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ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| evening | How many times the word 'evening' appears in the text? | 1 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| plenty | How many times the word 'plenty' appears in the text? | 0 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| radiant | How many times the word 'radiant' appears in the text? | 0 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| australia | How many times the word 'australia' appears in the text? | 1 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| pebble | How many times the word 'pebble' appears in the text? | 1 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| usually | How many times the word 'usually' appears in the text? | 1 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| easy | How many times the word 'easy' appears in the text? | 0 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| instant | How many times the word 'instant' appears in the text? | 1 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| where | How many times the word 'where' appears in the text? | 2 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| insect | How many times the word 'insect' appears in the text? | 0 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| folded | How many times the word 'folded' appears in the text? | 0 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| love | How many times the word 'love' appears in the text? | 0 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| dusk | How many times the word 'dusk' appears in the text? | 0 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| blades | How many times the word 'blades' appears in the text? | 2 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| volitized | How many times the word 'volitized' appears in the text? | 2 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| billion | How many times the word 'billion' appears in the text? | 0 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| names | How many times the word 'names' appears in the text? | 0 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| nature | How many times the word 'nature' appears in the text? | 0 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| piled | How many times the word 'piled' appears in the text? | 0 |
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Illustrated by van Dongen
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Science
Fiction June 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to
learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use
trying—when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled
through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star
that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first
lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by
Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine,
and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also
volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft
tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged
were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state,
that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney.
The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be
drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after
Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife
geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The
rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which
was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium
from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets
landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he
followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that
he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a
half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of
the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about
sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't
make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to
more than a month. His drinking water—kept separate from the water in
the reactor—might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too
carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent
conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days
reserve—plus one is five—plus sixteen days normal supply equals
twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be
dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin
for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the
light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on"
position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power
comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the
main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however,
came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself
through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course—
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light
of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons
of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers,
was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in
the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a
curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam
into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine,
the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the
temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly
freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing
the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would
operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in
the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if
the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his
drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the
pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The
water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and
the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the
trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the
condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into
the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully
used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious
luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to
live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as
the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the
ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans.
It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to
the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have
appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares.
If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark
filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the
rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce
the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening
his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum
density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again.
McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably
lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the
inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all
doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone
was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system
to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly
improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was
disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the
survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he
did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a
leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with
cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were
complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he
accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of
suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he
didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no
alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was
assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor.
Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to
Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning
at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning
on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar
furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on
anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up
to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what
they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the
Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going
over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope
they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're
amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm
sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what
day
."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean
Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty
a.m.
"
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean
anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any
rate," he said.
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the
nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and
one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it
threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians
asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've
got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they
don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker
says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on
bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was
hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em
too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a
rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get
hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and
they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade
commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small
craters overlapped and touched each other. There was—except in the
places that men had obscured them with footprints—not a square foot
that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a
square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been
made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater
covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been
exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and
found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the
cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white
crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into
a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man.
These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't
be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of
them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags
and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would
waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all
right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he
thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he
was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of
potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch
across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon
puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the
unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was
nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a
type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by
the sun.
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The
stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only
Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept
around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared
on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo,
and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to
move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into
the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same
time that the sun rose.
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and
to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores
out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going
back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two
drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't
have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his
tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The
union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need.
And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant
taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity,
"it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled
it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission
it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only
fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the
Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no
profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to
the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in
charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of
the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to
here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth,
and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium,
they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it
isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water
we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and
set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to
pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone
up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a
profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a
half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a
radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that
will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English
and Scots. Speaking of which—"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"
Slainte, McIlroy, bach.
" [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"
Slainte mhor, bach.
" [Great Health, man.]
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky
when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The
thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such
cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by
chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each
one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the
volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking
mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of
a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of
his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his
tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up
oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light
went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his
ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five
minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as
efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit
so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He
resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his
plan to search for a large bubble.
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the
mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The
dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath
it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled
maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed
his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of
the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his
vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and
ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to
clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor
don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor
building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It
would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor
started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the
boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat
was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric
eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw
the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building
opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a
fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead
started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an
unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off
on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the
inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come
with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the
reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without
a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that
indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no
matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because
it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of
the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and
ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the
Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor
turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials.
"Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is
there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an
engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage.
I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its
shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough
power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that
pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at
the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and
turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold
it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and
dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see
what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he
can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get
out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a
while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we
lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve.
How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using
the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple
of weeks."
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director
McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector
is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring
the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was
presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be
carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director
McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his
oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic
search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered
by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now
dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as
it is believed he was carrying only short-range,
intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was
saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never
a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd
never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it
tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the
reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a
rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted
Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the
stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset
crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth,
as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light
formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became
more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth
walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with
his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the
window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at
McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she
walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in
front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise,
and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His
neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few
minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia
will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then
Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them
are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position
by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it
had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why
this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about
finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole
population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the
search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was
slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine!
That's just line! Is Evans—?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite
observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report
back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the
rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting.
When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to
run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited
figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He
looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing.
"Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must
have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in
all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to
remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I
remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with
electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the
room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of
course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how
long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short
of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to
fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my
claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine
on the Moon!"
THE END
| mines | How many times the word 'mines' appears in the text? | 1 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| customary | How many times the word 'customary' appears in the text? | 0 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| knaubloch | How many times the word 'knaubloch' appears in the text? | 2 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| screeched | How many times the word 'screeched' appears in the text? | 1 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| olfactory | How many times the word 'olfactory' appears in the text? | 0 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| unbearable | How many times the word 'unbearable' appears in the text? | 0 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| copyright | How many times the word 'copyright' appears in the text? | 2 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| inc. | How many times the word 'inc.' appears in the text? | 2 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| ace | How many times the word 'ace' appears in the text? | 3 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| local | How many times the word 'local' appears in the text? | 1 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| wilson | How many times the word 'wilson' appears in the text? | 2 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| its | How many times the word 'its' appears in the text? | 1 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| stated | How many times the word 'stated' appears in the text? | 1 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| books | How many times the word 'books' appears in the text? | 3 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| floating | How many times the word 'floating' appears in the text? | 1 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| haunted | How many times the word 'haunted' appears in the text? | 0 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| spectacular | How many times the word 'spectacular' appears in the text? | 1 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| gigantic | How many times the word 'gigantic' appears in the text? | 0 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| most | How many times the word 'most' appears in the text? | 1 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| shouted | How many times the word 'shouted' appears in the text? | 0 |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| u.s.a. | How many times the word 'u.s.a.' appears in the text? | 1 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| research | How many times the word 'research' appears in the text? | 1 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| hanging | How many times the word 'hanging' appears in the text? | 1 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| raced | How many times the word 'raced' appears in the text? | 1 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| days | How many times the word 'days' appears in the text? | 1 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| flesh | How many times the word 'flesh' appears in the text? | 0 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| voluntary | How many times the word 'voluntary' appears in the text? | 0 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| foliage | How many times the word 'foliage' appears in the text? | 1 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| whirlpools | How many times the word 'whirlpools' appears in the text? | 2 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| emergency | How many times the word 'emergency' appears in the text? | 0 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| stream | How many times the word 'stream' appears in the text? | 2 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| renewed | How many times the word 'renewed' appears in the text? | 1 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| etext | How many times the word 'etext' appears in the text? | 1 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| boulevard | How many times the word 'boulevard' appears in the text? | 0 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| peep | How many times the word 'peep' appears in the text? | 0 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| touched | How many times the word 'touched' appears in the text? | 0 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| given | How many times the word 'given' appears in the text? | 0 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| machine | How many times the word 'machine' appears in the text? | 0 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| southern | How many times the word 'southern' appears in the text? | 0 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| purple | How many times the word 'purple' appears in the text? | 1 |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| shattering | How many times the word 'shattering' appears in the text? | 0 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| jagged | How many times the word 'jagged' appears in the text? | 0 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| least | How many times the word 'least' appears in the text? | 1 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| mildly | How many times the word 'mildly' appears in the text? | 1 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| legend | How many times the word 'legend' appears in the text? | 3 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| volume | How many times the word 'volume' appears in the text? | 0 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| illustrated | How many times the word 'illustrated' appears in the text? | 1 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| giant | How many times the word 'giant' appears in the text? | 1 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| research | How many times the word 'research' appears in the text? | 1 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| fiction | How many times the word 'fiction' appears in the text? | 1 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| screens | How many times the word 'screens' appears in the text? | 0 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| making | How many times the word 'making' appears in the text? | 0 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| climb | How many times the word 'climb' appears in the text? | 1 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| appreciable | How many times the word 'appreciable' appears in the text? | 1 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| grim | How many times the word 'grim' appears in the text? | 0 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| fronts | How many times the word 'fronts' appears in the text? | 0 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| etext | How many times the word 'etext' appears in the text? | 1 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| hell | How many times the word 'hell' appears in the text? | 1 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| otherwise | How many times the word 'otherwise' appears in the text? | 0 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| hotel | How many times the word 'hotel' appears in the text? | 0 |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| bird | How many times the word 'bird' appears in the text? | 0 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| literally | How many times the word 'literally' appears in the text? | 1 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| jumped | How many times the word 'jumped' appears in the text? | 2 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| copyright | How many times the word 'copyright' appears in the text? | 1 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| alarm | How many times the word 'alarm' appears in the text? | 1 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| etext | How many times the word 'etext' appears in the text? | 1 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| freckled | How many times the word 'freckled' appears in the text? | 1 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| neck | How many times the word 'neck' appears in the text? | 0 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| sit | How many times the word 'sit' appears in the text? | 1 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| pouches | How many times the word 'pouches' appears in the text? | 1 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| bed | How many times the word 'bed' appears in the text? | 1 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| chirp | How many times the word 'chirp' appears in the text? | 0 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| distribution | How many times the word 'distribution' appears in the text? | 0 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| vague | How many times the word 'vague' appears in the text? | 0 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| transcriber | How many times the word 'transcriber' appears in the text? | 1 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| renewed | How many times the word 'renewed' appears in the text? | 1 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| lovers | How many times the word 'lovers' appears in the text? | 0 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| extensive | How many times the word 'extensive' appears in the text? | 1 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| period | How many times the word 'period' appears in the text? | 1 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| lots | How many times the word 'lots' appears in the text? | 0 |
BRAMBLE BUSH
BY ALAN E. NOURSE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
And when he saw what he had done, with all his might and main
He jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
MOTHER GOOSE
Dr. David Lessing found Jack Dorffman and the boy waiting in his office
when he arrived at the Hoffman Center that morning. Dorffman looked as
though he'd been running all night. There were dark pouches under his
eyes; his heavy unshaven face seemed to sag at every crease. Lessing
glanced sharply at his Field Director and sank down behind his desk
with a sigh. "All right, Jack—what's wrong?"
"This kid is driving me nuts," said Dorffman through clenched teeth.
"He's gone completely hay-wire. Nobody's been able to get near him
for three weeks, and now at six o'clock this morning he decides he's
leaving the Farm. I talk to him, I sweat him down, I do everything but
tie him to the bed, and I waste my time. He's leaving the Farm. Period."
"So you bring him down here," said Lessing sourly. "The worst place he
could be, if something's really wrong." He looked across at the boy.
"Tommy? Come over and sit down."
There was nothing singular about the boy's appearance. He was thin,
with a pale freckled face and the guileless expression of any normal
eight-year-old as he blinked across the desk at Lessing. The awkward
grey monitor-helmet concealed a shock of sandy hair. He sat with a mute
appeal in his large grey eyes as Lessing flipped the reader-switch and
blinked in alarm at the wildly thrashing pattern on the tape.
The boy was terrorized. He was literally pulsating with fear.
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me about it, Tommy," he said gently.
"I don't want to go back to the Farm," said the boy.
"Why?"
"I just don't. I hate it there."
"Are you frightened?"
The boy bit his lip and nodded slowly.
"Of me? Of Dr. Dorffman?"
"No. Oh, no!"
"Then what?"
Again the mute appeal in the boy's eyes. He groped for words, and none
came. Finally he said, "If I could only take this off—" He fingered
the grey plastic helmet.
"You think
that
would make you feel better?"
"It would, I know it would."
Lessing shook his head. "I don't think so, Tommy. You know what the
monitor is for, don't you?"
"It stops things from going out."
"That's right. And it stops things from going in. It's an insulator.
You need it badly. It would hurt you a great deal if you took it off,
away from the Farm."
The boy fought back tears. "But I don't want to go back there—" The
fear-pattern was alive again on the tape. "I don't feel good there. I
never want to go back."
"Well, we'll see. You can stay here for a while." Lessing nodded at
Dorffman and stepped into an adjoining room with him. "You say this has
been going on for
three weeks
?"
"I'm afraid so. We thought it was just a temporary pattern—we see so
much of that up there."
"I know, I know." Lessing chewed his lip. "I don't like it. We'd better
set up a battery on him and try to spot the trouble. And I'm afraid
you'll have to set it up. I've got that young Melrose from Chicago to
deal with this morning—the one who's threatening to upset the whole
Conference next month with some crazy theories he's been playing with.
I'll probably have to take him out to the Farm to shut him up." Lessing
ran a hand through sparse grey hair. "See what you can do for the boy
downstairs."
"Full psi precautions?" asked Dorffman.
"Certainly! And Jack—in this case, be
sure
of it. If Tommy's in the
trouble I think he's in, we don't dare risk a chance of Adult Contact
now. We could end up with a dead boy on our hands."
Two letters were waiting on Lessing's desk that morning. The first was
from Roberts Bros., announcing another shift of deadline on the book,
and demanding the galley proofs two weeks earlier than scheduled.
Lessing groaned. As director of psionic research at the Hoffman Medical
Center, he had long since learned how administrative detail could suck
up daytime hours. He knew that his real work was at the Farm—yet he
hadn't even been to the Farm in over six weeks. And now, as the book
approached publication date, Lessing wondered if he would ever really
get back to work again.
The other letter cheered him a bit more. It bore the letterhead of the
International Psionics Conference:
Dear Dr. Lessing:
In recognition of your position as an authority on human Psionic
behavior patterns, we would be gratified to schedule you as principle
speaker at the Conference in Chicago on October 12th. A few remarks in
discussion of your forthcoming book would be entirely in order—
They were waiting for it, then! He ran the galley proofs into the
scanner excitedly. They knew he had something up his sleeve. His
earlier papers had only hinted at the direction he was going—but the
book would clear away the fog. He scanned the title page proudly. "A
Theory of Psionic Influence on Infant and Child Development." A good
title—concise, commanding, yet modest. They would read it, all right.
And they would find it a light shining brightly in the darkness, a
guide to the men who were floundering in the jungle of a strange and
baffling new science.
For they were floundering. When they were finally forced to recognize
that this great and powerful force did indeed exist in human minds,
with unimaginable potential if it could only be unlocked, they had
plunged eagerly into the search, and found themselves in a maddening
bramble bush of contradictions and chaos. Nothing worked, and
everything worked too well. They were trying to study phenomena which
made no sense, observing things that defied logic. Natural laws came
crashing down about their ears as they stood sadly by and watched
things happen which natural law said could never happen. They had never
been in this jungle before, nor in any jungle remotely like it. The
old rules didn't work here, the old methods of study failed. And the
more they struggled, the thicker and more impenetrable the bramble bush
became—
But now David Lessing had discovered a pathway through that jungle, a
theory to work by—
At his elbow the intercom buzzed. "A gentleman to see you," the girl
said. "A Dr. Melrose. He's very impatient, sir."
He shut off the scanner and said, "Send him in, please."
Dr. Peter Melrose was tall and thin, with jet black hair and dark
mocking eyes. He wore a threadbare sport coat and a slouch. He offered
Lessing a bony hand, then flung himself into a chair as he stared about
the office in awe.
"I'm really overwhelmed," he said after a moment. "Within the
stronghold of psionic research at last. And face to face with the
Master in the trembling flesh!"
Lessing frowned. "Dr. Melrose, I don't quite understand—"
"Oh, it's just that I'm impressed," the young man said airily. "Of
course, I've seen old dried-up Authorities before—but never before
a brand spanking new one, just fresh out of the pupa, so to speak!"
He touched his forehead in a gesture of reverence. "I bow before the
Oracle. Speak, oh Motah, live forever! Cast a pearl at my feet!"
"If you've come here to be insulting," Lessing said coldly, "you're
just wasting time." He reached for the intercom switch.
"I think you'd better wait before you do that," Melrose said sharply,
"because I'm planning to take you apart at the Conference next month
unless I like everything I see and hear down here today. And if you
don't think I can do it, you're in for quite a dumping."
Lessing sat back slowly. "Tell me—just what, exactly, do you want?"
"I want to hear this fairy tale you're about to publish in the name of
'Theory'," Melrose said. "I want to see this famous Farm of yours up in
Connecticut and see for myself how much pressure these experimental
controls you keep talking about will actually bear. But mostly, I want
to see just what in psionic hell you're so busy making yourself an
Authority about." There was no laughter in the man's sharp brown eyes.
"You couldn't touch me with a ten foot pole at this conference,"
snapped Lessing.
The other man grinned. "Try me! We shook you up a little bit last year,
but you didn't seem to get the idea."
"Last year was different." Lessing scowled. "As for our 'fairy tale',
we happen to have a staggering body of evidence that says that it's
true."
"If the papers you've already published are a preview, we think it's
false as Satan."
"And our controls are above suspicion."
"So far, we haven't found any way to set up logical controls," said
Melrose. "We've done a lot of work on it, too."
"Oh, yes—I've heard about your work. Not bad, really. A little
misdirected, is all."
"According to your Theory, that is."
"Wildly unorthodox approach to psionics—but at least you're energetic
enough."
"We haven't been energetic enough to find an orthodox approach that got
us anywhere. We doubt if you have, either. But maybe we're all wrong."
Melrose grinned unpleasantly. "We're not unreasonable, your Majesty. We
just ask to be shown. If you dare, that is."
Lessing slammed his fist down on the desk angrily. "Have you got the
day to take a trip?"
"I've got 'til New Year."
Lessing shouted for his girl. "Get Dorffman up here. We're going to the
Farm this afternoon."
The girl nodded, then hesitated. "But what about your lunch?"
"Bother lunch." He gave Melrose a sidelong glare. "We've got a guest
here who's got a lot of words he's going to eat for us...."
Ten minutes later they rode the elevator down to the transit levels
and boarded the little shuttle car in the terminal below the
Hoffman Center. They sat in silence as the car dipped down into the
rapid-transit channels beneath the great city, swinging northward in
the express circuit through Philadelphia and Camden sectors, surfacing
briefly in Trenton sector, then dropping underground once again for the
long pull beneath Newark, Manhattan and Westchester sectors. In less
than twenty minutes the car surfaced on a Parkway channel and buzzed
north and east through the verdant Connecticut countryside.
"What about Tommy?" Lessing asked Dorffman as the car sped along
through the afternoon sun.
"I just finished the prelims. He's not cooperating."
Lessing ground his teeth. "I should be running him now instead of
beating the bushes with this—" He broke off to glare at young Melrose.
Melrose grinned. "I've heard you have quite a place up here."
"It's—unconventional, at any rate," Lessing snapped.
"Well, that depends on your standards. Sounds like a country day
school, from what I've heard. According to your papers, you've even
used conventional statistical analysis on your data from up here."
"Until we had to throw it out. We discovered that what we were trying
to measure didn't make sense in a statistical analysis."
"Of course, you're sure you were measuring
something
."
"Oh, yes. We certainly were."
"Yet you said that you didn't know what."
"That's right," said Lessing. "We don't."
"And you don't know
why
your instruments measure whatever they're
measuring." The Chicago man's face was thoughtful. "In fact, you can't
really be certain that your instruments are measuring the children at
all. It's not inconceivable that the
children
might be measuring the
instruments
, eh?"
Lessing blinked. "It's conceivable."
"Mmmm," said Melrose. "Sounds like a real firm foundation to build a
theory on."
"Why not?" Lessing growled. "It wouldn't be the first time the tail
wagged the dog. The psychiatrists never would have gotten out of their
rut if somebody hadn't gotten smart and realized that one of their new
drugs worked better in combatting schizophrenia when the doctor took
the medicine instead of the patient. That was quite a wall to climb."
"Yes, wasn't it," mused Melrose, scratching his bony jaw. "Only took
them seventy years to climb it, thanks to a certain man's theories.
I wonder how long it'll take psionics to crawl out of the pit you're
digging for it?"
"We're not digging any pit," Lessing exploded angrily. "We're
exploring—nothing more. A phenomenon exists. We've known that, one way
or another, for centuries. The fact that it doesn't seem to be bound by
the same sort of natural law we've observed elsewhere doesn't mean that
it isn't governed by natural law. But how can we define the law? How
can we define the limits of the phenomenon, for that matter? We can't
work in the dark forever—we've
got
to have a working hypothesis to
guide us."
"So you dreamed up this 'tadpole' idea," said Melrose sourly.
"For a working hypothesis—yes. We've known for a long time that every
human being has extrasensory potential to one degree or another. Not
just a few here and there—every single one. It's a differentiating
quality of the human mind. Just as the ability to think logically in a
crisis instead of giving way to panic is a differentiating quality."
"Fine," said Melrose. "Great. We can't
prove
that, of course, but
I'll play along."
Lessing glared at him. "When we began studying this psi-potential, we
found out some curious things. For one thing, it seemed to be immensely
more powerful and active in infants and children than in adults.
Somewhere along the line as a child grows up, something happens. We
don't know what. We do know that the child's psi-potential gradually
withdraws deeper and deeper into his mind, burying itself farther and
farther out of reach, just the way a tadpole's tail is absorbed deeper
and deeper into the growing frog until there just isn't any tail any
more." Lessing paused, packing tobacco into his pipe. "That's why we
have the Farm—to try to discover why. What forces that potential
underground? What buries it so deeply that adult human beings can't get
at it any more?"
"And you think you have an answer," said Melrose.
"We think we might be near an answer. We have a theory that explains
the available data."
The shuttle car bounced sharply as it left the highway automatics.
Dorffman took the controls. In a few moments they were skimming through
the high white gates of the Farm, slowing down at the entrance to a
long, low building.
"All right, young man—come along," said Lessing. "I think we can show
you our answer."
In the main office building they donned the close-fitting psionic
monitors required of all personnel at the Farm. They were of a
hard grey plastic material, with a network of wiring buried in the
substance, connected to a simple pocket-sized power source.
"The major problem," Lessing said, "has been to shield the children
from any external psionic stimuli, except those we wished to expose
them to. Our goal is a perfectly controlled psi environment. The
monitors are quite effective—a simple Renwick scrambler screen."
"It blocks off all types of psi activity?" asked Melrose.
"As far as we can measure, yes."
"Which may not be very far."
Jack Dorffman burst in: "What Dr. Lessing is saying is that they seem
effective for our purposes."
"But you don't know why," added Melrose.
"All right, we don't know why. Nobody knows why a Renwick screen
works—why blame us?" They were walking down the main corridor and out
through an open areaway. Behind the buildings was a broad playground. A
baseball game was in progress in one corner; across the field a group
of swings, slides, ring bars and other playground paraphernalia was in
heavy use. The place was teeming with youngsters, all shouting in a
fury of busy activity. Occasionally a helmeted supervisor hurried by;
one waved to them as she rescued a four-year-old from the parallel bars.
They crossed into the next building, where classes were in progress.
"Some of our children are here only briefly," Lessing explained as
they walked along, "and some have been here for years. We maintain a
top-ranking curriculum—your idea of a 'country day school' wasn't
so far afield at that—with scholarships supported by Hoffman Center
funds. Other children come to us—foundlings, desertees, children from
broken homes, children of all ages from infancy on. Sometimes they
stay until they have reached college age, or go on to jobs. As far as
psionics research is concerned, we are not trying to be teachers. We
are strictly observers. We try to place the youngsters in positions
where they can develope what potential they have—
without
the
presence of external psionic influences they would normally be subject
to. The results have been remarkable."
He led them into a long, narrow room with chairs and ash trays, facing
a wide grey glass wall. The room fell into darkness, and through the
grey glass they could see three children, about four years old, playing
in a large room.
"They're perfectly insulated from us," said Lessing. "A variety of
recording instruments are working. And before you ask, Dr. Melrose,
they are all empirical instruments, and they would all defy any
engineer's attempts to determine what makes them go. We don't know what
makes them go, and we don't care—they go. That's all we need. Like
that one, for instance—"
In the corner a flat screen was flickering, emitting a pale green
fluorescent light. It hung from the wall by two plastic rods which
penetrated into the children's room. There was no sign of a switch,
nor a power source. As the children moved about, the screen flickered.
Below it, a recording-tape clicked along in little spurts and starts of
activity.
"What are they doing?" Melrose asked after watching the children a few
moments.
"Those three seem to work as a team, somehow. Each one, individually,
had a fairly constant recordable psi potential of about seventeen on
the arbitrary scale we find useful here. Any two of them scale in at
thirty-four to thirty-six. Put the three together and they operate
somewhere in the neighborhood of six hundred on the same scale."
Lessing smiled. "This is an isolated phenomenon—it doesn't hold for
any other three children on the Farm. Nor did we make any effort to
place them together—they drew each other like magnets. One of our
workers spent two weeks trying to find out why the instruments weren't
right. It wasn't the instruments, of course."
Lessing nodded to an attendant, and peered around at Melrose. "Now, I
want you to watch this very closely."
He opened a door and walked into the room with the children. The
fluorescent screen continued to flicker as the children ran to Lessing.
He inspected the block tower they were building, and stooped down to
talk to them, his lips moving soundlessly behind the observation wall.
The children laughed and jabbered, apparently intrigued by the game he
was proposing. He walked to the table and tapped the bottom block in
the tower with his thumb.
The tower quivered, and the screen blazed out with green light, but the
tower stood. Carefully Lessing jogged all the foundation blocks out of
place until the tower hung in midair, clearly unsupported. The children
watched it closely, and the foundation blocks inched still further out
of place....
Then, quite casually, Lessing lifted off his monitor. The children
continued staring at the tower as the screen gave three or four violent
bursts of green fire and went dark.
The block tower fell with a crash.
Moments later Lessing was back in the observation room, leaving the
children busily putting the tower back together. There was a little
smile on his lips as he saw Melrose's face. "Perhaps you're beginning
to see what I'm driving at," he said slowly.
"Yes," said Melrose. "I think I'm beginning to see." He scratched his
jaw. "You think that it's adult psi-contact that drives the child's
potential underground—that somehow adult contact acts like a damper, a
sort of colossal candle-snuffer."
"That's what I think," said Lessing.
"How do you know those children didn't make you take off your monitor?"
Lessing blinked. "Why should they?"
"Maybe they enjoy the crash when the blocks fall down."
"But that wouldn't make any difference, would it? The blocks still fall
down."
Melrose paced down the narrow room. "This is very good," he said
suddenly, his voice earnest. "You have fine facilities here, good
workers. And in spite of my flippancy, Dr. Lessing, I have never
imagined for a moment that you were not an acute observer and a
careful, highly imaginative worker. But suppose I told you, in perfect
faith, that we have data that flatly contradicts everything you've told
me today. Reproducible data, utterly incompatable with yours. What
would you say to that?"
"I'd say you were wrong," said Lessing. "You couldn't have such data.
According to the things I am certain are true, what you're saying is
sheer nonsense."
"And you'd express that opinion in a professional meeting?"
"I would."
"And as an Authority on psionic behavior patterns," said Melrose
slowly, "you would kill us then and there. You would strangle us
professionally, discredit anything we did, cut us off cold." The
tall man turned on him fiercely. "Are you blind, man? Can't you see
what danger you're in? If you publish your book now, you will become
an Authority in a field where the most devastating thing that could
possibly happen would be—
the appearance of an Authority
."
Lessing and Dorffman rode back to the Hoffman Center in grim silence.
At first Lessing pretended to work; finally he snapped off the tape
recorder in disgust and stared out the shuttle-car window. Melrose had
gone on to Idlewild to catch a jet back to Chicago. It was a relief to
see him go, Lessing thought, and tried to force the thin, angry man
firmly out of his mind. But somehow Melrose wouldn't force.
"Stop worrying about it," Dorffman urged. "He's a crackpot. He's
crawled way out on a limb, and now he's afraid your theory is going to
cut it off under him. Well, that's his worry, not yours." Dorffman's
face was intense. "Scientifically, you're on unshakeable ground. Every
great researcher has people like Melrose sniping at him. You just have
to throw them off and keep going."
Lessing shook his head. "Maybe. But this field of work is different
from any other, Jack. It doesn't follow the rules. Maybe scientific
grounds aren't right at all, in this case."
Dorffman snorted. "Surely there's nothing wrong with theorizing—"
"He wasn't objecting to the theory. He's afraid of what happens after
the theory."
"So it seems. But why?"
"Have you ever considered what makes a man an Authority?"
"He knows more about his field than anybody else does."
"He
seems
to, you mean. And therefore, anything he says about it
carries more weight than what anybody else says. Other workers follow
his lead. He developes ideas, formulates theories—and then
defends
them for all he's worth
."
"But why shouldn't he?"
"Because a man can't fight for his life and reputation and still keep
his objectivity," said Lessing. "And what if he just happens to be
wrong? Once he's an Authority the question of what's right and what's
wrong gets lost in the shuffle. It's
what he says
that counts."
"But we
know
you're right," Dorffman protested.
"Do we?"
"Of course we do! Look at our work! Look at what we've seen on the
Farm."
"Yes, I know." Lessing's voice was weary. "But first I think we'd
better look at Tommy Gilman, and the quicker we look, the better—"
A nurse greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. "We called
you at the Farm, but you'd already left. The boy—" She broke off
helplessly. "He's sick, Doctor. He's sicker than we ever imagined."
"What happened?"
"Nothing exactly—happened. I don't quite know how to describe it."
She hurried them down the corridor and opened a door into a large
children's playroom. "See what you think."
The boy sat stolidly in the corner of the room. He looked up as they
came in, but there was no flicker of recognition or pleasure on his
pale face. The monitor helmet was still on his head. He just sat there,
gripping a toy fire engine tightly in his hands.
Lessing crossed the room swiftly. "Tommy," he said.
The boy didn't even look at him. He stared stupidly at the fire engine.
"Tommy!" Lessing reached out for the toy. The boy drew back in terror,
clutching it to his chest. "Go away," he choked. "Go away, go away—"
When Lessing persisted the boy bent over swiftly and bit him hard on
the hand.
Lessing sat down on the table. "Tommy, listen to me." His voice was
gentle. "I won't try to take it again. I promise."
"Go away."
"Do you know who I am?"
Tommy's eyes shifted haltingly to Lessing's face. He nodded. "Go away."
"Why are you afraid, Tommy?"
"I hurt. My head hurts. I hurt all over. Go away."
"Why do you hurt?"
"I—can't get it—off," the boy said.
The monitor
, Lessing thought suddenly. Something had suddenly gone
horribly wrong—could the boy really be sensing the source of the
trouble? Lessing felt a cold knot gather in the pit of his stomach. He
knew what happened when adult psi-contact struck a psi-high youngster's
mind. He had seen it a hundred times at the Farm. But even more—he
had felt it in his own mind, bursting from the child. Like a violent
physical blow, the hate and fear and suspicion and cruelty buried and
repressed in the adult mind, crushing suddenly into the raw receptors
of the child's mind like a smothering fog—it was a fearful thing. A
healthy youngster could survive it, even though the scar remained. But
this youngster was sick—
And yet
an animal instinctively seeks its own protection
. With
trembling fingers Lessing reached out and opened the baffle-snap on the
monitor. "Take it off, Tommy," he whispered.
The boy blinked in amazement, and pulled the grey helmet from his head.
Lessing felt the familiar prickly feeling run down his scalp as the
boy stared at him. He could feel deep in his own mind the cold chill
of terror radiating from the boy. Then, suddenly, it began to fade. A
sense of warmth—peace and security and comfort—swept in as the fear
faded from the boy's face.
The fire engine clattered to the floor.
They analyzed the tapes later, punching the data cards with greatest
care, filing them through the machines for the basic processing and
classification that all their data underwent. It was late that night
when they had the report back in their hands.
Dorffman stared at it angrily. "It's obviously wrong," he grated. "It
doesn't fit. Dave, it doesn't agree with
anything
we've observed
before. There must be an error."
"Of course," said Lessing. "According to the theory. The theory says
that adult psi-contact is deadly to the growing child. It smothers
their potential through repeated contact until it dries up completely.
We've proved that, haven't we? Time after time. Everything goes
according to the theory—except Tommy. But Tommy's psi-potential was
drying up there on the Farm, until the distortion was threatening the
balance of his mind. Then he made an adult contact, and we saw how he
bloomed." Lessing sank down to his desk wearily. "What are we going to
do, Jack? Formulate a separate theory for Tommy?"
"Of course not," said Dorffman. "The instruments were wrong. Somehow we
misread the data—"
"Didn't you see his
face
?" Lessing burst out. "Didn't you see how he
acted
? What do you want with an instrument reading?" He shook his
head. "It's no good, Jack. Something different happened here, something
we'd never counted on. It's something the theory just doesn't allow
for."
They sat silently for a while. Then Dorffman said: "What are you going
to do?"
"I don't know," said Lessing. "Maybe when we fell into this bramble
bush we blinded ourselves with the urge to classify—to line everything
up in neat rows like pins in a paper. Maybe we were so blind we missed
the path altogether."
"But the book is due! The Conference speech—"
"I think we'll make some changes in the book," Lessing said slowly.
"It'll be costly—but it might even be fun. It's a pretty dry, logical
presentation of ideas, as it stands. Very austere and authoritarian.
But a few revisions could change all that—" He rubbed his hands
together thoughtfully. "How about it, Jack? Do we have nerve enough to
be laughed at? Do you think we could stand a little discredit, making
silly asses of ourselves? Because when I finish this book, we'll be
laughed out of existence. There won't be any Authority in psionics for
a while—and maybe that way one of the lads who's
really
sniffing out
the trail will get somebody to listen to him!
"Get a pad, get a pencil! We've got work to do. And when we finish, I
think we'll send a carbon copy out Chicago way. Might even persuade
that puppy out there to come here and work for me—"
| nourse | How many times the word 'nourse' appears in the text? | 1 |