Beyond the End of Time (1952) Anthology

by Frederik Pohl (ed. )

  It will be observed that the Haslip Intergalactic Expedition was referred to as having proved the futility of hope. It had set out twenty-five years before the destruction of Alyx was attempted by the Space Patrol.

  The expedition had been composed of twenty men and twenty women, and the ten children already born to them. Its leader was Jon Haslip, twenty-second in descent from that Junior Lieutenant Haslip who first suggested the sort of consciousness Alyx might possess and eight generations from the Jon Haslip who had discovered the development of Alyx’s independent consciousness and memory and will.

  The first Jon Haslip received for his reward a footnote in a long-forgotten volume. The later one was hastily withdrawn from Alyx, his report was suppressed, and he was assigned permanently to one of the minor planets of the Taurine group. Jon Haslip XXII was a young man, newly-married but already of long experience in space, when he lifted from Cetis Alpha 2, crossed the galaxy to Dassos, and headed out from there toward the Second Galaxy.

  It was considered that not less than six years’ journeying in super-overdrive would be required to cross the gulf between the island universes. The ship was fueled for twenty years at full power, and it would grow its food in hydroponic tanks, purify its air by the growing vegetation, and nine-tenths of its mass was fuel.

  It had gone into the very special overdrive which Alyx had worked out—and ignored thereafter—twenty-five years before. Of all the creations of men, it seemed least likely to have any possible connection with the planet-entity which was Alyx.

  But it was the Haslip Expedition which made the last report on Alyx. There is still dispute about some essential parts of the story. On the one hand, Alyx had no need to leave the First Galaxy. With three hundred million inhabitable planets, of which not more than ten thousand .wert colonized and of which certainly less than a quarter million had been even partially surveyed, Alyx could have escaped detection for centuries if it chose.

  It could have defended itself if discovered. There was no reason for it to take to intergalactic space. That it did so seems to rule out accident. But it is equally inconceivable that any possible device could intentionally have found the Haslip Expedition in that unthinkable gulf between galaxies.

  But it happened. Two years’ journeying out from the First Galaxy, when the younger children had already forgotten what it was like to see a sun and had lost all memories of ever being out-of-doors beneath a planet’s sky, the expedition’s fuel store be can to deteriorate.

  Perhaps a single molecule of the vast quantity of fuel was altered by a cosmic ray. It is known that the almost infinitely complex molecules of overdrive fuel are capable of alteration by neutron bombardment, so the cosmic-ray alteration is possible. In any case, the fuel began to change. As if a contagious allotropic modification were spreading, the fuel progressively became useless.*

  *Pure metallic tin, at low temperatures, sometimes changes spontaneously to a gray, amorphous powder, the change beginning at one spot and spreading through the rest of the material.—M.L.

  Two years out from the First Galaxy, the expedition found itself already under fueled. By heroic efforts, the contaminated fuel was expelled from the tanks. But there was not enough sound fuel left to continue to the Second Galaxy, or to return to the First. If all drive were cut off and the expedition’s shin simply drifted on, it might reach the Second Galaxy in three centuries with fuel left for exploration and landings.

  Neither the original crew nor their children nor their grandchildren could hope to reach such a journey’s end. But their many-times-great-grandchildren might. So the Haslip Expedition conserved what fuel was left, and the ship drifted on in utter emptiness, and the adults of the crew settled down to endure the imprisonment which would last for generations.

  They did not need to worry about food or air. The ship was self-sustaining on that Score. They even had artificial gravity. But the ship must drift for three centuries before the drive was turned on again.

  Actually, it did drift for twenty-three years after the catastrophe. A few of the older members of the crew died; the greater part had no memory at all of anything but the ship.

  Then Alyx came. Its approach was heralded by a clamorous ringing of all the alarm bells on the ship. It winked into being out of overdrive a bare half million miles away. It glowed blindingly with the lights it had created to nourish its surface. It swam closer and the crew of the expedition’s ship set to work fumblingly— because it had been many years since the drive had been used—and tried vainly to estimate the meaning of the phenomenon.

  Then they felt acceleration toward Alyx. It was not a gravitational pull, but a drawing of the ship itself.

  The ship landed on Alyx, and there was the sensation of reeling, of the collapse of all the cosmos. Then the unchanging galaxies began to stir, very slowly—not at all like the crawling glow-worms that suns seem within a galaxy—and the older members of the crew knew that this entire planet had gone into overdrive.

  When they emerged from the ship there were forests, lakes, palaces—such beauty as the younger members of the crew had no memory of. Music filled the air and sweet scents, and—in short, Alyx provided the crew of the Haslip Expedition with a very admirable paradise for human beings. And it went on toward the Second Galaxy.

  Instead of the three hundred years they had anticipated, or even the four years that would have remained with the very special overdrive with which the expedition’s ship was equipped, Alyx came out of overdrive in three months, at the edge of the Second Galaxy.

  In the interval, its communicators had been at work. It explained, naively, .everything that had happened to it among men. It explained its needs. It found words— invented words—for explanation of the discoveries the Space Patrol had wanted but could not wait to secure.

  Jon Haslip the twenty-second found that he possessed such revelations of science as unaided human beings would not attain to for thousands of years yet to come. He knew that Alyx could never return to the First Galaxy because it was stronger and wiser than men. But he understood Alyx. It seemed to be an inheritance in his family.

  Alyx still could not live without men nor could it live among men. It had brought the Haslip Expedition to the Second Galaxy, and of its own accord it made a new ship modeled upon the one it had drawn to itself, but remarkably better. It offered that ship for exploration of the Second Galaxy. It offered others. It desired only to serve men.

  This new ship, made by Alyx, for the Haslip Expedition, returned to Dassos a year later with its reports. In the ship of Alyx’s making, the journey between galaxies took only five months—less than the time needed for the ancient first space journey from Earth to Venus.*

  * Earth, of course, is familiar as the first home of humanity. It is the third planet of Sol. Venus is the second planet of Sol, and the first journey from one planet to another was that between Earth and Venus.—M.L.

  Only a part of the augmented crew of the first ship came back to Dassos with reports for the Space Patrol. Another part stayed behind in the Second Galaxy, working from a base equipped with machines that Alyx had made for the service of men. And still another part—

  The Space Patrol was very much annoyed with Jon Haslip the twenty-second. He had not destroyed Alyx. It had informed him truthfully of the fact that it was a danger to men, and he had not destroyed it. Instead, he had made a bargain with it. Those of the younger folk who preferred to remain on Alyx did so. They had palaces and gardens and every imaginable luxury. They also had sciences that overreached those of other men, and Alyx itself for an instructor.

  Alyx carried those young folks on toward infinity. In time to come, undoubtedly, some of the descendants of those now living on Alyx would wish to leave it.

  They would form a human colony somewhere else. Perhaps some of them would one day rejoin the parent race, bringing back new miracles that they or possibly Alyx had created in its rejoicing at the companionship of the human beings who lived upon it.

  T
his, was the report of Jon Haslip the twenty-second. He also had reports of new planets fit for human habitation, of star-systems as vast as those of the First Galaxy, and an unlimited vista of expansion for humanity. But the Space Patrol was very much annoyed. He had not destroyed Alyx.

  The annoyance of authority was so great, indeed, that in its report of reassurance to humanity—saying that there was no more need to fear Alyx—the name of Jon Haslip was not even mentioned. In the history-books, as a matter of fact, the very name of the Haslip Expedition has been changed, and it is now called the First Intergalactic Expediton and you have to hunt through the appendices in the back of the books to find a list of the crew and Jon Haslip’s name.

  But Alyx goes on—forever. And it is happy. It likes human beings, and some of them live on it.

  Travel is so broadening. But suppose your home were a Mecca for tourists from tomorrow?

  OPERATION PEEP

  By John Wyndham

  When I called 'round in the evening I showed Sally the paragraph in the Center City News.

  "What do you think of that?" I asked her.

  She read it, standing, and with an impatient frown on her pretty face.

  "I don’t believe it,” she said, finally.

  Sally’s principles of belief and disbelief are things I never could get a line on. How a girl can dismiss a pack of solid evidence like it was kettle steam. . . . Oh, well, skip it. The paragraph read:

  MUSIC WITH A KICK

  Patrons at Adams Hall last night got a shock when they saw a pair of legs dangling knee-deep from the roof while the concert was on. Seemingly everybody there saw them and all reports agree they were bare feminine gams. After three or four minutes anti a couple of rule kicks they disappeared upwards. Examination of the roof showed everything normal, and the owners of the hall are at a loss to account for the phenomenon.

  "It's just more of the same," I said.

  "So what?” said Sally. "What does it prove, anyway?" she added, apparently forgetful that she wasn’t believing "I don’t know—yet.” I admitted.

  “Well, there you are then.” she said.

  Sometimes I get the feeling Sally doesn’t rely much on logic

  To me, it looked like there were things happening that needed adding together.

  You see, Sally and I knew about the first guy to bump against it. A certain Patrolman Walsh. Oh, maybe others saw things before that and just put them down as a new kind of pink elephant. But when Patrolman Walsh found a head sitting up on the sidewalk, he stopped to look at it pretty hard. The thing that upset Walsh, according to the report he turned in after running half a mile to the precinct station, was that it turned to look back at him.

  If it did, he shouldn’t have mentioned it; it just naturally brought the pink elephants to mind. Nobody in a respectable police station wants to hear a thing like that. However, he stuck to his story, so after they’d bawled' him out a bit and taken disappointing sniffs at his breath, they sent him back with another man to show just where he’d seen the thing. Of course no head could be found— nor signs of cleaning-up marks. And that’s all there was said about the incident—save, doubtless, a few curt remarks on the conduct-sheet to dog his future career.

  But two evenings later another queer story made the papers. Seems an apartment house was curdled by scaring shrieks from a Mrs. Rourke in No. 35 and simultaneously from a Miss Farrell who lived above her. When the neighbors arrived, they found Mrs. Rourke hysterical about a pair of legs that had been dangling from her bedroom ceiling, and Miss Farrell the same about an arm and shoulder stretched out under her lied. But there was nothing to be seen on the ceiling, and nothing under the bed beyond a discreditable quantity of dust.

  There were other little incidents, too. It was Jimmy Lindlen who drew my attention to them. He works, if that isn't too strong a word for it, in my office and his hobby is collecting queer facts. In this he is what you might call the reductio ad opposite absurdum of Sally. For him everything screwy that gets printed in a newspaper is a fact—poor fellow. I guess he once heard that the truth is never simple, from which he deduced that everything not simple must be true.

  I've never actually seen Jimmy at work on his hobby. But at a guess I'd say he would deal himself a hand of cuttings in which there was one strange yet constant factor, discard the awkward ones, and then settle down to astonish himself as much as possible with theories about the rest. I got used to him coming into my room full of inspiration, and didn’t lake much account of it. I knew he'd shuttle and deal himself another hand that evening and stagger himself all over again. So when he brought in that first batch about Patrolman Walsh and the rest 1 didn't ignite much.

  But some days later he was back with more. Maybe work was slack, or maybe I was surprised by his playing the same type of phenomena twice running. Anyway, I paid more attention than usual.

  "You see. Arms, heads, legs, torsos all over the place. It's an epidemic," said Jimmy. “There's something behind it. Somethings happening!" he said, as near as you can vocalize italics.

  When I'd read the clippings. I had to admit that maybe he was right.

  A bus driver had seen the upper half of a body upright in the road before him—but a bit late. When he did stop and climb out. sweating, to examine the mess, there was nothing there. A woman hanging out of a window watching the street saw another head below her, doing the same—but this one was projecting out of the solid brickwork. There was a pair of arms which came out of the floor in a butcher's shop, then withdrew into the solid cement. There was the man on an erection job who became aware of a strangely dressed figure standing close to him, but in the empty air—after which lie had to be helped down and sent home. Another figure was noticed between the rails in the path of a heavy freight train, but had vanished without trace when the train had passed. .The dozen or so witnesses agreed that it was wearing some kind of fancy dress, but looked quite masculine-While I skimmed through the clippings Jimmy stood wailing, like a bottle of seltzer.

  "You see," he fizzed enthusiastically. “Something is happening."

  "Supposing it is," I conceded. “But what?”

  ‘The manifestation zone is limited," Jimmy said impressively. "If you look where I've circled the incidents on this city plan, you'll see they’re grouped. Somewhere in that circle is the 'focus of disturbance.'" He nicely managed to vocalize the inverted commas. 'I've got a pretty good idea of the cause." he added, weightily.

  I rarely knew Jimmy when he hadn't, though it might be a different one an hour later.

  "I'll buy it," I offered.

  ‘Teleportation! Rusting a thing up and transmitting it through space like television sends pictures. That’s what it is. Bound to come sooner or later!” He leaned forward earnestly. “How else'd you account for it?"

  “If there could lie teleportation, or teleportage, or whatever it is, I reckon there'd have to be a transmitter and some sort of reassembly station," I told liim. "You couldn't expect a person to be kind of broadcast and then come together again any old place.”

  “But you don't know that,” he pointed out. “Besides, that’s part of what I was meaning by 'focus/ It may be focused on that area.”

  “If it is.” I said, “it seems to have got its levels and positions all to hell. I wonder just what happens to a guy who gets himself reassembled half in and half out of a brick wall?”

  It’s details like that which get Jimmy impatient.

  “Obviously,” he said, “it’s in the early stages. Experimental.”

  “Huh,” I said.

  That evening had been the first time I had mentioned the business to Sally, which on the whole was a mistake. After making it dear she didn't believe it. she went on to call it “just another invention."

  "What do you mean. Why, it would be greater than the wheel!”

  “Should be," she said, “but not the way we’d use it.”

  Sally was in one of her withering moods. She turned on that voice she reserves for the
stupidities of the world.

  "We've got two ways of using inventions," she said. “One is to kill more people more easily: the other is to help short-sighted goons make easy money out of suckers. Maybe there are a few exceptions, like X rays, but look at the movies, listen to the radio, and can you or I go buy a nice cheap little helicopter to keep in die back yard?”

  Sal gets like that sometimes.

  “Inventions!" she said, with as near a snort as her snub nose can manage. "What we do with the product of genius is first ram it down to the lowest common denominator, then multiply it by the vulgarest possible fractions. What a world! When I think of what other centuries are going to say of us it just makes me go hot all over."

  "You're a funny girl," I told her. "Future generations, hey? I suppose they’ll laugh like hell at us—but at least we won’t know it. And will they be doing any different with their inventions?”

  A couple of days later Jimmy looked into my room again.

  "He’s laid off," he said. "This teleporting guy. Not a report later than Tuesday. Maybe he knows somebody’s "Meaning you?” I asked.

  He frowned. "I got it figured out. I took the bearings on the map of all the incidents, and the fix came on New Saints Church. I’ve searched the place, but I didn’t find anything. Still, I figure I’m close—why else would he stop?”

  That very evening there was a paragraph about an arm some woman had watched travel along her kitchen wall.

  When I showed it to Sally, later, she suited to snort again. Quickly I suggested a movie. When we got out it was raining but Sally had on her slicker and we decided to walk back to her place. I took her arm.