The Space Opera Megapack

by John W. Campbell

  “I don’t think it’s a case of ‘handling’ at all. I don’t know what it is, but I believe it’s fatal. We won’t go down.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense!” Belle protested.

  “Not yet, no; but it’s a datum. Enough data and we’ll be able to formulate a theory.”

  * * * *

  “You and your theories! I wish we could get some facts!”

  “You can call that a fact. But I want you and Jim to do some math. We know that we’re making mighty long jumps. Assuming that they’re at perfect random, and of approximately the same length, the probability is greater than one-half that we’re getting farther and farther away from Tellus. Is there a jump number, N, at which the probability is one-half that we land nearer Tellus instead of farther away? My jump-at-conclusions guess is that there isn’t. That the first jump set up a bias.”

  “Ouch. That isn’t in any of the books,” James said. “In other words, do we or do we not attain a maximum? You’re making some bum assumptions; among others that space isn’t curved and that the dimensions of the universe are very large compared to the length of our jumps. I’ll see if I can put it into shape to feed to Compy. You’ve always held that these generators work at random—the rest of those assumptions are based on your theory?”

  “Check. I’m not getting anywhere studying my alleged Xenology, so I’m going to work full time on designing a generator that will steer.”

  “You tried to before. So did everybody else.”

  “I know it, but I’ve got a lot more data now. And I’m not promising, just trying. Okay? Worth a try?”

  “Sure—I’m in favor of anything that has any chance at all of working.”

  Jumping went on; and Garlock, instead of going abroad on the planets, stayed in the Pleiades and worked.

  * * * *

  At Number Forty-three, their reception was of a new kind. They were compatible with the people of this world, but the Inspector advised them against landing.

  “I do not forbid you,” he explained, carefully. “Our humans are about to destroy themselves with fission and fusion bombs. They send missiles, without warning, against visitors. Thus, the last starship to visit us here disregarded my warning and sent down a sensing device as usual—Engineers do not land on non-telepathic worlds, you know—and it was destroyed.”

  “You’re a Guardian of Humanity,” Garlock said. “Can’t you straighten people out?”

  “Of course not!” The Arpalone was outraged. “We guard humanity against incompatibles and non-humans; but it is not our business to interfere with humanity if it wishes to destroy itself. That is its privilege and its own business!”

  Garlock probed down. “No telepathy, even—not even a Seven. This planet is backward—back to Year One. And nothing but firecrackers—we’re going down, aren’t we?”

  “I’ll say we are!” Belle said. “This will break the monotony, at least,” and the others agreed.

  “You won’t object, I take it,” Garlock said to the Inspector, “if we try to straighten them out. We can postpone the blow-up a few years, at least.”

  “No objections, of course. In fact, I can say that we Guardians of Humanity would approve such action.”

  Down the Pleiades went, into the air of the nation known as the “Allied Republican Democracies of the World,” and an atomic-warheaded rocket came flaming up.

  “Hm…m…m. Ingenious little gadget, at that,” James reported, after studying it thoroughly. “Filthy thing for fall-out, though, if it goes off. Where’ll I flip it, Clee? One of their moons?”

  “Check. Third one out—no chance of any contamination from there.”

  The missile vanished; and had any astronomer been looking at that world’s third and outermost moon at the moment, he might have seen a tremendous flash of light, a cloud of dust, and the formation of a new and different crater among the hundreds already there.

  “No use waiting for ’em, Jim. All three of you toss everything they’ve got out onto that same moon, being sure not to hurt anybody—yet. I’ll start asking questions.”

  The captain who had fired the first missile appeared in the Main. He reached for his pistol, to find that he did not have one. He tensed his muscles to leap at Garlock, to find that he could not move.

  Garlock drove his probe. “Who is your superior officer?” and before the man could formulate a denial, that superior stood helpless beside him.

  * * * *

  Then three—and four. At the fifth:

  “Oh, you are the man I want. Prime Minister—euphemism for Dictator—Sovig. Missile launching stations and missile storage? You don’t know? Who does?”

  Another man appeared, and for twenty minutes the Pleiades darted about the continent.

  “Now submarines, atomic and otherwise, and all surface vessels capable of launching missiles.” Another man appeared.

  This job took a little longer, since the crew of each vessel had to be teleported back to their bases. An immense scrap-pile, probably visible with a telescope of even moderate power, built up rapidly on the third moon.

  “Now a complete list of your uranium-refining plants, your military reactors, heavy-water and heavy-hydrogen plants, and so on.” Another man appeared, but the starship did not move.

  “Here is a list of plants,” and Garlock named them, coldly. “You will remember them. I will return you to your office, and you may—or may not, as you please—order them evacuated. Look at your watch. We start destroying them in exactly seventy-two of your hours from this moment. Any and all persons on the properties will be killed; any within a radius of ten of your miles may be killed. Our explosives are extremely powerful, but there is no radioactivity and no danger from the fall-out. The danger is from flash-blindness, flash-burn, sheer heat, shock-wave, concussion, and flying debris of all kinds.”

  The officer vanished and Garlock turned back to the Prime Minister.

  “You have an ally, a nation known as the ‘Brotherhood of People’s Republics.’ Where is its capital? Slide us over there, Jim. Now, Prime Minister Sovig, you and your ally, the second and first most populous nations of your world, are combining to destroy—a pincers movement, let us say?—the third largest nation, or rather, group of nations—the Nations of the North.… Oh, I see. Third only in population, but first in productive capacity and technology. They should be destroyed because their ideology does not agree with yours. They are too idealistic to strike first, so you will. After you strike, they will not be able to. Whereupon you, personally, will rule the world. I will add to that something you are not thinking, but should: You will rule it until one of your friends puts his pistol to the back of your neck and blows your brains out.”

  * * * *

  They were now over the ally’s capitol; which launched five missiles instead of one. Garlock collected four more men and studied them.

  “Just as bad—if possible, worse. Who, Lingonor, is the leader of your opposition, if any?” Another man, very evidently of the same race, appeared.

  “Idealistic, in a way, but spineless and corrupt,” Garlock announced to all. “His administration was one of the most corrupt ever known on this world. We’ll disarm them, too.”

  They did. The operation did not take very long; as this nation—or group, it was not very clear exactly what it was—while very high in manpower, was very low in technology.

  The starship moved to a station high above the Capitol Building of the Nations of the North and moved slowly downward until it hung poised one scant mile over the building. Missiles, jets, and heavy guns were set and ready, but no attack was made. Therefore Garlock introduced himself to various personages and invited them aboard instead of snatching them; nor did he immobilize them after they had been teleported aboard.

  “The president, the chief of staff, the Chief Justice, the most eminent scientist, the head of a church, the leaders of the legislative body and four political bosses, the biggest business man, biggest labor leader, and biggest gangster.
Fourteen men.” As Garlock studied them his face hardened. “I thought to leave your Nations armed, to entrust this world’s future to you, but no. Only two of you are really concerned about the welfare of your peoples, and one of those two is very weak. Most of you are of no higher motivation than are the two dictators and your gangster Clyden. You are much better than those we have already disarmed, but you are not good enough.”

  Garlock’s hard eyes swept over the group for two minutes before he went on:

  “I am opening all of your minds, friend and foe alike, to each other, so that you may all see for yourselves what depths of rottenness exist there and just how unfit your world is to associate with the decent worlds of this or any other galaxy. It would take God Himself to do anything with such material, and I am not God. Therefore, when we have rid this world of atomics we will leave and you will start all over again. If you really try, you can not only kill all animal life on your planet, but make it absolutely uninhabitable for.…”

  “Stop it, Clee!” Lola jumped up, her eyes flashing. Garlock dropped the tuned group, but Belle took it over. Everyone there understood every thought. “Don’t you see, you’ve done enough? That now you’re going too far? That these twenty-odd men, having had their minds opened and having been given insight into what is possible, will go forward instead of backward?”

  “Forward? With such people as the Prime Ministers, the labor and business leaders, the bosses and the gangsters to cope with? Do you think they’ve got spines stiff enough for the job?”

  “I’m sure of it. Our world did it with no better. Millions and millions of other worlds did it. Why can’t this one do it? Of course it can.”

  “May I ask a couple of questions?” This thought came from the tall, trim, soldierly Chief of Staff.

  “Of course, General Cordeen.”

  “We have all been taking it for granted that you four belong to some super-human race; some kind or other of Homo Superior. Do I understand correctly your thought that your race is Homo Sapiens, the same as ours?”

  “Why, of course it is,” Lola answered in surprise. “The only difference is that we are a few thousand years older than you are.”

  “You said also that there were ‘millions and millions’ of worlds that have solved the problems facing us. Were all these worlds also peopled by Homo Sapiens? It seems incredible.”

  “True, nevertheless. On any and every world of this type humanity is identical physically; and the mental differences are due only to their being in different stages of development. In fact, every planet we have visited except this one makes a regular custom of breeding its best blood with the best blood of other solar systems. And as to the ‘millions and millions,’ I meant only a very large but indefinite number. As far as I know, not even a rough estimate has ever been made—has there, Clee?”

  “No, but it will probably turn out to be millions of millions, instead of millions and millions; and squared and then cubed at that. My guess is that it’ll take another ten thousand years of preliminary surveying such as we’re doing, by all the crews the various Galaxian Societies can put out, before even the roughest kind of an estimate can be made as to how many planets are inhabited by mutually fertile human peoples.”

  * * * *

  For a moment the group was stunned. Then:

  “Do you mean to say,” asked the merchant prince, “that you Galaxians are not the only ones who have interstellar travel?”

  “Far from it. In fact, yours is the only world we have seen that does not have it, in one form or another.”

  “Oh? More than one way? That makes it still worse. Would you be willing to sell us plans, or lease us ships…?”

  “So that you could exploit other planets? We will not. You would get nowhere, even if you had an interstellar drive right now. You, personally, are a perfect example of what is wrong with this planet. Rapacious, insatiable; you violate every concept of ethics, common decency, and social responsibility. Your world’s technology is so far ahead of its sociology that you not only should be, but actually are being, held in quarantine.”

  “What?”

  “Exactly. One race I know of has been inspecting you regularly for several hundreds of your years. They will not make contact with you, or allow you to leave your own world, until you grow up to something beyond the irresponsible-baby stage. Thus, about two and one-half of your years ago, a starship of that race sent down a sensing element—unmanned, of course—to check your state of development. Brother Sovig volatilized it with an atomic missile.”

  “We did not do it,” the dictator declared. “It was the war-mongering capitalists.”

  “You brainless, mindless, contemptible idiot,” Garlock sneered. “Are even you actually stupid enough to try to lie with your mind? To minds linked to your own and to mine?”

  “We did do it, then, but it was only a flying saucer.”

  “Just as this ship was, to you, only a flying saucer, I suppose. So here’s something else for you to think about, Brother Sovig, with whatever power your alleged brain is able to generate. When you shot down that sensor, the starship did not retaliate, but went on without taking any notice of you. When you tried to shoot us down, we took some slight action, but did not kill anyone and are now discussing the situation. Listen carefully now, and remember—it is very possible that the next craft you attack in such utterly idiotic fashion will, without any more warning than you gave, blow this whole planet into a ball of incandescent gas.”

  “Can that actually be done?” the scientist asked. For the first time, he became really interested in the proceedings.

  “Very easily, Doctor Cheswick,” Garlock replied. “We could do it ourselves with scarcely any effort and at very small cost. You are familiar, I suppose, with the phenomenon of ball lightning?”

  “Somewhat. Its mechanism has never been elucidated in any very satisfactory mathematics.”

  “Well, we have at our disposal a field some.…”

  “Hold it, Clee,” James warned. “Do you want to put out that kind of stuff around here?”

  “Um…m…m. What do you think?”

  * * * *

  James studied Cheswick’s mind. “Better than I thought,” he decided. “He has made two really worthwhile intuitions—a genius type. He’s been working on what amounts almost to the Coupler Theory for ten years. He’s almost got it, but you know intuitions of that caliber can’t be scheduled. He might get it tomorrow—or never. I’d say push him over the hump.”

  “Okay with me. We’ll take a vote—one blackball kills it. Brownie? Just the link, of course. A few hints, perhaps, at application, but no technological data.”

  “I say give it to him. He’s earned it. Besides, he isn’t young and may die before he gets it, and that would lose them two or three hundred years.”

  “Belle?”

  “In favor. Shall I drop the linkage? No,” she answered her own question. “No other minds here will have any idea of what it means, and it may do some of them a bit of good to see one of their own minds firing on more than one barrel.”

  “Thank you, Galaxians.” The scientist’s mind had been quivering with eagerness. “I am inexpressibly glad that you have found me worthy of so much help.”

  * * * *

  Garlock entered Cheswick’s mind. First he impressed, indelibly, six symbols and their meanings. Second, a long and intricate equation; which the scientist studied avidly.

  During the ensuing pause, Garlock cut the President and Chief of Staff out of the linkage. “We have just given Cheswick a basic formula. In a couple of hundred years it will give you full telepathy, and then you will begin really to go up. There’s nothing secret about it—in fact, I’d advise full publication—but even so it might be a smart idea to give him both protection and good working conditions. Brains like his are apt to be centuries apart on any world.”

  “But this is…it could be…it must be!” Cheswick exclaimed. “I never would have formulated that! It isn’t quite im
plicit, of course, but from this there derives the existence of, and the necessity for, electrogravitics! An entirely new field of reality and experiment in science!”

  “There does indeed,” Garlock admitted, “and it is far indeed from being implicit. You leaped a tremendous gap. And yes, the resultant is more humanistic than technological.”

  Belle’s ear-splitting whistle resounded throughout the Main. “How do you like them tid-bits, Clee?” she asked. “Two hundred years in seventy-eight seconds? You folks will have telepathy by the time your present crop of babies grows up. Clee, aren’t you sorry you got mad and blew your top and wanted to pick up your marbles and go home? Threesuch intuitions in one man’s lifetime beats par, even for the genius course.”

  “It sure does,” Garlock admitted, ruefully. “I should have studied these minds—particularly his—before jumping at conclusions.”

  “May I say a few words?” the president asked.

  “You may indeed, sir. I was hoping you would.”

  “We have been discouraged; faced with an insoluble problem. Sovig and Lingonor, knowing that their own lives were forfeit anyway, were perfectly willing to destroy all the life on this world to make us yield. Now, however, with the insight and the encouragement you Galaxians have given us, the situation has changed. Reduced to ordinary high explosives, they cannot conquer us.…”

  “Especially without an airforce,” Lola put in. “I, personally, will see to it that every bomber and fighter plane they now have goes to the third moon. It will be your responsibility to see to it that they do not rebuild.”

  “Thank you, Miss Montandon. We will see to it. As for our internal difficulties—I think, under certain conditions, they can be handled. Our lawless element,” he glanced at the gangster, “can be made impotent. The corrupt practices of both capital and labor can be stopped. We have laws,” here he looked at the members of Congress and the judge, “which can be enforced. The conditions I mentioned would be difficult at the moment, since so few of us are here and it is manifest that few if any of our people will believe that such people as you Galaxians really exist. Would it be possible for you, Miss Montandon, to spend a few days—or whatever time you can spare—in showing our Congress, and as many other groups as possible, what humanity may hope to become?”