The Space Opera Megapack

by John W. Campbell

  “Rance! Rance Kent—”

  “Marta—this is Rance!” he cried.

  He heard a sob of relief. “I’ve been calling you for minutes! I was hoping that you’d remember to listen!

  “Jandron and ten of the others have gone to that wreck in which you found the fuel,” she added swiftly. “They unreeled a tube-line behind them as they went, and I can hear them pumping in the fuel now.”

  “Are the others guarding you?” Kent asked quickly.

  “They’re down in the lower deck at the tanks and airlocks. They won’t allow me down on that deck. I’m up here in the middle-deck, absolutely alone.

  “Jandron told me that we’d start out of here as soon as the fuel was in,” she added, “and he and the men were laughing about Krell.”

  “Marta, could you in any way get space-helmets and get out to bring them over here to us?” Kent asked eagerly.

  “There’s a lot of space-suits and helmets here,” she answered, “but I couldn’t get out with them, Rance! I couldn’t get to the airlocks with Jandron’s seven or eight men down there guarding them!”

  Kent felt despair; then as an idea suddenly flamed in him, he almost shouted into the instrument:

  “Marta, unless you can get over here with helmets for us, we’re all lost. I want you to put on a space-suit and helmet at once!”

  There was a short silence, and then her voice came, a little muffled. “I’ve got the suit and helmet on, Rance. I’m wearing the suit-phone inside it.”

  “Good! Now, can you get up to the pilot-house? There’s no one guarding it or the upper-deck? Hurry up there, then, at once.”

  Crain and the rest were staring at Kent. “Kent, what are you going to have her do?” Crain exclaimed. “It’ll do no good for her to start the Pallas: those guards will be up there in a minute!”

  “I’m not going to have her start the Pallas,” said Kent grimly. “Marta, you’re in the pilot-house? Do you see the heavy little steel door in the wall beside the instrument-panel?”

  “I’m at it, but it’s locked with a combination-lock,” she said.

  “The combination is 6–34–77–81,” Kent told her swiftly. “Open it as quickly as you can.”

  “Good God, Kent!” cried Crain. “You’re going to have her—?”

  “Get out of there the only way she can!” Kent finished fiercely. “You have the door open, Marta?”

  “Yes; there are six or seven control-wheels inside.”

  “Those wheels control the Pallas’ exhaust-valves,” Kent told her. “Each wheel opens the valves of one of the ship’s decks or compartments and allows its air to escape into space. They’re used for testing leaks in the different deck and compartment divisions. Marta, you must turn all those wheels as far as you can to the right.”

  “But all the ship’s air will rush out; the guards below have no suits on, and they’ll be—” she was exclaiming. Kent interrupted.

  “It’s the only chance for you, for all of us. Turn them!”

  There was a moment of silence, and Kent was going to repeat the order when her voice came, lower in tone, a little strange:

  “I understand, Rance. I’m going to turn them.”

  There was silence again, and Kent and the men grouped round him were tense. All were envisioning the same thing—the air rushing out of the Pallas’ valves, and the unsuspecting guards in its lower deck smitten suddenly by an instantaneous death.

  Then Marta’s voice, almost a sob: “I turned them, Rance. The air puffed out all around me.”

  “Your space-suit is working all right?”

  “Perfectly,” she said.

  “Then go down and tie together as many space-helmets as you can manage, get out of the airlock, and try to get over here to the Martian Queen with them. Do you think you can do that, Marta?”

  “I’m going to try,” she said steadily. “But I’ll have to pass those men in the lower-deck I just—killed. Don’t be anxious if I don’t talk for a little.”

  Yet her voice came again almost immediately. “Rance, the pumping has stopped! They must have pumped all the fuel into the Pallas!”

  “Then Jandron and the rest will be coming back to the Pallas at once!” Kent cried. “Hurry, Marta!”

  The suit-phone was silent; and Kent and the rest, their faces closely pressed against the deck-windows, peered intently along the wreck-pack’s edge. The Pallas was hidden from their view by the wrecks between, and there was no sign as yet of the girl.

  Kent felt his heart beating rapidly. Crain and Liggett pressed beside him, the men around them; Krell’s face was a mask as he too gazed. Kent was rapidly becoming convinced that some mischance had overtaken the girl when an exclamation came from Liggett. He pointed excitedly.

  * * * *

  She was in sight, unrecognizable in space-suit and helmet, floating along the wreck-pack’s edge toward them. A mass of the glassite space-helmets tied together was in her grasp. She climbed bravely over the stern of a projecting wreck and shot on toward the Martian Queen.

  The airlock’s door was open for her, and, when she was inside it, the outer door closed and air hissed into the lock. In a moment she was in among them, still clinging to the helmets. Kent grasped her swaying figure and removed her helmet.

  “Marta, you’re all right?” he cried. She nodded a little weakly.

  “I’m all right. It was just that I had to go over those guards that were all frozen.… Terrible!”

  “Get these helmets on!” Crain was crying. “There’s a dozen of them, and twelve of us can stop Jandron’s men if we get back in time!”

  Kent and Liggett and the nearer of their men were swiftly donning the helmets. Krell grasped one and Crain sought to snatch it.

  “Let that go! We’ll not have you with us when we haven’t enough helmets for our own men!”

  “You’ll have me or kill me here!” Krell cried, his eyes hate-mad. “I’ve got my own account to settle with Jandron!”

  “Let him have it!” Liggett cried. “We’ve no time now to argue!”

  Kent reached toward the girl. “Marta, give one of the men your helmet,” he ordered; but she shook her head.

  “I’m going with you!” Before Kent could dispute she had the helmet on again, and Crain was pushing them into the airlock. The nine or ten left inside without helmets hastily thrust steel bars into the men’s hands before the inner door closed. The outer one opened and they leapt forth into space, floating smoothly along the wreck-pack’s border with bars in their grasp, thirteen strong.

  Kent found the slowness with which they floated forward torturing. He glimpsed Crain and Liggett ahead, Marta beside him, Krell floating behind him to the left. They reached the projecting freighters, climbed over and around them, braced against them and shot on. They sighted the Pallas ahead now. Suddenly they discerned another group of eleven figures in space-suits approaching it from the wreck-pack’s interior, rolling up the tube-line that led from the Pallas as they did so. Jandron’s party!

  * * * *

  Jandron and his men had seen them and were suddenly making greater efforts to reach the Pallas. Kent and his companions, propelling themselves frenziedly on from another wreck, reached the ship’s side at the same time as Jandron’s men. The two groups mixed and mingled, twisted and turned in a mad space-combat.

  Kent had been grasped by one of Jandron’s men and raised his bar to crack the other’s glassite helmet. His opponent caught the bar, and they struggled, twisting and turning over and over far up in space amid a half-score similar struggles. Kent wrenched his bar free at last from the other’s grasp and brought it down on his helmet. The glassite cracked, and he caught a glimpse of the man’s hate-distorted face frozen instantly in death.

  Kent released him and propelled himself toward a struggling trio nearby. As he floated toward them, he saw Jandron beyond them making wild gestures of command and saw Krell approaching Jandron with upraised bar. Kent, on reaching the three combatants, found them to be two
of Jandron’s men overcoming Crain. He shattered one’s helmet as he reached them, but saw the other’s bar go up for a blow.

  Kent twisted frantically, uselessly, to escape it, but before the blow could descend a bar shattered his opponent’s helmet from behind. As the man froze in instant death Kent saw that it was Marta who had struck him from behind. He jerked her to his side. The struggles in space around them seemed to be ending.

  Six of Jandron’s party had been slain, and three of Kent’s companions. Jandron’s four other followers were giving up the combat, floating off into the wreck-pack in clumsy, hasty flight. Someone grasped Kent’s arm, and he turned to find it was Liggett.

  “They’re beaten!” Liggett’s voice came to him! “They’re all killed but those four!”

  “What about Jandron himself?” Kent cried. Liggett pointed to two space-suited bodies twisting together in space, with bars still in their lifeless grasp.

  Kent saw through their shattered helmets the stiffened faces of Jandron and Krell, their helmets having apparently been broken by each other’s simultaneous blows.

  Crain had gripped Kent’s arm also. “Kent, it’s over!” he was exclaiming. “Liggett and I will close the Pallas’ exhaust-valves and release new air in it. You take over helmets for the rest of our men in the Martian Queen.”

  * * * *

  In several minutes Kent was back with the men from the Martian Queen. The Pallas was ready, with Liggett in its pilot-house, the men taking their stations, and Crain and Marta awaiting Kent.

  “We’ve enough fuel to take us out of the dead-area and to Neptune without trouble!” Crain declared. “But what about those four of Jandron’s men that got away?”

  “The best we can do is leave them here,” Kent told him. “Best for them, too, for at Neptune they’d be executed, while they can live indefinitely in the wreck-pack.”

  “I’ve seen so many men killed on the Martian Queen and here,” pleaded Marta. “Please don’t take them to Neptune.”

  “All right, we’ll leave them,” Crain agreed, “though the scoundrels ought to meet justice.” He hastened up to the pilot-house after Liggett.

  In a moment came the familiar blast of the rocket-tubes, and the Pallas shot out cleanly from the wreck-pack’s edge. A scattered cheer came from the crew. With gathering speed the ship arrowed out, its rocket-tubes blasting now in steady succession.

  Kent, with his arm across Marta’s shoulders, watched the wreck-pack grow smaller behind. It lay as when he first had seen it, a strange great mass, floating forever motionless among the brilliant stars. He felt the girl beside him shiver, and swung her quickly around.

  “Let’s not look back or remember now, Marta!” he said. “Let’s look ahead.”

  She nestled closer inside his arm. “Yes, Rance. Let’s look ahead.”

  SALVAGE IN SPACE, by Jack Williamson

  INTRODUCTION, by Sam Moskowitz

  The year 1928 was a great year of discovery for Amazing Stories. They were uncovering new talent at such a great rate, (Harl Vincent, David H. Keller, E. E. Smith, Philip Francis Nowlan, Fletcher Pratt and Miles J. Breuer), that Jack Williamson barely managed to become one of a distinguished group of discoveries by stealing the cover of the December issue for his first story The Metal Man.

  A disciple of A. Merritt, he attempted to imitate in style, mood and subject the magic of that late lamented master of fantasy. The imitation found great favor from the readership and almost instantly Jack Williamson became an important name on the contents page of Amazing Stories. He followed his initial success with two short novels, The Green Girl in Amazing Stories and The Alien Intelligence in Science Wonder Stories, another Gernsback publication. Both of these stories were close copies of A. Merritt, whose style and method Jack Williamson parlayed into popularity for eight years.

  Yet the strange thing about it was that Jack Williamson was one of the most versatile science fiction authors ever to sit down at the typewriter. When the vogue for science-fantasy altered to super science, he created the memorable super lock-picker Giles Habilula as the major attraction in a rousing trio of space operas, The Legion of Space, The Cometeers, and One Against the Legion. When grim realism was the order of the day, he produced Crucible of Power and when they wanted extrapolated theory in present tense, he assumed the disguise of Will Stewart and popularized the concept of contra terrene matter in science fiction with Seetee Ship and Seetee Shock. Finally, when only psychological studies of the future would do, he produced “With Folded Hands…” and “…And Searching Mind.”

  “The Cosmic Express” is of special interest because it was written during Williamson’s A. Merritt “kick,” when he was writing little else but, and it gave the earliest indication of a more general capability. The lightness of the handling is especially modern, barely avoiding the farcical by the validity of the notion that wireless transmission of matter is the next big transportation frontier to be conquered. It is especially important because it stylistically forecast a later trend to accept the background for granted, regardless of the quantity of wonders, and proceed with the story. With only a few thousand scanning-disk television sets in existence at the time of the writing, the surmise that this media would be a natural for westerns was particularly astute.

  Jack Williamson was born in 1908 in the Arizona territory when covered wagons were the primary form of transportation and apaches still raided the settlers. His father was a cattle man, but for young Jack, the ranch was anything but glamorous. “My days were filled,” he remembers, “with monotonous rounds of what seemed an endless, heart-breaking war with drought and frost and dust-storms, poison-weeds and hail, for the sake of survival on the Llano Estacado.” The discovery of Amazing Stories was the escape he sought and his goal was to be a science fiction writer. He labored to this end and the first he knew that a story of his had been accepted was when he bought the December, 1929 issue of Amazing Stories. Since then, he has written millions of words of science fiction and has gone on record as follows: “I feel that science-fiction is the folklore of the new world of science, and the expression of man’s reaction to a technological environment. By which I mean that it is the most interesting and stimulating form of literature today.”

  SALVAGE IN SPACE

  His “planet” was the smallest in the solar system, and the loneliest, Thad Allen was thinking, as he straightened wearily in the huge, bulging, inflated fabric of his Osprey space armor. Walking awkwardly in the magnetic boots that held him to the black mass of meteoric iron, he mounted a projection and stood motionless, staring moodily away through the vision panels of his bulky helmet into the dark mystery of the void.

  His welding arc dangled at his belt, the electrode still glowing red. He had just finished securing to this slowly-accumulated mass of iron his most recent find, a meteorite the size of his head.

  Five perilous weeks he had labored, to collect this rugged lump of metal—a jagged mass, some ten feet in diameter, composed of hundreds of fragments, that he had captured and welded together. His luck had not been good. His findings had been heart-breakingly small; the spectro-flash analysis had revealed that the content of the precious metals was disappointingly minute.25

  On the other side of this tiny sphere of hard-won treasure, his Millen atomic rocket was sputtering, spurts of hot blue flame jetting from its exhaust. A simple mechanism, bolted to the first sizable fragment he had captured, it drove the iron ball through space like a ship.

  Through the magnetic soles of his insulated boots, Thad could feel the vibration of the iron mass, beneath the rocket’s regular thrust. The magazine of uranite fuel capsules was nearly empty, now, he reflected. He would soon have to turn back toward Mars.

  Turn back. But how could he, with so slender a reward for his efforts? Meteor mining is expensive. There was his bill at Millen and Helion, Mars, for uranite and supplies. And the unpaid last instalment on his Osprey suit. How could he outfit himself again, if he returned with no more metal than thi
s? There were men who averaged a thousand tons of iron a month. Why couldn’t fortune smile on him?

  He knew men who had made fabulous strikes, who had captured whole planetoids of rich metal, and he knew weary, white-haired men who had braved the perils of vacuum and absolute cold and bullet-swift meteors for hard years, who still hoped.

  But sometime fortune had to smile, and then.…

  The picture came to him. A tower of white metal, among the low red hills near Helion. A slim, graceful tower of argent, rising in a fragrant garden of flowering Martian shrubs, purple and saffron. And a girl waiting, at the silver door—a trim, slender girl in white, with blue eyes and hair richly brown.

  Thad had seen the white tower many times, on his holiday tramps through the hills about Helion. He had even dared to ask if it could be bought, to find that its price was an amount that he might not amass in many years at his perilous profession. But the girl in white was yet only a glorious dream.…

  * * * *

  The strangeness of interplanetary space, and the somber mystery of it, pressed upon him like an illimitable and deserted ocean. The sun was a tiny white disk on his right, hanging between rosy coronal wings; his native Earth, a bright greenish point suspended in the dark gulf below it; Mars, nearer, smaller, a little ocher speck above the shrunken sun. Above him, below him, in all directions was vastness, blackness, emptiness. Ebon infinity, sprinkled with far, cold stars.

  Thad was alone. Utterly alone. No man was visible, in all the supernal vastness of space. And no work of man—save the few tools of his daring trade, and the glittering little rocket bolted to the black iron behind him. It was terrible to think that the nearest human being must be tens of millions of miles away.

  On his first trips, the loneliness had been terrible, unendurable. Now he was becoming accustomed to it. At least, he no longer feared that he was going mad. But sometimes.…

  Thad shook himself and spoke aloud, his voice ringing hollow in his huge metal helmet: