by Jerry
“Like me!” his father said in surprise. He looked up.
His wife was standing in the doorway. “Supper’s ready, John. You better eat before more patients come. I don’t have very much, but if the gentleman would care to sit down with us, he’ll be welcome. Did you notice, John? He looks like someone we know.” She turned . . . “Are you by any chance related to the Ainsleys?”
“I am,” he said unsteadily, “but please don’t ask me how.”
“I knew it,” she said. “You remind me of my Uncle Harry.”
His father turned to him as they went out for supper. “If you would only talk to him?” he asked. “We’re just his parents, but perhaps he will listen to you!”
It was strange how the scientist felt an uneasiness to face the boy again. Young Peter was standing by his chair, impatient to sit down. He welcomed the supper guest coolly, looking the other way. They sat down at the familiar table. His father bent his forehead to his hand, resting the elbow on the table, gave the usual sign and started to pray. How often, the scientist thought, had he heard those familiar words, “The summer is over, the harvest is ended and we are not saved.” But never had the words held such a new and terrible meaning as today.
All through the meal he could scarcely refrain from stealing glances at the boy across the table. Was it possible that he had once been as slender, light-hearted and fair-skinned as that, his blood vessels so new and pliable, his eyes clear as spring water? Could he ever have been so young, innocent and idealistic? Why, the boy’s face was fresh as a girl’s. Once when his mother wanted a clean handkerchief, he rose reluctantly enough, but, once up, bounded up the stairs so effortlessly on his long legs that the visitor felt a sudden awe, mingled with despair, for the boy he had once been.
Vainly he tried to win him. When he spoke, the boy listened unwillingly and, if pressed, with veiled hostility. He made only short inscrutable replies, then looked the other way. It was plain, the man told himself, that the boy did not approve of him. Why, he was famous throughout the world, but the boy rejected him. There was something about him the boy did not relish. Yet this was the one he must make peace with, he knew. There was no mistaking that. All through the meal he talked, argued and begged, until he felt the sweat stand on his face. His father and mother had begun to look at him queerly. The boy resisted as hard as ever, until the man knew he was foiled and defeated; that never could he dissuade the boy from his dream.
It was when hope was at its lowest ebb that a scratching sound was heard at the door. The boy answered it, and a black-and-brown shepherd dog burst in. It was Doxy, keen and shaggy old Doxy. He jumped up at the boy in greeting; then, smelling on the floor, ran straight to the visitor, jumped up, barked and licked him. For a little while he ran back and forth between boy and man, smelling eagerly at one and then at the other, as if something puzzled him.
“That’s singular,” his father said. “Doxy doesn’t go to many people. But he acts as though he knows you.”
“And likes you,” his mother added. She was always the one to encourage.
The scientist saw that now for the first time the boy was regarding him intently, with a kind of respect, as if his hostility was broken and he saw in him something he hadn’t seen before. The man sat very still. He had received honors from a dozen sources, including the President of the United States, but never had he felt quite the gratitude as for this. Some inexplicable thing inside of him was released and began to melt, like that time long ago when, as a child, he had gone to Fourth Gap and later found himself back in the blessed peace and warmth of home.
“If you don’t mind,” he asked his mother, “may I stay here for a while this evening?”
That was his mistake, he knew. Hardly was it said and permission given before the dog began to growl. His hair bristled. Then a sudden knock rang from the door. The boy went to answer.
“It’s somebody for you,” he stammered.
“Is it the guard?” the visitor asked, and the boy nodded.
The scientist sat very quiet. It shook him a little. It had come sooner than he expected. But he should have known he couldn’t stay in this blessed place forever.
“I’ll have to go now,” he said, and got to his feet. He saw that his parents looked frightened. He kissed his trembling mother and then his father’s bearded mouth as he used to do when he was small. Last he shook the cold hand of the boy.
The rap came once more, demandingly. Again the dog growled deep in his throat.
“I’m coming!” the scientist called. Then to the others, “Good-by.”
“Good-by,” his father answered. “I’ll pray for you.”
“Remember you’re an Ainsley. We’ll both pray for you,” his mother told him.
“God bless you,” he said, and opened the door.
Not until he was clear of the house, with his foot reaching for the steps, did he remember there were no steps there.
When he came to himself he was lying on the ground. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he saw that the sugar maples and picket fence were gone. He picked himself up painfully. The house was dark. The door looked as if it had been boarded up for a long time. So did the windows. And yet so real and strong remained the memory of his father and mother and the lamplit table that he pounded on the boards.
“Papa!” he called.
Only silence from the decayed shell of a house answered him. Below he could see the cold glitter of electric lights on the tanks and buildings of the secret XYT explosive line. Nearer at hand were the cemetery and the guard waiting. Well, he told himself, he could face things a little better now. His father and mother had said they would pray for him. And the boy inside of him had made his first sign of peace to the man he had become.
THE AMBUSHER
A.T. Kedzie
CARN SHIVERED a little as a lance of icy wind cut through a rent in his patched and faded quilted cotton uniform. He dug himself closer into the stone lined culvert and ignored the numbing cold. His mind was clear and keen and he had to be near the road to be able to hear the rumble of the tank when it left the City.
We’re wearing them down, Carn thought, and an ironic smile crossed his frozen lips. But will we wear down first? The Commy units held the Cities in their iron grip. They had the fuel and the power and the machines plus a ruthlessness that paused at nothing. But the Freelies were making progress too.
Carn thought of the tree vehicles his group had destroyed last week. In his mind’s eye he saw the eruption of flame and smoke when the three cars rolled into the field of fire of the few rocket throwers. The Commies didn’t know what had hit them.
But the sadness weighed again. Cana remembered the low-flying Commy strafer catching the forty Freelies on the edge of Marshland and cutting them to ribbons with cannon-fire. But people were escaping the Cities every day and the Freelies were becoming bolder and more audacious with each passing day.
He thought of himself. Armed with thirty pounds of crude dynamite and a simple burning fuse. Radio had picked up a Commy contact. A tankful of technicians was going to leave in four hours for St. George.
You’ll end up in hell, Cam’s mind said, you’ll burn, boys. Oh, if the Freelies could only get one City. Only one! Well that was a long way off. We’ll knock you off one by one if it takes us an eternity.
Faintly the sounds of distant vibration traveling far in the quiet cold set Carn alert. He pressed his numbed ear against the underside of the concrete strip. Yes, that was it. The sound of a motor, powerful and assured.
Carn carefully examined his wooden box, wedging it firmly into the crevice in the stone nearest the center of the road. He attached a length of five minute fuse and then waited. While he waited he checked his single weapon, an old but serviceable bolt action Mauser rifle. The noise grew louder.
Once he crept out of the culvert and stared down the curved stretch of road. The roar of the tank motor was loud and clear now. Carn could visualize the laughing Commies within. Warm and c
omfortable they were probably enthusiastically planning what they’d requisition in St. George and how the girls were and how their new C.O. would be.
Like hell you will, Carn said half audibly as if the imagined thought was real. He laughed mirthlessly as he realized his anger.
The thrump of rubber tread was perfect. Familiarity enabled Carn to calculate by judgment. This was not new. He waited for a hundred pulse beats and struck a match. He applied it to the fuse’s end, made sure that the innocent length of cord was ignited. Then he crawled from the culvert and ran as fast as he could through the knifing breeze toward the slight hummock a couple of hundred feet away. He worked the bolt of his rifle and waited for the oncoming Commy vehicle. No Commies were going to get away alive!
The monstrous turtle of steel-alloy rolled smoothly along the snow-covered ribbon of highway. Inside ten or fifteen men anticipated their new work in one of the captive Cities. The tank rolled over the culvert.
Cam’s heart was in his mouth. But it went. There was a cosmic explosion; the mass of metal seemed to rise ten feet in the air, roll over and come to a jumbled stop, a broken smouldering heap of metal.
But some were alive. Carn saw a hatch slowly open and a figure emerge. There was a flame pistol in its hand and it dazedly stared around like some half-blind insect looking for its tormentor. Carn aimed carefully and fired. The figure dropped.
Twice more Commies—those uninjured—tried to emerge. Twice again Carn cut them down. Carn waited expecting more to come out. But they didn’t. Slowly he made his way toward the wreckage. As soon as he was sure there was no life there, he’d leave, for there would be swift patrols out seeking vengeance.
Ten minutes later he’d completed his distasteful task even when sparked by hatred. This was one more thing the Commies would extract revenge for, but there would be no end to it. It would continue until the last of them surrendered or died and left the Cities to the Freelies.
Carn walked off briskly into the cold night. The wind seemed a little softer and the stars were shining brighter . . .
METEOR
William T. Powers
A meteor that strikes a spaceship can destroy it, disrupt it’s whole structure if its big enough. But even more, a meteor can disrupt the whole structure of interplanetary travel without touching a single ship!
Tobias Henderson, Master of the British Freighter, Bronson, was relaxing at tea. The Callisto-Mars run was long and dull, but Tobias knew how to be comfortable. In fact, getting comfortable was the one thing at which Tobias was better than average. He had to be. Free-flight and Martian sauces had combined their effects to make him the third largest item on the Bronson, and one might have debated the advantage held by the computer-detector.
For reasons other than jealousy, Tobias hated the computer. The main drive might flatten him somewhat on take-off and landing, but the computer had been known to snatch the Bronson from under its master’s feet, causing him to misname countless safety-engineers, just to avoid some pebble. Today, as usual, Tobias squinted at the computer before he injected his cream into the tea bag. Promptly, a red light popped on.
“Coward!” Tobias muttered. “It won’t come within a hundred miles!” The red light went out. Tobias creased his face in brief triumph, then pulled the stopper out of the tea bag and inserted a straw, an uncivilized process made necessary by free-flight. The red light popped on again. Hopefully, Tobias ignored it.
Something clicked rapidly in the bulkhead where the monster was hidden; Tobias sighed and braced himself for the recoil of the blasters. Unfortunately, a grip on the desk was not enough to save him. The Bronson shuddered sideways, skittering out of its orbit to let something too big to blast go by. Tobias, unable to express himself, oscillated to a stop in his triple harness and glared in black silence at the globules of tea quivering off the bulkheads. After a suitable pause, the computer went ahem and slid a card out where Tobias could see it.
The lettering was red.
The meteor was out of sight of the Bronson in a few seconds, plunging on toward the orbit of Mars, aimed a little above the Orion nebula. This 492 was a fast meteor from outside the system, nearly zero Kelvin, six miles across. One flat side might have been a plain at one time; the other surfaces were harsh and jagged, signs of a cataclysm. The sun lit an exposed stratum, picking out the fossil of an ancient tree.
Thirty miles a second the meteor traveled. In twenty-four hours, it would have gone the twenty-five hundred kilomiles separating it from the orbit of Mars. The intersection point was no more than a thousand miles from the place where Mars’ advancing limb would be tomorrow.
Phil Brownyard dropped a penny in the You-Vu-It just in time to see a screenful of little bright spots fade to a shot of an announcer.
“There you have it, folks. Danvers came up from the sixth quad at well over three miles per second, just in time to avert a scoring play by Syverson and Phelps. His ship snagged the Mark into free territory, but he couldn’t turn fast enough to keep in-bounds. That, of course, ended the period. Now a word from—”
Phil reached out for a switch, but the commercial droned on. Frustrated, he grumbled and pushed his dessert away. He had a grudge against the game of Ten-Mark that included its sponsors. The pilots who played had a rugged, exciting life, full of pretty girls, big money, and sudden death. Two years were all a man could stand of the screaming accelerations and close shaves, but those two years—! Phil shoved his chair back and headed for the elevators. Pushing his way to the expresses, he glimpsed Fred Holland from Computing coming around the corner; he stood in the doorway of the car until Fred caught up.
“Hi, Phil!” Fred grinned. “Have a cigar!”
“Boy?”
“Yep.” Fred grabbed for the handrail as the car shot up the shaft. “Twenty minutes ago. Aggie just vised me and everything’s all right.”
“Tell Aggie Claire will be over tonight to help out.”
“Thanks. She could use some help. Well . . . so long. Wait, your cigar!” Fred thrust a couple at Phil and hopped out the door. The car lifted swiftly and Phil pushed the buzzer.
“Six-forty.” The operator snapped as the door whipped open. Phil stepped out, ducking a little as a monorail messenger-car rushed by overhead. He pushed through the door marked Safety, waving hello to Doris, and went into the office.
Run, run, run, he thought. Am I glad I’m not in public relations! The swivel chair was big and soft, so he relaxed and pulled out a cigar.
Behind him, monstrous New York City stretched. The six hundred fortieth story of the Government Building overlooked the city from half a mile above the top passenger levels; sixty miles from Phil’s window the lights of the North Highway glowed steadily.
Ten thousand square miles, eighteen million people, a vast system of conveyors, highways, terminals; a billion dollars worth of trade every day. New York City, 2055.
The periphery was lined with homes that spewed hordes of commuters every eight hours. Past neat factories and a few local airports the subways sped, the crowded tunnels boring into the deepening pile of the city. Above them mounted in higher and higher tiers interlocking roadways, flat, sinuous conveyer-housings, office buildings and freight terminals climbing over each other. The hum of the city deepened to a growl, grew to a rumble, swelled into thunder; the sound drifted up past the levels, picking up the zum of tires and the crowd-babble. The sound filtered around steel and stone and hung among the upthrust skyscrapers, fading at last into the dark upper air.
On the tip of every spire were thick-limbed UHF arrays pouring out power to the stars. The million kilowatt beams swept steadily through the sky, balancing on the rotating earth, hurling their messages through the system of planets.
Back through the Heaviside Layer, feeble signals returned, to be gathered and sorted by the city’s robot brains.
In a comer of the government computing room, a silent coder came to life. A card hopped into one of its racks, and the machine buzzed briefly. The card, punche
d and stamped, slid quickly into the works of the nearest idle router.
Plate voltage flashed briefly, and the monster decided to send the card to Safety. Along a hidden wall the card sped, up one floor and into another router that punched it twice and sent it to Spatial Debris.
At the first sign of life from the next stage, a signal was shot down five stories to Computing, where the termination of phase one was recorded on microfilm.
Phase two began. Electronic fingers probed the card and withdrew. A rudimentary brain thought a moment, and a little set of thumbs descended to press the card, embossing on it the co-ordinates of an orbit. The card jumped ahead ten inches and a metal stamp jolted it. A pneumatic tube flipped open and the last machine capsuled the card, which now bore one red edge and the admonition, “DANGER.” The card whistled up five stories and thumped to a stop by Phil’s left elbow.
Phil looked indecisively at the ash on his cigar, then flipped it off and ground out the stub. He reached for the capsule, tingled a bit when he saw the red edge.
A print-send writer stood to the left of the desk; Phil inserted the card and the machine began to clatter. A strip of tape inched out.
“Meteor. A-2 to B-5. 27-32 mps. det. 2994663.6033. Coord. 270.665—160332 x 108—710.4 Dir.Cos. 0.000355,-0.554639. 29.358 mps.”
The rough equation of an hyperbolic orbit followed. Phil went to the lucite plan-map of the minor planets and began to plot points. Four points fed into the Curvator sufficed; an arm descended over the chart and began to trace a heavy black line, jogging at equal-time intervals. The tip of the arm approached the orbit of Mars, intersecting it just as the red spot designating Mars moved into its path. The Curvator, having reached the limit of its accuracy, stopped and flashed an orange light that meant “possible collision.”
That meant that the meteor would miss the planet by no more than eight thousand miles, if at all. Phil was by now totally alert. The probable mass of the meteor was twelve billion tons, its velocity thirty miles per second. Only the heaviest of equipment would be capable of breaking it up and diverting the pieces into the sun. Were it to strike Mars, it would pick up another three miles per second before it hit, then it would release the equivalent of five billion kilowatt-hours of energy in a fraction of a second. A large piece of Martian vicinity could be vaporized.
