The Best of Clifford D. Simak

by Clifford D. Simak

  Russ swung the controls to provide side acceleration and the two ships swung far to the rear of Neptune. They would pass that massive planet at the safe distance of a full hundred million miles.

  "He won't even make a pass at it," said Greg. "He knows he's licked."

  "Probably trying to store some more power," suggested Russ.

  "Sweet chance he has to do that," declared Greg. "Look at that needle walk, will you? We'll hit the speed of light in a few more hours and after that he may just as well shut off his lens. There just won't be any radiation for him to catch."

  Craven didn't make a try at Neptune. The planet was far away when they intersected its orbit... furthermore, a wall of darkness had closed in about the ships. They were going three times as fast as light and the speed was still accelerating!

  Hour after hour, day after day, the Invincible and its trailing captive sped doggedly outward into space. Out into the absolute wastes of interstellar space, where the stars were flecks of light, like tiny eyes watching from very far away.

  * * *

  Russ lounged in the control chair and stared out the vision plate. There was nothing to see, nothing to do. There hadn't been anything to see or do for days. The controls were locked at maximum and the engines still hammered their roaring song of speed and power. Before them stretched an empty gulf that probably never before had been traversed by any intelligence, certainly not by man.

  Out into the mystery of interstellar space. Only it didn't seem mysterious. It was very commonplace and ordinary, almost monotonous. Russ gripped his pipe and chuckled.

  There had been a day when men had maintained one couldn't go faster than light. Also, men had claimed that it would be impossible to force nature to give up the secret of material energy. But here they were, speeding along faster than light, their engines roaring with the power of material energy.

  They were plowing a new space road, staking out a new path across the deserts of space, pioneering far beyond the 'last frontier.'

  Greg's steps sounded across the room. "We've gone a long way, Russ. Maybe we better begin to slow down a bit."

  "Yes," agreed Russ. He leaned forward and grasped the controls. "We'll slow down now," he said.

  Sudden silence smote the ship. Their ears, accustomed for days to the throaty roarings of the engines, rang with the torture of no sound.

  Long minutes and then new sounds began to be heard... the soft humming of the single engine that provided power for the interior apparatus and the maintenance of the outer screens.

  "Soon as we slow down below the speed of light," said Greg, "well throw the televisor on Craven's ship and learn what we can about his apparatus. No use trying it now, for we couldn't use it, because we're in the same space condition it uses in normal operation."

  "In fact," laughed Russ, "we can't do much of anything except move. Energies simply can't pass through this space we're in. We're marooned."

  Greg sat down in a chair, gazed solemnly at Russ.

  "Just what was our top speed?' he demanded.

  Russ grinned. "Ten thousand times the speed of light," he said.

  Greg whistled soundlessly. "A long way from home."

  * * *

  Far away, the stars were tiny pinpoints, like little crystals shining by the reflection of a light. Pinpoints of light and shimmering masses of lacy silver... star dust that seemed ghostly and strange, but was, in reality, the massing of many million mighty stars. And great empty black spaces where there was not a single light, where the dark went on and on and did not stop.

  Greg exhaled his breath softly. "Well, were here."

  "Wherever that might be," amended Russ.

  There were no familiar constellations, not a single familiar star. Every sign post of the space they had known was wiped out. "There really aren't any brilliant stars," said Russ, "None at all. We must be in a sort of hole in space, a place that's relatively empty of any stars."

  Greg nodded soberly. "Good thing we have those mechanical shadows. Without them we'd never find our way back home. But we have several that will lead us back."

  Outside the vision panel, they could see Craven's ship. Freed now of the space field, it was floating slowly, still under the grip of the momentum they had built up in their dash across space. It was so close that they could see the lettering across its bow.

  "So they call it the Interplanetarian," said Russ.

  Greg nodded. "Guess it's about time we talk to them. I'm afraid they're getting pretty nervous."

  "Do you have any idea where we are?" demanded Ludwig Stutsman.

  Craven shook his head. "No more idea than you have. Manning snaked us across billions of miles, clear out of the Solar System into interstellar space. Take a look at those stars and you get some idea."

  Spencer Chambers stroked his gray mustache, asked calmly: "What do you figure our chances are of getting back?"

  "That's something we'll know more about later," said Craven. "Doesn't look too bright right now. I'm not worrying about that. What I'm wondering about is what Manning and Page are going to do now that they have us out here."

  "I thought you'd be," said a voice that came out of clear air.

  They stared at the place from which the voice had seemed to come. There was a slight refraction in the air; then, swiftly, a man took shape. It was Manning. He stood before them, smiling.

  "Hello, Manning," said Craven. "I figured you'd pay us a call when you got around to it."

  "Look here," snarled Stutsman, but he stopped when Chambers' hand fell upon his shoulder, gripped it hard.

  "Got plenty of air?" asked Greg.

  "Air? Sure. Atmosphere machines working perfectly," Craven replied.

  "Fine," said Greg. "How about food and water? Plenty of both?"

  "Plenty," said Craven.

  "Look here, Manning," broke in Chambers, "where's all this questioning leading? What have you got up your sleeve?"

  "Just wanted to be sure," Greg told him. "Would hate to have you fellows starve on me, or go thirsty. Wouldn't want to come back and find you all dead." "Come back?" asked Chambers wonderingly. "I'm afraid I don't understand. Is this a joke of some sort?"

  "No joke," said Greg grimly. "I thought you might have guessed. I'm going to leave you here"

  "Leave us here?" roared Stutsman.

  "Keep your shirt on," snapped Greg. "Just for awhile, until we can go back to the Solar System and finish a little job we're doing. Then we'll come back and get you."

  Craven grimaced. "I thought it would be something like that." He squinted at Manning through the thick lenses. "You never miss a bet, do you?"

  Greg laughed. "I try not to."

  A little silence fell upon the three men and Manning's image.

  Greg broke it. "How about your energy collector?" he asked Craven. "Will it maintain the ship out here? You get cosmic rays. Not too much else, I'm afraid."

  Craven grinned wryly. "You're right, but we can get along. The accumulators are practically drained, though, and we won't be able to store anything. Would you mind shooting us over just a little power? Enough to charge the accumulators a little for emergency use."

  He looked over his shoulder, almost apprehensively.

  "There might be an emergency out here, you know. Nobody knows anything about this place."

  "I'll give you a little power," Greg agreed.

  "Thank you very much," said Craven, half in mockery. "No doubt you think yourself quite smart, Manning, getting us out here. You know you have us stranded, that we can't collect more than enough power to live on."

  "That's why I did it," Greg said, and vanished.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Craven watched the Invincible gather speed and tear swiftly through the black, saw it grow tiny and then disappear entirely, either swallowed by the distance or snapping into the Strange super-space that existed beyond the speed of light.

  He turned from the window, chuckling.

  Stutsman snarled at him: "What's
so funny?"

  The scientist glared at the wolfish face and without speaking, walked to the desk and sat down. He reached for pencil and paper.

  Chambers walked over to watch him.

  "You've found something, Doctor," he said quietly.

  Craven laughed, throatily. "Yes, I have. I've found a lot. Manning thinks he can keep us out here, but he's wrong. We'll be in the Solar System less than a week after he gets there."

  Chambers stifled a gasp, tried to speak calmly. "You mean, this?"

  "Of course I mean it. I don't waste my time with foolish jokes."

  "You have the secret of material energy?" "Not that," the scientist growled, "but I have something else as valuable. I have the secret of Manning's drive: I know what it is that enables him to exceed the speed of light... to go ten thousand times as fast as light... the Lord knows how much faster if he wanted to."

  "No ordinary drive would do that." said Chambers. "It would take more than power to make a ship go that fast."

  "You bet your life it would, and Manning is the boy who's got it. He uses a space field. I think I can duplicate it."

  "And how long will it take you to do this work?"

  "About a week," Craven told him. "Perhaps a little longer, perhaps a little less. But once we go, we'll go as fast as Manning does. We'll be short on power, but I think I can do something about that, too."

  Chambers took a chair beside the desk. "But do we know the way home?"

  "We can find it," said Craven.

  "But there are no familiar constellations," objected Chambers. "He dragged us out so far that there isn't a single star that any one of us can identify."

  "I said I'd find the Solar System" Craven declared impatiently, "and I will. Manning started out for it, didn't he? I saw the way he went. The Sun is a type G star and all I'll do is look for a type G star."

  "But there may be more than one type G star," objected the financier.

  "Probably are," Craven agreed, "but there are other ways of finding the Sun and identifying it."

  He volunteered no further information, went back to work with the pad and pencil. Chambers rose wearily from his chair.

  "Tell me when you know what we can do," he said.

  "Sure," Craven grunted.

  "THAT'S the Sun," said Craven. "That faint star between those two brighter ones."

  "Are you sure of it?" demanded Stutsman.

  "Of course. I don't make blunders."

  "It's the only type G star in that direction," suggested Chambers, helpfully.

  "Not that, either," declared Craven. "In fact, there are several type G stars. I examined them all and I know I'm right."

  "How do you know?" challenged Stutsman.

  "Spectroscopic examination. That collector field of ours gathers energy just like a burning glass. You've seen a burning glass, haven't you?"

  He stared at Stutsman, directing the question at him. Stutsman shuffled awkwardly, unhappily.

  "Well," Craven went on, "I used that for a telescope. Gathered the light from the suns and analyzed it. Of course it didn't act like a real telescope, produce an image or anything like that, but it was ideal for spectroscopic work."

  They waited for him to explain. Finally, he continued:

  "All of the stars I examined were just type G stars, nothing else but there was a difference in one of them. First, the spectroscope showed lines of reflected light passing through oxygen and hydrogen, water vapor and carbon dioxide. Pure planetary phenomena, never found on a star itself. Also it showed that a certain per cent of the light was polarized. Now remember that I examined it for a long time and I found out something else from the length of observation which convinces me. The light varied with a periodic irregularity. The chronometers aren't working exactly right out here, so I can't give you any explanation in terms of hours. But I find a number of regularly recurring changes in light intensity and character... and that proves the presence of a number of planetary bodies circling the star. That's the only way one could explain the fluctuations for the G-type star is a steady type. It doesn't vary greatly and has no light fluctuations to speak of. Not like the Cephids and Mira types."

  "And that proves it's our Sun?" asked Chambers.

  Craven nodded. "Fairly definitely, I'd say."

  "How far away is it?" Stutsman wanted to know.

  Craven snorted. "You would ask something like that."

  "But," declared Stutsman, "there are ways of measuring how far a star is away from any point, measuring both the distance and the size of the star."

  "Okay," agreed Craven, "you find me something solid and within reach that's measurable. Something, preferably, about 200 million miles or so across. Then I'll tell you how far we are from the Sun. This ship is not in an orbit. It's not fixed in space. I have no accurate way of measuring distances and angles simultaneously and accurately. Especially angles as small as these would be."

  Craven and Stutsman glared at one another.

  "It's a long way however you look at it," the financier said. "If we're going to get there, well have to start as soon as possible. How soon can we start, Doctor?"

  "Very soon. I have the gravity concentration field developed and Manning left me just enough power to get a good start." He chuckled, took off his glasses, wiped the lenses and put them back on again. "Imagine him giving me that power!"

  "But after we use up that power, what are we going to do?" demanded Chambers. "This collector lens of yours won't furnish us enough to keep going."

  "You're right," Craven conceded, "but we'll be able to get more. We'll build up what speed we can and then we'll shut off the drive and let momentum carry us along. In the meantime our collector will gather power for us. We're advancing toward the source of radiation now, instead of away from it. Out here, where there's little gravity stress, fewer conflicting lines of gravitation, we'll be able to spread out the field, widen it, make it thousands of miles across. And the new photo-cells will be a help as well."

  "How are the photo-cells coming?" asked Chambers.

  Craven grinned. "We'll have a bank of them in within a few hours, and replace the others as fast as we can. I have practically the whole crew at work on them. Manning doesn't know it, but he found the limit of those photo-cells when he was heaving energy at us back in the Solar System. He blistered them. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but it was. You have to hand it to Manning and Page. They are a couple of smart men."

  To the eye there was only one slight difference between the old cells and the new ones. The new type cell, when on no load, appeared milky white, whereas the old cells on no load were silvery. The granular surface of the new units was responsible for the difference in appearance, for each minute section of the surface was covered with even more minute metallic hexagonal pyramids and prisms.

  "Just a little matter of variation in the alloy," Craven explained. "Crystalization of the alloy, forming those little prisms and pyramids. As a result, you get a surface thousands of times greater than in the old type. Helps you absorb every bit of the energy."

  * * *

  The Interplanetarian arrowed swiftly starward, driving ahead with terrific momentum while the collector lens, sweeping up the oncoming radiations, charged the great banks of accumulators. The G-type star toward which they were heading was still pale, but the two brighter stars to either side blazed like fiery jewels against the black of space.

  "You say we'll be only a week or so behind Manning?" asked Chambers.

  Craven looked at the financier, his eyes narrowed behind the heavy lenses. He sucked in his loose lips and turned once again to the control board.

  "Perhaps a little longer," he admitted finally. "We're losing time, having to go along on momentum in order to collect power. But the nearer we get to those stars, the more power we'll have and we'll be able to move faster."

  Chambers drummed idly on the arm of his chair, thinking.

  "Perhaps there's time yet," he said, half to himself. "With the power we
'll have within the Solar System, we can stop Manning and the revolution. We can gain control again."

  * * *

  Craven was silent, watching the dials.

  "Manning might even pass us on the way back to look for us," Chambers went on. "He thinks we're still out there. He wouldn't expect to find us where we are, light years from where we started."

  Craven shot him a curious look. "I wouldn't be too sure of that. Manning has a string of some sort tied to us. He's got us tagged... good and proper. He's always been able to find us again, no matter where we were. I have a hunch he'll find us again, even way out here."

  Chambers shrugged his shoulders. "It really doesn't matter. Just so we get close enough to the Sun so we can load those accumulators and jam the photo-cells full. With a load like that we can beat him hands down."

  The financier fell into a silence. He stared out of the vision plate, watching the stars. Still far away, but so much nearer than they had been.

  His brain hummed with dreams. Old dreams, revived again, old dreams of conquest and of empire, dreams of a power that held a solar system in its grip.

  Craven broke his chain of thoughts. "Where's our friend Stutsman? I haven't seen him around lately."

  Chambers chuckled good-naturedly. "He's sulking. He seems to have gotten the idea neither one of us likes him. He's been spending most of his time back in the engine room with the crew."

  "Were you talking about me?" asked a silky voice.

  They spun around to see Stutsman standing in the doorway of the control room. His face was twisted into a wolfish grin and in his right hand he held a heat gun.

  Chambers' voice was sharp, like the note of a clanging bell. "What's this?"

  Stutsman's face twisted into an even more exaggerated grin. "This," he said, "is mutiny. I'm taking over!" He laughed at them.

  "No use calling the crew. They're with me."

  "Damn you!" shouted Chambers, taking a step forward. He halted as Stutsman jerked the pistol up.

  "Forget it, Chambers. You're just second man from now on. Maybe not even second man. You tried out this dictator business and you bungled it. You went soft. You're taking orders from me from now on. No questions, no back talk. You do as I say and maybe you won't get hurt."