by Earl
There was no answer.
Valler dismissed them quickly, one after another, with the X-ray probe. Tiny brains in huge hulks, most of them. He laughed at the peanut brain in the miniature horse-sized saurian from Io. And the fist-sized cranium of the great green lion-bear from Hyperion.
Then he saw the huge brain on the screen, almost human size.
Valler strode to the cage labeled—Furred Tortoise, Titan. In its hard-shelled body of mere goat-size, covered with incongruous silky hair, you would least expect intelligence. But its leonine head, out of all proportion to its body, held a cunning big brain of human capacity. And Valler thought he could see now, close up, how its lidded eyes held age-old wisdom.
“Any last words, Erko Kajj?” said Valler grindingly, as he used the iron goad to whack it several times, making it cringe back.
Silence.
“Scared dumb, eh?” mocked Valler savagely, extracting revenge for his aching nerves. “Thought you were smart, superior. Thought you could play cat-and-mouse with me, driving me wild before you finally broke loose and got me. But your big brain still only amounts to a half-witted Earthman, see? Goodbye, Erko Kajj of Titan.”
Valler’s gun barked. He pumped the whole magazine of atomic bullets into the hairy turtle. Reptilian to the core, it made no sound as it slumped, kicked, and lay still.
Valler turned—and shrieked.
A silent form stood behind him, out of its opened cage. It knocked the empty gun from his hands, seized him in its claws.
“But you can’t be Erko Kajj,” whispered Valler. “You only have a brain the size of a peanut . . . I saw it . . . I saw it . . .”
“You had the right idea,” and the telepathic voice of Erko Kajj was near to pity, “but you forgot one thing about your own dinosaurs, that they had a second brain at the base of the spine. That one, you see, is my real brain.”
Valler looked into the small cold eyes of the miniature loan dinosaur and saw death.
THE PAYOFF
They were plunging toward Earth at a speed that nearly wrecked the ship—but no one could remember why!
AMNESIA had always been just a word in the dictionary before to Captain Van Archberg. But now it had leaped from the. dictionary upon him, and upon his crew of five. Awakening as if from a deep sleep, none of them had the slightest idea why they were in a ship in space.
“Some situation,” Archberg summed it up, cutting off their confused babble. “Each of us knows his name and duties running the ship. Those longstanding facts and reflexes stuck with us. But somehow, we’ve lost all memory of this trip itself. Anybody have an idea how it happened?”
“I think we hit a space-warp,” spoke up Kronin. “Some are known that can wreck a ship. Maybe we hit one that did no physical damage, but instead gave us a cranial jolt or trauma.” Kronin, besides the radioman, was the ship’s doctor. “Could be the warp erased our recent memory-patterns.” He shrugged.
“Next,” said Archberg, “where are we going and where have we been?” Pillbury answered, the flight engineer. “The instruments show we’re heading back to Earth, and according to the flight-curve, from Pluto. But listen, here’s the big thing; we’re going at terrific speed, even for the Starblast Drive. It’s rated at a top speed of half-light. Yet right now we’re barreling along at a peak of 100,000 miles a second, which means we almost burned out the motors during acceleration. Why did we take that chance?”
Six faces questioned one another dumbly, and anxiously.
“Have you all felt it too?” put in Dawson tensely. “A sort of urgency about all this? As if it was very vital for us to get back to Earth?”
All of them nodded, feeling the nervous tension that carried over from before the memory-blackout.
“We can’t remember why,” said Archberg, baffled, “but we can feel this trip was something important. So it boils down to that mystery—just why are we racing back to Earth at breakneck speed?”
“What if this mission,” breathed Larch, “is something big? Look how it adds up. Six topnotch A-l spacemen, which we know we are, with probably the fastest ship ever built on Earth, smashing through space at over half light-speed. It might actually involve the fate of the world. Melodramatic? Maybe so, maybe not.”
Archberg forced himself calm. “Let’s not go off the deep end, men. First, this may have been just a routine exploration-trip, or maybe a follow-up of a previous lost expedition.”
“With this strong feeling of urgency among us all?” snapped Jefferson. “I say it’s something more significant, like being sent to get help from the Pluto Wisemen, rated as intellectual giants.”
“Or,” chimed in Kronin, “it might be a raging epidemic on Earth, from space-germs, and we went to Pluto for some antibiotic cure.”
“How about a warning we’re carrying back to Earth,” guessed Dawson, “of some deep-space danger we stumbled on, like a runaway comet?”
“I’ll go you one better,” said Pillbury without flippancy, for the mood was grim upon them all. “Suppose the sun is scheduled to explode, and we were sent to arrange for the migration of the human race to Pluto—which would be far enough away to escape destruction?”
“One more angle.” finished Larch. “What if we were sent to scout some space-enemy from another star, massed near or on Pluto? And maybe it was they who flung some sort of memory-blot ray after us, to keep their battle plans secret.”
Archberg threw up his hands. “Five possible big reasons we went to Pluto and we can’t remember a thing. And worst of all, we’re still far beyond radio-range, passing Jupiter’s orbit now.
We’re flying in a vacuum of ignorance.”
He snapped erect, guiltily. “No use brooding about it. Only one sensible thing to do; reach Earth as fast as we possibly can. At your posts, men.”
THEY DROVE on for Earth, six men lost in an unreal fog of amnesia. Was Earth waiting for them in frantic frenzy? So it seemed as they began braking past the asteroids, and radio finally ghosted in.
“Attention, Spaceship, Orion,” came an authoritative, excited voice. “We’ve cleared all space-lanes for you, straight through to Atlantic Spaceport on Earth. Keep going at your top speed.”
“Tell me,” yelled back Archberg. “What is this all about?”
No answer; the other end had clicked off, seconds before his voice leaped the distance between. Archberg ground his teeth. But it wouldn’t be long now before they landed on Earth.
They tore past blurred Liars, and the moon, hit the atmosphere screamingly, and the final jolt landing tossed them hard on the floor. Archberg was the first to stagger out, ignoring his broken arm. What would he tell them, the men running up eagerly? Those cheering, waiting millions? “Excuse us, but what did you send us for?” It was funny—as funny as somebody falling into an atomic pile.
“We failed,” is what Archberg did say first. “All the way to Pluto and back at top-speed plus, but we failed miserably—”
“Are you crazy?” yelled a voice, whose owner was pounding him on the back. “You didn’t fail. How could any other ship beat you and your crew? You broke all records, Archberg—you won!”
“Won?” echoed Archberg. bracing himself for a shock.
Behind him, Jefferson sat down on the ground and bawled. Pillbury screamed; the others swore and stared.
Archberg stared too, at the giant banner.
FINISH LINE . . . ANNUAL PLUTO RACE . . . GRAND PRIZE 100,000 CREDITS.
SHIPWRECK IN THE SKY
The flight into space that made Pilot-Capt. Dan Barstow famous.
There is a warm feeling about welcoming back into the pages of a science fiction magazine the work of a writer who is a legend in the genre. So, here’s Binder and a neatly wrapped-up package of a folktale of the future.
THE FLIGHT was listed at GHQ as Project Songbird. It was sponsored by the Space Medicine Labs of the U.S. Air Force. And its pilot was Captain Dan Barstow.
A hand-picked man, Dan Barstow, chosen for the AF’s most
important project of the year because he and his VX-3 had already broken all previous records set by hordes of V-2s, Navy Aerobees and anything else that flew the skyways.
Dan Barstow, first man to cross the sea of air and sight open, unlimited space. Pioneer flight to infinity. He grinned and hummed to himself as he settled down for the long jaunt. Too busy to be either thrilled or scared he considered the thirty-seven instruments he’d have to read, the twice that many records to keep, and the miles of camera film to run. He had been hand-picked and thoroughly conditioned to take it all without more than a ten percent increase in his pulse rate. So he worked as matter-of-factly as if he were down in the Gs Centrifuge of the Space Medicine Labs where he had been schooled for this trip for months.
He kept up a running fire of oral reports through his helmet radio, down to Rough Rock and his CO. “All Roger, sir . . . temperature falling fast but this rubberoid space suit keeps me cozy, no chills . . . Doc Blaine will be happy to hear that!
Weightless sensations pretty queer and I feel upside-down as much as rightside-up, but no bad effects . . . Taking shots of the sun’s corona now with color film . . . huh? Oh, yes, sir, it’s beautiful all right, now that you mention it. But, hell, sir, who’s got the time for aesthetics now? . . . Oops, that was a close one! Tenth meteor whizzing past.
Makes me think of flak back on those Berlin bombing runs.”
Dan couldn’t help wincing when the meteors peppered down past. The “flak” of space. Below he could see the meteors flare up brightly as they hit the atmosphere. Most of those near his position were small, none bigger than a baseball, and Dan took comfort in the fact that his rocket was small too, in the immensity around him. A direct hit would be sheer bad luck, but the good old law of averages was on his side.
“Yes, Colonel, this tin can I’m riding is holding together okay,” Dan continued to Rough Rock. If he paused even a second in his reports a top-sergeant’s yell from the Colonel’s throat came back for him to keep talking. Every bit of information he could transmit to them was a vital revelation in this US AF-Alpha exploration of open space beyond Earth’s air cushion, with ceiling unlimited to infinity.
“Cosmic rays, sir? Sure, the reading shot up double on the Geiger . . . huh? Naw, I don’t feel a thing . . . like Doc Baird suspected, we invented a lot of Old Wive’s Tales in advance, before going into space. I feel fine, so you can put down cosmic ray intensity as a Boogey Man . . . What’s that? Yeah, yeah, sir, the stars shine without winking up here. What else? . . . Space is inky black—no deep purples or queer more-than-blacks like some jetted-up writers dreamed up—just plain old ordinary dead black. Earth, sir? . . . Well, it does look dish-shaped from up here, concave . . . Sure, I can see all the way to Europe and—say! Here’s something unexpected. I can see that hurricane off the coast of Florida . . . You said it, sir! Once we install permanent space stations up here it will be easy to spot typhoons, volcano eruptions, tidal waves, earthquakes, what have you, the moment they start. If you ask me, with a good telescope you could even, spot forest fires the minute they broke out, not to mention a sneak bombing on a target city—uh, sorry, sir, I forgot.”
Dan broke off and almost retched as his stomach turned a flip-flop to end all flip-flops. The VX-3 had reached the peak of its trajectory at over 1000 miles altitude and now turned down, lazily at first. He gulped oxygen from the emergency tube at his lips and felt better.
“Turning back on schedule, Rough Rock. Peak altitude 1037 miles. Everything fine, no danger. This was all a cinch . . . HEY! Wait . . . Something not in the books has popped up . . . stand by!”
Dan had felt the rocket swing a bit, strangely, as if gripped by a strong force. Instead of falling directly down toward Earth with a slight pitch, it slanted sideways and spun on its long axis. And then Dan saw what it was . . .
Beneath, intercepting his trajectory, coming around fast over the curvature of Earth, was a tiny black worldlet, 998 miles above Earth. It might be an enormous meteor, but Dan felt he was right the first time. For it wasn’t falling like a meteor but swinging parallel to Earth’s surface on even keel.
He stared at the unexpected discovery, as amazed as if it were a fire-breathing dragon out of legend. For it was, actually, he realized in swift, stunned comprehension, more amazing than any legend.
Dan kept his voice calm. “Hello, Rough Rock . . . Listen . . . nobody expected this . . .
hold your hat, sir, and sit down; I’ve discovered a second moon of Earth! . . . Uhhuh, you heard me right! a second moon! Tie that, will you? . . . Sure, it’s tiny, less than a mile in diameter I’d say. Dead black in color. Guess that’s why telescopes never spotted it. Tiny and black, blends into the black backdrop of space. It has terrific speed. And that little maverick’s gravitational field caught my rocket . . . Of course it can’t yank me away from Earth gravity, but the trouble is—yipe! my rocket and that moonlet may be in for a mutual collision course . . .”
Dan’s trained eye suddenly saw that grim possibility. Barreling around Earth in a narrow orbit with a speed of something near or over 12,000 miles an hour the tiny new moon had, since his ascent, charged directly into his downward free fall. It was a chance in a thousand for a direct hit, except for one added factor—the moonlet exerted enough gravity pull out of its many-million ton bulk to warp the rocket into its path. And the thousand-to-one odds were thus wiped out, becoming even money.
“Nip and tuck,” reported Dan, answering the excited pleadings and questions from Rough Rock. “It won’t be a head-on crash. I may even miss entirely . . . Oh, Lord! Not with that spire of rock sticking up from it . . . I’m going to hit that . . .”
Dan had heard an atomic bomb blast once and it sounded like a string of them set off at once as the rocket smashed into the rocky prominence. The rock splintered. The rocket splintered. But Dan was not there to be splintered likewise. He had jammed down a button, at the critical moment, and the rocket’s emergency escape-hatch had ejected him a split-second before the violent impact.
But Dan blacked out. receiving some of the concussion of the exploding rocket. When his eyes snapped open he was floating like a feather in open, airless space. His rubberoid space suit, living up to its rigid tests, had inflated to its elastic limit. But it held and within its automatic units began feeding him oxygen, heat and radio-power. He had a chance, now, because he had been ejected cleanly from the rocket, without damage to the protective suit.
The stars wheeled dizzily around him. Dan finally saw the reason why. He was not just floating as a free agent in space. He was circling the black moonlet, at perhaps a thousand yards from its pitted surface.
“Hello, Rough Rock,” he called. “Still alive and kicking, sir. Only now, of all crazy-mad things, I’m a moon of this moon! The collision must have knocked me clear out of my down-to-Earth orbit . . . I must have been ejected in the same direction as the moonlet’s course, in its gravity field . . . I don’t know. Let an electronic brain figure it out some time . . . Anyway, now I’m being dragged along in the orbit of the moonlet—how about that? Yes, sir, I’m circling down closer and closer to the moonlet . . . No, don’t worry, sir. It was a weak gravity pull, only a fraction of an Earth-g. So I’m drifting down gently as a cloud . . . Stand by for my landing on Earth’s second moon!”
The bloated figure in the bulging space suit circled the black stony surface several more times, in a narrowing spiral, and finally landed with a soft skidding bump that didn’t even jar Dan’s teeth. He bounced several times from a diminishing height of fifty-odd feet in grotesque slow-motion before he finally came to a stop.
He sat still for a moment, adjusting to the fantastic fact of being shipwrecked on an unchartered moonlet, crowding down his pulse rate which might be over ten percent normal now.
“Okay, Rough Rock, I hear you . . . You’re telling me, sir? . . . Obviously, I’m marooned here. No rocket to leave with. No way to get back to terra firma . . . what? If you’ll pardon my saying so, sir, that’s a sill
y question . . . Of course I’m scared! Scared green. Sorry about the rocket, sir, losing it for you . . . Me, sir? Thank you, sir. But stop apologizing, will you? I know you haven’t got any duplicates of the VX-3 ready, no rescue rocket . . .”
Dan listened a moment longer then broke in roughly. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, will you stop crying over me, sir? So I get mine here. I might have gotten it over Berlin, too. Forget it—sir.”
Dan grinned suddenly. “Look, what have I got to kick about? I’ll go out in a flash of glory—at least one headline will put it that way—and I’ll get credit in the history books as the man who discovered that Earth has two moons! What more could I ask, really?”
Dan blushed at the reply from Rough Rock. “Will you lay off please, Colonel? How else should a man take it? I’m still scared silly inside. But, look, I’ve really got something to report now. This little runt moon makes tracks around Earth in probably two hours minus. If I remember my Spacenautics right I’m already looking down over the Grand Canyon, heading west. I’m going to get a. pretty terrific bird’s-eye view of the whole world in two more hours, which is just about how much oxygen I’ve got left . . . Lucky, eh?”
Dan looked down, watching in fascination the majestic wheeling of the Earth below him. His little moonlet did not rotate, or rather it rotated once for each revolution around Earth, as the Moon did, keeping one face earthward, giving him an uninterrupted view. The Sierras on Earth hove into clear view and the broad Pacific. There would follow Hawaii, then Japan, Asia, Europe . . . No, he saw he was slanting southwest. It would be across the equator, past Australia, perhaps near the South Pole, then up around over the top of the world past Greenland, following that great circle. around the globe. In any case, his was the speediest trip around the world ever made by man!
“Before we’re out of mutual range, Rough Rock, I’m going to explore this new moon. Me and Columbus! Stand by for reports.”
