by Jerry
“You fool!” Kah stormed. “You will die here with the rest. I will lead all of you into the Place and we will live there always. If we stay here you know most of you will die—the old ones and the women and the children. Only we young men will live. Have we anything to lose even if I am wrong?—which I am not!”
That swayed the balance. The pitiful groups moved slowly toward Kah. “We will go with you Kah,” they said. “Promise us heat and food.”
And five hours later, the small band of humans entered the forbidding magnificence of the Place. Mountains of metal and strange materials surrounded them—everywhere their was wonder. But the Place was dead. Already decay was beginning to set in.
Kah led the band masterfully to a “cave”—and it was warm. Kah brought out huge quantities of metal stones, which when broken open yielded rich foods. Kah showed them the comforts of which they had only dreamed. And the Bad Babies came to none of them, unlike what the One Who Came Before had warned.
Instead the tribe prospered and grew and learned. For the Place was good.
And Kah played with strange things, unknowing that some day we would be able to read in the strange carvings in the stones of the Place, the story of the Radioactive Dust . . .
Crash Landing!
Lee Owen
I‘M A CLERK at Intercontinental. That’s my job. It’s not much of one. I’d rather be seated in the bucket of a Lunar Special or taking a Martian drag, but I can’t pass the medical—my heart—so I do the next best thing. I spend a lot of my time off on the obeervation platforms at Cheyenne One, which, as everyone knows, is the major North American Space Port.
So much for me. What I want to tell about is the recent tragedy, the crack-up of the “Cobalt” the fast Venus-Terra liner. I was there the Saturday morning she came in.
What a sight that was! I was sitting in the glass-encased observation tower listening to the speakers drone the usual drivel of arrival and departure, but my ears pricked up when I heard, “. . . Cobalt—Venus-Terra, coming in on dock seven. Clear air—crews alert.”
Overhead, the sleek slim needle that was the System’s fastest passenger rocket, slid into view, as the pilot prepared to land. The rocket’s forejets braked her overhead, and skillfully the pilot tipped her over so that she stood on her tail, in the conventional landing-maneuver which is as old as rockets themselves.
Slowly and gracefully, the four-hundred foot needle of polished titanium, that was the “Cobalt” settled itself dockward. I could just imagine the proud sensation the pilot must have felt as he set her downwards, under the eyes of ten thousand people, knowing be was the object of their envy.
He was an old hand. The rocket moved slowly, but with assurance. Its tail was pinpointed for the dock. On a sliver of flame it was balanced, its internal gyros holding it erect.
Every eye was on the proud ship. No one saw the initial movements of the fool who caused the tragedy. The rocket was balanced at perhaps five hundred feet and was descending rapidly. Then abruptly every eye caught the intruder.
Hurtling right toward the nose of the ship, was a stubby freighter, a common carrier of uncertain lineage. There were no survivors of it, so we can’t ever learn the cause or the reason for the freighter’s direction, but the surviving pilot said, that when his radar screamed “object!” he nearly died then and there.
He made one frantic effort to throw power to the “Cobalt” in a mad effort to send it hurtling upwards and away from the projectile that was about to strike it. But it was too late. You can’t imagine the hideous sound when the two vessels met There was such a grinding of tortured metal that you’d think the ships were crying aloud.
The rest is anti-climactic. Both plunged earthward and in their striking pulverized a dozen acres of field. It was a miracle that as many survived as did, but the safety chambers and the acceleration tables helped a lot.
When I went home that evening, I was left with a feeling of wonder, and even now, when the spaceways tempt me, I recall the accident. Yet, I know I’d sell my soul to be in the shoes of the men who man the rockets . . .
Flat-top Killer!
Lee Owen
BUZZ PUSHED “transmit” and spoke calmly into the microphone though his heart was pounding:
“Red flat-top sighted in radar eight hundred miles off coast. We are at eighty-thousand feet. Am about to take offensive action—over!”
“They’re not monitoring us, Buzz,” Harris said, “they can’t pick us up!”
“Won’t pick us up, Jack,” Buzz said sharply. “They’re playing it real safe—the fools. Who the hell worries about international complications when they’ve got a flat-top launcher loaded with rockets. The hell with orders. We’ll attack!”
Eighty thousand feet below the jet patrol bomber and thirty miles away lay the Red monster. Over it floated an umbrella of fighters while on the deck the grotesque shapes of the gigantic rocket launchers stuck their ugly snouts into the air. A hundred ships of every variety existed in the flotilla. Closer to the coast than this they need not come. The devastation of the rockets from the huge carrier would make mince-meat of the coastal cities. And the surprise would be complete. They’d be troops in the shambles of Seattle and ‘Frisco and Los Angeles in three days!
High and remote, out of radar contact, isolated by the thick cloud-banks, the jet bomber rolled serenely on.
“Got their coordinates on the nose, Jack,” Buzz asked his navigator.
“The computer’s swallowing the data right now. This ought to be good.”
“Here goes!” Buzz said exultantly as he pressed the firing stud. The plane lifted slightly as the weight of the four guided missiles left it. Four slim, narrow-winged projectiles slid under rocket power from the belly of the jet plane. At the same time the bomber opened wide its engines and headed east. There was always the chance of interception in spite of the enormous speed and altitude of the craft.
The four needle-nosed rockets tailed burning flames as their velocities built up. At sixty thousand feet over the Red flotilla, the strange missiles dipped sharply in unison. The relays cut in and the motors opened wide. Speeds built up sharply until they were moving at an incredible pace, guided by nothing but the set of their electronic brains tantalized by the coordinates fed into them. Unerringly they shot downward. They moved of course faster than sound and the radars of the Reds caught them only for a fleeting instant. By then it was too late to counter with anti-missiles.
In the fleeting jet, Buzz and Jack watched the screens. Anxiously they waited as the seconds ticked by, seconds which lengthened into minutes. Finally it happened. Clearly and perfectly, the monstrous mushroom appeared in the screens, and with incredible rapidity it rose into the sky, probing it like some gigantic finger. The Red flotilla was done . . .
Grimly and unsmilingly Buzz shook Jack’s hand. “Thank God!” he said fervently, “the rats carried atomics . . .”
Do Unto Others . . .
Lee Owen
JIM MORLAND relaxed comfortably with the tall cool drink at his side. The aluminum hut was cool and inside there was no hint of the steaming jungle heat, for the refrigerators threw the B.T.U’s away. Jim listened to the pleasant throb of the compressors and thought that the Venusian life wasn’t bad at all.
He glanced at the chests at the side of the room. They were crammed to the top with soron, that weed-like substance from which the medicos pulled a variety of hormones. On Earth it was worth its weight in polonium.
He’d been shrewd, Jim mentally congratulated himself. Dealing with these stupid primitive people was a cinch. Here they were working like slaves for him, in return for the cheap and shoddy baubles he’d brought with him—utensiles, fish-hooks, nets, rubber tubing, pikes, and an odd assortment of junk.
At New Cinn they’d warned traders and colonial to play square with the natives. Bah! What for? They were happy with their junk. As soon as the Earthman was gone, and when the shoddy stuff had fallen to pieces, the seal-like Venerians would go
back to their simple ways forgetting all about the men whom they had dealt with. Those crazy warnings of the Colonial authorities were just a ruse to make sure traders spent a lot.
Morland glanced at the calendar. The rocket was due in seven more days. He’d collected enough soron to make him happy for a long time with the credits it’d bring. He was going to get out of this swamp once and for all.
The scratching at the aluminum door of the hut resumed. He went to it and opened it. Framed in it was the four foot seallike Venerian. It held a wooden box filled with rusty little pieces of metal which Morland recognized as fish-hooks he’d traded a few weeks ago. The creature held It out supplicatingly. Without a word Morland closed the door. For a while the scratching continued. Then it stopped.
A few hours later he was making his last trek. He moved slowly through the muddy ooze underfoot. His reference was the little radar beacon in the cabin. It was a double job so that nothing could go wrong. There was chance of his getting lost, in “radio” light of the two beams.
It wasn’t hard to dispose of his “goods”. The ignorant natives willingly gave soron for the shoddiest mass of junk. Morland had been out about four hours and the steaming stickiness of the mud-suit was beginning to bother him. Now was the time to go back.
He turned up the volume of his little head-set, expecting to catch the usual buzz. But there was no sound! The radar beacon must have failed! Frantically Morland moved, running up and down trying to find a reference point. But there are to references in the Venerian jungles . . .
Morland never did find the beacon. Three days later his exhausted terrified body sank beneath the softening mud, marked momentarily by an air bubble . . .
And a little while later, a Venerian removed the blanket of mud from the tower atop an empty aluminum hut . . .
Teleported Invasion
Carter T. Wainwright
IN THE low, grim, grey, concrete building the work went on apace. Huge electrical generators, an automatic steam generating plant, weird electrical apparatus—all were poured into the building, to be incorporated into the Machine.
For Doctor Grainlee was building a teleporter.
Irascible, erudite, exotic in his ways, Professor Grainlee, had the money and the talents to indulge himself. And this was to be the culminating experiment of his life. How often had he stood lecturing before his classes in physics and mathematics, expounding to the receptive graduate students, his scientifically untenable, unshakable belief in the theory of teleportation.
“Subject a material object,” he had often said, “to extremes of currents or magnetic fields, or pressures, and I know—my mathematics shows it—it will vanish out of our time and our space—but not out of our ken!” In spite of some half humorous attitudes on the part of his colleagues, he only affirmed his passion more fanatically and intensively.
And gradually Dr. Grainlee drifted from the circle of university activity . . .
Time passed and fewer things went into the building. Aided by assistants, the good professor worked night and day, spending countless hours, and incredible effort on his pet project.
Jim Clarman, looking for a story with an unusual twist happened to wander by the building. And in his enthusiasm, he decided that an interview with the recluse and eccentric would be just the thing.
He let himself in the building after no one answered his buzzing. The floors were dusty and an aura of dis-use hung over the corridors. It was easy to find the main labs.
Jim walked in. The place was empty and all in silence. The gigantic generators did not move; only the shuffle of Jim’s feet in the concrete disturbed the silence.
Near the wall hung a fantastic array of equipment, whose most prominent feature was a metal tube about three feet in diameter. Jim approached it and looking into the tube was like looking into interstellar space itself. It was dark and cavernous, and seemed to have no bottom.
Beside the apparatus was a placard, now faded and dusty. Inscribed thereon were the words: “I am gone into hyperspace through the tube you see before you—I am seeking the source of the things. H.K.G.” That was all.
Jim stood in front of the large tube and gingerly reached out his hand. As he did so something brushed against it and a distinctly cold and clammy feeling assailed it I Again he ventured to reach, and like a series of invisible tennis balls, some things were coming from the tube.
Jim ran shrieking from the hall . . .
The Grav-Dancers
H.R. Stanton
“CLASS OF ’84” was emblazoned in light all across the gymnasium, and the laughing crowd of high school boys and girls were beginning to drift in. The orchestra was already playing. A general air of commencement gayety hung over the impromptu ballroom.
The self-conscious youngsters walked in slowly, a little ill at ease in their flashy green tuxes, but their gorgeously attired girls bore themselves like the little queens they were.
“Gee honey,” Fatty McAllister said excitedly to the pretty little brunette at his side, “this is gonna be fun. Dad just got me my new anti-gravs.”
“Now don’t you get too excited,” warned his partner. “Remember how you nearly broke a skylight at the last dance.”
“Aw . . .” protested the portly lad, “I can take care of myself.”
“But what about me?” she asked plaintively. “Your gravs are stronger.”
Suddenly the Caller’s voice boomed through the amplifiers: “Boys and girls, take your partners. First grav now begins.”
The crowd shuffled around excitedly, boys arraigning themselves with their partners. It was a pretty spectacle.
Again the speaker boomed: “Follow your curves and execute the whirls. Anyone flying free will be sent off the air until freetime comes! Grab your partners, here we go!”
At that signal, the orchestra burst suddenly into strong welling sound. Simultaneously, like well-trained birds, the three hundred pairs of grav-dancers rose into the air, the little grav-pulsers mounted on their heels, propelling them smoothly.
Gracefully pirouetting through space, moving in perfect synchronism, wheeling skillfully, diving boldly, swirling madly, the grav-dancers went through their routine.
Any other motion, with the possible exception of ice-skating is awkward compared with grav-dancing, and since it’s the rage most youngsters have earned to do it well.
The gymnasium was a vast volume of solidified gracefulness. In perfect rhythm with complete feel for the music, the couples sped and spun through the air, the girls billowing wildly, the boys, green tuxes unruffled.
Laughs and cries of joy and exultance filled the air to be heard even above the music. The grav-dancers were riding “high” tonight.
There was a shriek, a cry of alarm, and three hundred pairs of eyes shot skyward. And there was Fatty, clinging frantically to his partner and racing toward the ceiling. As usual, he’d become too exuberant. Vainly he tried to disengage himself from his girl, who trying to restrain him from rising, found instead, herself rising with him.
Jimmy Bryan cut abruptly and rapidly through the swirl and clamped a hand around one of Fatty’s ankles just in time to prevent him from going through another skylight. Another “tragedy” had been avoided.
As soon as Fatty was down to the floor, the dancers resumed and on and on went the mad whirl, far into the commencement night . . .
The Monsters
Leslie Phelps
THE STORY never has been fully released. Rumors began coming out of various Japanese sources as far back as nineteen fifty-five and now, three years later, it can be said pretty definitely, that the worst is over and the Monsters have been destroyed.
Directly under the atomic bomb blast which so severely laced the city of Hiroshima during the Second World War, was located a small jail housing some seventy prisoners, most of whom had been imprisoned for capital crimes and who were awaiting trial.
They were not killed by the bomb blast but most suffered severe radiation bums and were sent to
various prison hospitals in near-by prefectures. No one noticed that more than half these men escaped in the next three years. True, their escape was noticed and they were hunted, but no connection was noted between their being Hiroshimans and escapees.
In ‘fifty-four the rumors began. Horribly mutilated bodies, criminal acts of terrible ferocity, stories of “hideous monsters” who terrified their victims, were rife. Eventually government and semi-military agencies were set to track down both the sources of the rumors and the so-called “monsters.”
They succeeded. It was a long and slow task, and many more crimes were committed before they were completely obliterated. It was learned that the radiation blasts had done two things. First, most of the prisoners were effectively physical “mutants” distorted and warped beyond belief, scarred with burn-tissue and ugly as sin. Secondly, the radiation blasts had changed their powerful criminal mentalities.
Yes, it has been found through these experiences that radiations will stimulate or induce activity in those minds susceptible to criminal urges. The strategists and technicians who plan on conducting defense measures against this powerful weapon must now take into account this new source of danger.
Best-Dressed Man—1980
William Karney
“MY HUSBAND is looking for a new suit,” Mary Brady said to the stand-offish-looking clerk. He looked even paler under the powerful fluorescents of the ultra-modern glass, ceramic and stellite store.
“Of course, Madam,” the clerk said, casting a disdainful look toward Jim Brady’s rather beat-up coveralls. “Just what did you have in mind?”
“What do you think, Jim?” Mary asked turning toward her husband. “After all, you’re wearing it.”
Like male shoppers everywhere and at all times, Jim had little real idea of what he wanted. Which was why Mary was along. “I’m going along this time,” Mary had insisted. “You’ve been given the business too often.”
