Buck Rogers- A Life in the Future

by Martin Caidin

  It was a strange sensation at first, to give a little hop that normally would carry me twelve inches off the ground, and shoot into the air some twenty or thirty feet, to drift down and land again almost as lightly as a feather. Or to give a great shove against the ground, and soar sixty or seventy feet upward.

  BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY

  But for speed leaping I found it was necessary to cultivate a certain delicate instinct of balance. I felt very much as I had when, as a boy, I ran alongside a horse, letting the animal pull me as I took great, leaping steps. In short, I found that although weight apparently had vanished, momentum remained and if I hit anything while shooting forward horizontally, I hit it hard.

  It was for this reason that the use of jumping belts in cities, useful as they might have been in leaping to the upper stories of buildings or the upper levels of the vast moving sidewalks, was generally prohibited. The temptation to make speed with them was too great. Too many serious accidents had been caused by those who leaped into crowded places with uncontrollable momentum. But to soar across the country, in great easy leaps of sixty to ninety feet or more at the speed of an ice-skater, was delightful.

  WOMEN SOLDIERS

  It was, perhaps, all the more delightful to me because my instructor in the art of leaping was Wilma Deering, that slender, blue-eyed, golden-haired, high-spirited young soldier-girl who was destined to be my companion and capable assistant in so many astounding adventures in this marvelous universe.

  Eqiiality of the sexes had been one of the developments brought about during five centuries. It was part of the education of all

  WILMA

  BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY

  young girls to spend a certain amount of time in military service as well as in various industrial and mechanical activities. Naturally, most of them stayed in the kind of service to which they were best fitted (and the mechanical conveniences of the age made them practically as efficient as men in nearly all lines) unless they married. Then they adopted home-making as their career, and were subject to call for military or other service only in case of emergency.

  Wilma, who had self-reliance, fearlessness and stamina, even beyond the high average of her X5th Century sisters, had naturally remained in the military service, for which her talents eminently fitted her, and into this same service I naturally gravitated.

  WEAPONS OF THE 25TH CENTURY

  The weapons and equipment of the military service were most interesting to me. Men and girls wore close-fitting uniforms of a synthetically fabricated material, not a woven cloth,

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  BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY

  that had the consistency of soft leather and yet was most difficult to cut or tear. For service in cold climates, uniform cloth was electronically treated to radiate inward a continuous glow of heat, while the outside surface was heat resistant. For warm climates the cloth was given a spongy texture for aeration, and

  a high ratio of heat conductivity.

  The jumping belt was, of course, a part of the regular equipment, as was the close-fitting hel-met, of the same material as the uniforms, into which were built the tiny receivers of the in-di vidual radiophone sets that enabled an officer to give commands to his entire force, scattered over an area miles in extent, or to converse with a single scout individually from a distance.

  Of the weapons, the rocket pistol was the nearest thing to the firearms of the 2.0th Century, I knew. It was very much like an old automatic, except that its magazine was much larger, and the propelling charge was in a tiny cartridge case that travelled with the highly explosive bullet instead of remaining in the pistol, giving flatter trajectory and greater range. And some of

  TELEV-EYE

  these bullets had explosive power equal to artillery shells of the 2.0th Century.

  There were, of course, rocket guns; great squat cannon from which leaped self-propelling shells capable of shattering an area of a mile or more in radius.

  The telev-eye, used either as a weapon of destruction or for scouting, was an aerial torpedo, its weight eliminated by in-ertron counterbalancing, radio-controlled, with a great "eye" or lens, behind which was located a television transmitter that relayed back to its operator, who was safely entrenched miles in the rear, the picture which this "eye" picked up. Once the telev-eye picked up a fugitive aircraft, that ship was doomed, for no ship could outmaneuver or out-speed these terrible projectiles of destruction, which were so small that they could seldom be hit by enemy guns.

  Another most efficient weapon for short range work was the paralysis gun. This was a pistol, from which flashed a faintly visible, crackling beam of energy vibrations that temporarily paralyzed certain brain centers. A person hit by this ray instantly dropped rigid

  J 1 J • ^U ^ r • PARALYSIS GUN

  and paralyzed, to remain that way tor minutes

  or hours, and then recover with no worse effects than a bad

  headache.

  But to me one of the most amazing weapons of the 2.5th Century was the lightning gun. This wasn't really a gun at all, though it was called such from its general appearance. It was

  BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY

  an electronic generator and projector. From it flashed forth an invisible beam of carrier-wave oscillations along whichcould be sent a stupendous electrical charge. Its use was against aircraft. It was only necessary to focus the beam on the unsuspecting target, and then flash along it an electrical charge of opposite polarity to that in the clouds. When that ship later neared a cloud, it was struck by lightning. Obviously great care had to be taken in the operation of the lightning gun, or the gun itself might pull a bolt down from the clouds. It could only be used under certain atmospheric conditions. Batteries of these lightning guns were stationed at strategic points over the country and along the sea coast, co-ordinated to "fire" all at once, in groups, or singly, as necessity required.

  LIGHTNING GUN

  BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY

  17

  AMAZING CITIES

  I entered into the life of the 2.5th Century with a mighty zest. On every hand were marvels almost unbelievable. Cities of towering pinnacles. Others that had been roofed over with great domes of metalloglass, a transparent product with a strength greater than steel. And still others that were in reality one single great building, spreading for miles, with mazes of thoroughfares, internal corridors and external galleries, along which shot automati- "^^^^ cally controlled floating cars.

  The lift in these cars was furnished by an over-balance of inertron, but the cosmo-magnetic grip of the guide rails embedded in the pavements held them down to within twelve inches of the ground. One had only to enter one of these cars, locate his destination as to avenue, cross-corridor and level on the triple dial and then relax. An amazingly z5th century city

  i8 BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY

  complex system of car and power-house controls guided the vehicle promptly and safely by the shortest available route to the recorded destination.

  But I never ceased to wonder at the amazing number of these marvels whose real beginnings, back in the xoth Century, I could actually recall.

  Radio? It was basically and fundamentally woven into the whole fabric and structure of the 15th Century civilization. But such radio! Radio that embraced myriad types and varieties of electronic, sub-electronic, infra-magnetic and cosmic oscillations. Matter could be formed out of force with it. And even as the xoth Century scientists conceived and executed great scientific advances, so the 2.5th Century scientists to an even greater extent developed new, synthetic elements of strange properties, not existing naturally in any part of the universe. Inertron, for instance, was one of these. It had weight; but its weight caused it to fall up instead of down.

  RED MONGOL TERROR

  However, despite the development of five vivid centuries of scientific achievement, man's own social and moral progress still lagged b
ehind the progress of his creations. True, the average was far higher than it had been in the 2.0th Century, but there were on the face of the globe races whose advance in material civilization had been accompanied by moral and spiritual decay.

  There were, for instance, the terrible Ked Mongols, cruel, greedy and unbelievably ruthless, who for a time, all too long.

  BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY

  utterly crushed a large part of humanity in a slavery frightful to contemplate.

  In their great battle craft, sliding across the sky as though riding on columns of scintillating light, they drove like a scourge over all North America, with their terrible disintegrator rays blasting men and entire cities into nothingness. Where these beams fell, matter simply ceased to exist, and an instantaneous flicker was sufficient to gash the landscape with channels and canals sometimes a hundred or more feet deep and leave iridescent, vitreous scars where soft earth had been before.

  The disintegrator ray, however, became one of the most useful tools of X5th Century civilization in small projector form, with which tunnels could be bored and automatically finished with a hard vitreous surface with amazing rapidity, or with which refuse could be most economically destroyed, either by use of the hand machines or permanent installations.

  RED MONGOL WITH DISINTEGRATOR RAY MACHINE

  Wilma and I saw service in the war against these cruel Red Mongols and played an exciting part in the many fierce battles with them.

  KILLER KANE AND ARDALA

  But even among the more advanced races criminals still existed, and it was the destiny of Wilma and myself to frustrate the eviJ plans of certain super-criminals, Killer Katje and his companion, Ardala, and so win their undying hatred and enmity.

  Wilma, like other youngsters of all centuries, KILLER KANE had had her dreams, and unfortunately these had centered lightly at one time on a man who then had an unblemished reputation for integrity and ability, but she had broken with him instantly when she realized the potential evil that lay beneath his vivid personality. This man was Killer Kane.

  My coming and the interest Wilma showed in me had fanned Kane's smouldering resentment into a seething flame of hate. He later plunged into a criminal career of such utter daring and magnificent proportions as to be unequalled in the annals of two centuries. And though the beautiful, sleek adventuress, Ardala, was his constant and capable partner in crime, Kane never forgave nor forgot the wound to his vanity nor his consuming passion for revenge.

  And Ardala, though giving Killer Kane all the affection and loyalty of which her fierce, deceitful, feline nature was

  BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY

  2.1

  capable, suffered constantly the pangs of burning jealousy, and in consequence matched his hatred of Wilma and me with an enmity for us no less deadly because of her subtle talents.

  Throughout the Earth, and even beyond, into the vast voids of space, and other strange planets, Wilma's struggle and mine v^ith Killer Kane and Ardala was fated to continue.

  KILLER KANE AND ARDALA

  CONTROL OF SPACE SHIPS

  For interplanetary travel was an accomplished fact in the i5th Century. Even back in 1933 aviation engineers constructed a craft to fly the stratosphere, that upper section of the Earth's atmosphere in which the air is too rare for breathing, and from which its density declines gradually to the vacuum of interplanetary space.

  The first space ships in which we, Wilma and I, feeling infinitely less than microscopic, dared the immensity of outer void, were rocket propelled. In a vacuum, whirling fan blades

  BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY

  ©

  are futile for propulsion, for there is nothing for the blade to pull or push against. But the rocket, so to speak, provides "air" against which to push. The blazing gas, roaring out

  of the rocket tube, piles up against that which was emitted the preceding instant, and has not yet had time to expand to extreme Q rarefaction. The reaction of this piling up shoves the ship ahead. And since there is no air friction

  ROCKET SHIP

  in space to retard the ship a single impulse would give it a momentum that would continue forever, or until it was altered by some such event as entering the gravitational field of some planet, or colliding with a planetoid. Such speed, however, would be very slow, and the enormous distances to be covered in space made it imperative to attain speeds undreamed of in the antiquated days of 1933—five hundred years in the dim past.

  INTERPLANETARY NAVIGATION

  But with a continuous blast such as these ships used, they roared away from Earth at constantly accelerating speed. A rate of acceleration somewhat less than that of a falling body on Earth (and even back in 1933 experiences of aviators and parachute jumpers had proved the human system can stand the acceleration of gravity) but which constantly continued for even a few hours produced terrific speed.

  And as the space ship was so constructed that its boiv was its top, and its stern the base, this upward acceleration had the effect of pressing its passengers downward against its decks with something not far from equivalent to the force of gravity. At the half-way mark the ship, now floating through space at frightful speed, was gently swung about by small side-blasts, steadied vv^ith its base pointed in the direction of travel. And so for the second half of the journey the main blasts acted to decelerate the ship gradually, and at the same rate as the former acceleration. This deceleration substituted for gravity in the same way, and by the time the ship arrived at its planet of destination a few days, or a few months later, its speed was so reduced that it could safely enter the atmosphere and ride down on its rocket blast to a gentle landing.

  The controls of these space ships had been so carefully worked out by the scientific engineers—and the ships themselves so nicely balanced that a crew of two men—or girls for that matter—could easily operate one of the gigantic crafts.

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  BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY

  OLD DOCTOR HUER—SCIENTIST EXTRAORDINARY

  But this conquest of vast distances had not been possible until Old Doctor Huer, foremost scientist of the 15 th Century, with whom Wilma and I were associated in many adventures, had invented a method of creating ^natter in gaseous jomt from the energy impulses of sunlight and cosmic rays, with sufficient speed and in sufficient quantity to serve as rocket fuel. For no ship

  could hold enough rocket fuel for an entire interplanetary trip. It had to be derived from some outside source en route.

  NON-RECOIL ENERGY

  Huer, an amazing man for his age (I knew him to be over seventy), an indefatigable scientist and an irrepressible adventurer, also invented and developed the practical application of non-recoil energy, or as it was sometimes called, ^'one-way energy,'' by which a man might literally "lift himself by his bootstraps."

  The non-recoil energy tube was a small affair, resembling an ancient electric flashlight. It emitted a beam of energy which acted with controllable "push" against anything at which it was directed, but without any recoil whatever against the user. The principle was not dissimilar to that of shock and rebound

  DR. HUER

  BUCK ROGERS IN THE TWENTY-FIFTH CENTURY

  ^5

  absorbers on ancient automobiles or the recoil devices of ancient cannons, but it was a matter of carefully balanced electronic and sub-cosmic energy control rather than one of mechanical construction.

  Curiously, a man might hold one of these tubes pointed upward in one hand, and placing his other hand over the projector lens, rise on it as though holding on to a strap.

  Force tubes, of course, had been known for a long time, but in these the push was equal at both ends of the tube. They were, as a matter of fact, almost identical with the powerful repller rays on which the dreaded air-raiding ships of the Red Mongols rode, beams of faint light that pushed downward with terrific force against the ground, and upward with equal force against the keel of the ship generating the
m. The Mongols maneuvered

  their ships by the simple method of altering the slant of these rays. Slanted astern, they drove the ship forward, and vice versa. Huer's non-recoil energy, of course, had innumerable applications. It was ideal motive power for all kinds of vehicles, aircraft and space ships. And in industry it had a thousand applications.

  ECONOMY OF LABOR

  Had we not been plunged by circumstances, and the deadly hatred of Killer Kane and Ardala, into one desperate adventure after another, we could have found a never-ending interest in the adroit uses to which this convenient power of Dr. Huer's was put in the daily industrial life of the people. I had seen men punch holes in the hardest steel with a device little larger than a screwdriver, and with no more effort than a housewife might use in cutting biscuits out of a slab of dough.

  COMMUNITY KITCHENS

  There was very little home cooking, however, in the 2.5th Century. At least not in the cities; and only a small percentage of the population was required to run the farms.

  A marvelous system of conveyors led from the commtinity kitchens to every apartment. One could order his meal a la carte or table d'hote. In due course a wall panel would slide back, and a "floating table" would ease gently into the room, safely balanced on ''lifters" of inertron, with everything in readiness. It required but the pressure of a finger to guide