Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  Pop went on eating and breathing, but his life was over after that. He hit the bottle a little harder and his ship, The Luck, grew rustier and tackier, and those were the only outward signs that Pop Ganlon was a living dead man. He kept on grubbing among the cold rocks and pushing The Luck from Marsport to Callisto and back with whatever low-mass payloads he could pick up. He might have lived out his string of years like that, obscure and alone, if it hadn't been for John Kane. Kane was Pop Ganlon's ticket to a sort of personal immortality--if there is such a thing for an old spaceman.

  It was in Yakki, down-canal from Marsport, that Kane found Pop. There is a small spaceport there--a boneyard, really--for buckets whose skippers can't pay the heavy tariff imposed by the big ramp. All the wrecks nest there while waiting hopefully for a payload or a grubstake. They have all of Solis Lacus for a landing field, and if they spill it doesn't matter much. The drifting red sands soon cover up the scattered shards of dural and the slow, lonely life of Yakki goes on like before.

  The Patrol was on Kane's trail and the blaster in his hand was still warm when he shoved it up against Pop Ganlon's ribs and made his proposition.

  He wanted to get off Mars--out to Callisto. To Blackwater, to Ley's Landing, it didn't matter too much. Just off Mars, and quickly. His eyes had a metallic glitter and his hand was rock-steady. Pop knew he meant what he said when he told him life was cheap. Someone else's life, not Kane's.

  * * * * *

  That's how it happened that The Luck lifted that night from Yakki, outward bound for Ley's Landing, with Pop and Kane aboard her alone.

  Sitting at the battered console of The Luck, Pop watched his passenger. He knew Kane, of course. Or rather, he knew of him. A killer. The kind that thrives and grows fat on the frontiers. The bulky frame, the cropped black hair, the predatory eyes that looked like two blaster muzzles. They were all familiar to Pop. Kane was all steel and meanness. The kind of carrion bird that took what others had worked for. Not big time, you understand. In another age he'd have been a torpedo--a hireling killer. But out among the stars he was working for himself. And doing well.

  Pop didn't care. His loyalty to the Patrol had stopped quite suddenly not long before--in a dark alley in Lower Marsport. This was only a job, he told himself now. A job for coffee and cakes, and maybe a grubstake to work a few more lonely rocks. Life had become a habit for Pop, even if living had ended.

  "What are you staring at, Pop?" Kane's voice was like the rest of him. Harsh and cold as space itself.

  "At you, I guess," Pop said, "I was wondering what you'd done--and where--and to whom."

  "You're a nosey old man," Kane said. "Just get me to Ley's Landing. That's what I'm paying for, not a thing more."

  Pop nodded slowly and turned back to the control board. They were above the Belt by now, and a few short hours from turnover point. The cranky drives of The Luck needed all his attention.

  Presently he said, "We'll be turning over soon. Want to get some rest?"

  Kane laughed. "No thanks, old man. I'll stay here and watch you."

  Pop eyed the ready blaster and nodded again. He wondered vaguely how it would feel to die under the blast of such a weapon. It couldn't be very painful. He hoped it wasn't painful. Perhaps the boy hadn't suffered. It would be nice to be sure, he thought.

  There wasn't much for Pop to remember about the boy. He'd never been one for writing many letters. But the District Patrolman had come down to Yakki and looked Pop up--afterward. He'd said the boy was a good officer. A good cop. Died doing his job, and all that sort of thing. Pop swallowed hard. His job. What had 'his job' been that night in Lower Marsport, he wondered. Had someone else finished it for him?

  He remembered about that time hearing on the Mars Radio that a Triangle Post Office had been knocked over by a gunman. That might have been it. The Patrol would be after anyone knocking over EMV Triangle property. The Earth-Mars-Venus Government supported the Patrol for things like that.

  Pop guided The Luck skillfully above the Belt, avoiding with practiced ease the few errant chunks of rock that hurtled up out of the swarms. He talked to Kane because he was starved for talk--certainly not because he was trying to play Sherlock. Pop had long ago realized that he was no mental giant. Besides, he owed the Patrol nothing. Not a damned thing.

  "Made this trip often?" Pop tried to strike up a conversation with Kane. His long loneliness seemed sharper, somehow, more poignant, when he actually had someone to talk to.

  "Not often. I'm no space pig." It was said with scorn.

  "There's a lot to spacing, you know," Pop urged.

  Kane shrugged. "I know easier ways to make a buck, old timer."

  "Like how?"

  "A nosey old man, like I said," Kane smiled. Somehow, the smile wasn't friendly. "Okay, Pop, since you ask. Like knocking off wacky old prospectors for their dust. Or sticking up sandcar caravans out in Syrtis. Who's the wiser? The red dust takes care of the leftovers."

  Pop shook his head. "Not for me. There's the Patrol to think of."

  Kane laughed. "Punks. Bell-boys. They'd better learn to shoot before they leave their school-books."

  Pop Ganlon frowned slightly. "You talk big, mister."

  Kane's eyes took on that metallic glitter again. He leaned forward and threw a canvas packet on the console. It spilled crisp new EMV certificates. Large ones. "I take big, too," he said.

  Pop stared. Not at the money. It was more than he had ever seen in one pile before, but it wasn't that that shook him. It was the canvas packet. It was marked: Postal Service, EMV. Pop suddenly felt cold, as though an icy wind had touched him.

  "You ... you killed a Patrolman for this," he said slowly.

  "That's right, Pop," grinned Kane easily. "Burned him down in an alley in Lower Marsport. It was like taking candy from a baby...."

  Pop Ganlon swallowed hard. "Like taking candy from a ... baby. As easy as that...."

  "As easy as that, old man," Kane said.

  * * * * *

  Pop knew he was going to die then. He knew Kane would blast him right after turnover point, and he knew fear. He felt something else, too. Something that was new to him. Hate. An icy hate that left him shaken and weak.

  So the boy's job hadn't been finished. It was still to do.

  There was no use in dreaming of killing Kane. Pop was old. Kane was young--and a killer. Pop was alone and without weapons--save The Luck....

  Time passed slowly. Outside, the night of deep space keened soundlessly. The stars burned bright, alien and strange. It was time, thought Pop bleakly. Time to turn The Luck.

  "Turnover point," he said softly.

  Kane motioned with his blaster. "Get at it."

  Pop began winding the flywheel. It made a whirring sound in the confined space of the tiny control room. Outside, the night began to pivot slowly.

  "We have to turn end-for-end," Pop said. "That way we can decelerate on the drop into Callisto. But, of course, you know all about that, Mr. Kane."

  "I told you I'm no space pig," Kane said brusquely. "I can handle a landing and maybe a takeoff, but the rest of it I leave for the boatmen. Like you, Pop."

  Pop spun the flywheel in silence, listening to the soft whir. Presently, he let the wheel slow and then stop. He straightened and looked up at Kane. The blaster muzzle was six inches from his belly. He swallowed against the dryness in his throat.

  "You ... you're going to kill me," Pop said. It wasn't a question. Kane smiled, showing white teeth.

  "I ... I know you are," Pop said unsteadily. "But first, I want to say something to you."

  "Talk, old timer," Kane said. "But not too much."

  "That boy--that boy you killed in Marsport. He was my son," Pop said.

  Kane's face did not change expression. "Okay. So what?"

  Pop's lips twitched. "I just wanted to hear you say it." He looked at the impassive face of the killer. "You made a mistake, Mr. Kane. You shouldn't have done that to my boy."

  "Is that all?"

/>   Pop nodded slowly. "I guess that's all."

  Kane grinned. "Afraid, old man?"

  "I'm a space pig," Pop said. "Space takes care of its own."

  "You're in a bad way, old timer," Kane said, "and you haven't much sense. I'm doing you a favor."

  Pop lifted his hands in an instinctive gesture of futile protection as the blaster erupted flame.

  There was a smell in the control room like burnt meat as Kane holstered his weapon and turned the old man over with a foot. Pop was a blackened mass. Kane dragged him to the valve and jettisoned the body into space.

  * * * * *

  Alone among the stars, The Luck moved across the velvet night. The steady beat of flame from her tubes was a tiny spark of man-made vengeance on the face of the deeps.

  From her turnover point, she drove outward toward the spinning Jovian moons. For a short while she could be seen from the EMV Observatory on Callisto, but very soon she faded into the outer darkness.

  Much later, the Observatory at Land's End on Triton watched her heading past the gibbous mass of Pluto--out into the interstellar fastnesses.

  The thrumming of the jets was still at last. A wild-eyed thing that may once have been a man stared in horror at the fading light of the yellow star far astern.

  It had taken Kane time to understand what had happened to him, and now it was too late. Space had taken care of its own. The air in The Luck was growing foul and the food was gone. Death hung in the fetid atmosphere of the tiny control room.

  The old man--the boy--the money. They all seemed to spin in a narrowing circle. Kane wanted suddenly to shriek with laughter. A circle. The turnover circle. The full circle that the old man had made instead of the proper half-turn of a turnover. Three hundred sixty degrees instead of one hundred eighty. Three hundred sixty degrees to leave the nose of The Luck pointing outward toward the stars, instead of properly toward the Sun. A full circle to pile G on G until the Jovian moons were missed, and the Uranian moons and Triton, too. Ad Astra per Ardua....

  With the last fragment of his failing sanity, Kane thought of how Pop Ganlon and the boy must be laughing. He was still thinking that as the long night closed in around him.

  * * *

  Contents

  EGOCENTRIC ORBIT

  By John Cory

  It took a long time for human beings to accept that our little piece of meteoric rubble wasn't the exact and absolute center of the Universe. It does appear that way, doesn't it? It may not take so long for a spaceman to learn ...

  Near the end of his fifteenth orbit as Greenland slipped by noiselessly below, he made the routine measurements that tested the operation of his space capsule and checked the automatic instruments which would transmit their stored data to Earth on his next pass over Control. Everything normal; all mechanical devices were operating perfectly.

  This information didn't surprise him, in fact, he really didn't even think about it. The previous orbits and the long simulated flights on Earth during training had made such checks routine and perfect results expected. The capsules were developed by exhaustive testing both on the ground and as empty satellites before entrusting them to carry animals and then the first human.

  He returned to contemplation of the panorama passing below and above, although as he noted idly, above and below had lost some of their usual meaning. Since his capsule, like all heavenly bodies, was stable in position with respect to the entire universe and, thanks to Sir Isaac Newton and his laws, never changed, the Earth and the stars alternated over his head during each orbit. "Up" now meant whatever was in the direction of his head. He remembered that even during his initial orbit when the Earth first appeared overhead he accepted the fact as normal. He wondered if the other two had accepted it as easily.

  For there had been two men hurled into orbit before he ventured into space. Two others who had also passed the rigorous three-year training period and were selected on the basis of over-all performance to precede him. He had known them both well and wondered again what had happened on their flights. Of course, they had both returned, depending upon what your definition of return was. The capsules in which they had ventured beyond Earth had returned them living. But this was to be expected, for even the considerable hazards of descent through the atmosphere and the terrible heating which occurred were successfully surmounted by the capsule.

  Naturally, it had not been expected that the satellites would have to be brought down by command from the ground. But this, too, was part of the careful planning--radio control of the retro-rockets that move the satellite out of orbit by reducing its velocity. Of course, ground control was to be used only if the astronaut failed to ignite the retro-rockets himself. He remembered everyone's surprise and relief when the first capsule was recovered and its occupant found to be alive. They had assumed that in spite of all precautions he was dead because he had not fired the rockets on the fiftieth orbit and it was necessary to bring him down on the sixty-fifth.

  Recovery alive only partially solved the mystery, for the rescuers and all others were met by a haughty, stony silence from the occupant. Batteries of tests confirmed an early diagnosis: complete and utter withdrawal; absolute refusal to communicate. Therapy was unsuccessful.

  * * * * *

  The second attempt was similar in most respects, except that command return was made on the thirty-first orbit after the astronaut's failure to de-orbit at the end of the thirtieth. His incoherent babble of moons, stars, and worlds was no more helpful than the first.

  Test after test confirmed that no obvious organic damage had been incurred by exposure outside of the Earth's protective atmosphere. Biopsy of even selected brain tissues seemed to show that microscopic cellular changes due to prolonged weightlessness or primary cosmic-ray bombardment, which had been suggested by some authorities, were unimportant. Somewhat reluctantly, it was decided to repeat the experiment a third time.

  The launching was uneventful. He was sent into space with the precision he expected. The experience was exhilarating and, although he had anticipated each event in advance, he could not possibly have foreseen the overpowering feeling that came over him. Weightlessness he had experienced for brief periods during training, but nothing could match the heady impression of continuous freedom from gravity.

  Earth passing overhead was also to be expected from the simple laws of celestial mechanics but his feeling as he watched it now was inexpressible. It occurred to him that perhaps this was indeed why he was here, because he could appreciate such experiences best. He had been told the stars would be bright, unblinking, and an infinitude in extent, but could mere descriptions or photographs convey the true seeing?

  On his twenty-first orbit he completed his overseeing the entire surface of the planet in daylight. He had seen more of Earth than anyone able to tell about it, but only he had the true feeling of it. The continents were clearly visible, as were the oceans and both polar ice caps. The shapes were familiar but in only a remote way. A vague indistinctness borne of distance served to modify the outlines and he alone was seeing and understanding. On the dark side of the planet large cities were marked by indistinct light areas which paled to insignificance compared to the stars and his sun.

  He speculated about the others who had only briefly experienced these sights. Undoubtedly they weren't as capable of fully grasping or appreciating any of these things as he was. It was quite clear that no one else but he could encompass the towering feeling of power and importance generated by being alone in the Universe.

  At the end of the twenty-fifth orbit he disabled the radio control of the retro-rockets and sat back with satisfaction to await the next circuit of his Earth around Him.

  * * *

  Contents

  JACK OF NO TRADES

  By Charles Cottrell

  This thing really started before the time I had Willy Maloon under observation when he gunned the small runabout well past cruising speed in order to reach the little asteroid as soon as he could. At times lik
e that he showed undue impatience. I was following at a discreet distance behind him, homing in on the rock, too. I had to find out what he was up to.

  Archie Crosby, the obliging scoundrel, had "lent" Willy the homer unit out of supply. But, of course, he (Willy) had requested it in words to the effect that it was to replace a defective one in the cache. And Archie didn't doubt Willy for a moment, Willy being the kind of fellow he is.

  Willy had worked a couple of hours on the homer unit, which is nothing more than a small radio transmitter. He tuned it to a frequency on the high side of the band used by the homer units in the cache. This was so no one would be likely to inadvertently tune the frequency and get curious. Tuning any of the vehicle receivers to that particular transmitter frequency was a simple matter. Then he had taken the transmitter out among the asteroids and hunted around until he had found one about two miles or thereabouts in diameter, only it couldn't be said to have a diameter because it was quite irregular in shape. But to Willy it must have been as fascinating as a jewel. So he planted the homer on it so that he could find it again when he wanted to. Of course, he hadn't yet thought of a reason for wanting an asteroid, but he would. He usually found reasons for the strange things he did.

  And he did. It must have been just after Ollie Hadaway lost control of his tug. It had been headed in the direction of a rather large asteroid. Ollie had tried to unjumble the steering jets, but he couldn't, so he bailed out and was picked up a little later. The tug went on and shattered on the surface of the asteroid. Then later, Willy, at my directions, investigated the accident, examined the tug, and wrote up an accident report on it. And the inspection part of it must have gone something like this:

  When Willy arrived to examine the shattered tug on the surface of the asteroid, he must have been pleasantly surprised to note that the hull was a battered mess, but miraculously some of the innards were intact. He must have looked closer and saw that the drive unit had escaped destruction. The drive unit of a tug is a super-heavy duty workhorse of a unit chock full of more power than would ever be packed or needed in a conventional ship of the same size. But as I said before, this was a propulsion unit from a tug, and tugs like ones we use need plenty of power.