Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "No, Donald," he said sternly. "This time you don't get away with it. You see, I know what happened when you ate the spheres."

  The door creaked open. Elvin walked into the workshop, where all thirty of the tenth graders were gathered around the littered work table. The rocket was there, and they were studying the tiny motor. In a corner was a hastily constructed forge; three girls were working with it, turning out curved strips of metal, which a boy was machining on the metal lathe. In the center of the shop was a tall, gleaming bar of metal, surrounded by a network of wires and fastened to a wooden base made from an orange crate.

  "You're cooking up some more surprises for us?" Elvin asked.

  "No," Donald replied solemnly. "We're ashamed of--"

  "As, indeed, you should be."

  "We're doing our best to put everything back the way it was," Mabel Travis said. "Honestly, Mr. Elvin."

  "It won't help much; the damage is already done."

  "But it can be undone. We've already fixed up part of it."

  "Yes," David Schermerhorn cut in anxiously. "When Don and I came back this morning, the first thing we did was bring back the bank. Our machine's kind of crude, Mr. Elvin, so we couldn't get it right at first. I guess we picked up a castle or something in between; but that's all right, now. And the gold--well, we're going to turn it back to gravel again tonight." He gestured toward the bar of metal.

  "We can work from the edge of our field," David pointed out. "The whole desert will change at once, the way it did last night."

  "And what will you do with all the people on it?"

  "It won't hurt them."

  "But when they find their gold is gravel, you'll have a major catastrophe on your hands."

  Marilyn bit her lip. "That's why we haven't done anything yet. We don't want anybody to get hurt but--"

  "So you've considered that at last." The more Elvin rubbed in the guilt, he reasoned, the more secure he would make himself.

  "We could just transpose the whole area," Charles suggested. "We've considered that, too. Maybe in pieces, Mr. Elvin. You know, an acre or two to Australia, another to Germany, another to England. That couldn't cause much more than local riots."

  "But the men would be mighty uncomfortable for a while."

  "The only trouble is, our machines are so crude; we've had to build them out of scraps. And something could go wrong. We might try to send some of the mob to China, and end up putting them in the Pacific, or maybe back in time."

  "You've done enough tampering," Elvin declared. "I won't help you at all, unless you promise to leave everything as it is. You have to put yourselves in a position to help the world, not destroy it."

  * * * * *

  Elvin had injected just the right tone of nobility into his voice. The thirty adolescents consulted together in whispers. Then David asked,

  "What do you want us to do, Mr. Elvin?"

  "Let me act as your representative. I'll go to Washington and talk to responsible men in the government; I'll try to see the president himself. We should set up a scientific foundation for you, where you'll have the equipment you need and where your experiments won't do the rest of us any harm. But, if I'm to convince anybody, I'm going to have to do some tall talking. If you had one of the capsules left--"

  "No, Mr. Elvin; they're all gone." David was not looking at him, and Elvin knew he was lying; but this was not the occasion to make an issue of it. Above everything else, he had to see to it that they had complete faith in his motives.

  "Then one of your machines," he suggested. "I have to make them understand I'm not a crank."

  "That sounds sensible. Which one, Mr. Elvin? The Degravitational Unit is the smallest, and it would do the least harm if--" David looked away again. "--if it got out of your hands."

  "It isn't sensational enough. I rather wanted to show them this thing you used to transpose the bank and a square of jungle."

  "Oh, no!" Marilyn broke in. "We couldn't--"

  "Why that, Mr. Elvin?"

  "I've already told you. It's the sort of thing that would attract the attention of the important officials immediately, because it could be converted so readily to a weapon of inestimable value."

  There was a long silence, while the thirty youngsters looked from one to the other. It lengthened. Elvin felt a creeping edge of fear. David spoke at last,

  "I think you're right, Mr. Elvin. We could show the world how to build a society adjusted to the needs of man; we could develop techniques for wiping out disease and mental disorders; we could show you how to conserve our resources, how to build material things for the mutual happiness of all people; how to create instead of destroying. But of course you're right. The only thing that would really interest any of us would be a new weapon, wouldn't it? All right; we'll give it to you."

  Marilyn sprang up. "But, David--"

  "I know what I'm doing!" he snapped at her in a tense whisper. Turning back to Elvin he added smoothly, "But we'll want something from you first, Mr. Elvin."

  "Anything, my boy; anything to promote the welfare of mankind. But no more of your tricks, mind."

  "This is far from a trick, Mr. Elvin."

  "So long as that's understood--"

  "We're working on a machine--a new one. We have everything we need except tungsten. They use that in building television sets, among other things. I want you to drive down to one of the plants in Los Angeles and get us a pound of tungsten. They won't sell it to you; you'll have to steal it."

  "Now, David! Only a thick-skulled schoolboy would take such an unsocial attitude! I'm a teacher, a responsible citizen, proud--"

  "Do you want the machine for transposing matter?"

  "Yes; for the good of the nation. But--"

  "Then you'll have to take this risk. We'll give you a Degravitational Unit. That'll help you get away. When you bring us the tungsten, we'll deliver the transportation machine."

  Elvin made the drive to Los Angeles in record time. The highway was jammed with traffic, but all of it was moving in the opposite direction, toward San Benedicto. He refused to think of the consequences if he were caught. The glittering dream was still blazing on the horizon of his mind. If they refused him the learning capsule, it was unfortunate, but there was nothing he could do about it. The important machine was the one that transposed matter through time. With that one device alone, Elvin could sway the world. Placed in the scales against such a reward, the moral issue of theft counted not at all.

  * * * * *

  Los Angeles whirled chaotically in the monetary crisis. The streets were jammed with people, buying everything they could before prices jumped again. In the confusion, Elvin had no difficulty breaking into a television plant. He didn't trip a burglar alarm until he was leaving the factory, but the Degravitational Unit made his escape easy. Within four hours he was back in San Benedicto. He hurried to the workshop. But when he pounded on the door, there was no response. He tried the latch and the door swung open.

  The room was empty, but on the table was a large envelope addressed to him. A thin thread of wire was fastened to it; as he picked it up, the wire broke and somewhere in the distance a motor began to hum.

  "Dear Mr. Elvin," he read. "It was unkind of us to play another trick on you, but we're sure you'll be clever enough to steal the tungsten without getting caught. When you came to talk to us, we realized that the conclusion we had reached was right. Children--adolescent minds--have wrecked our world. You know all about that, Mr. Elvin; teachers always do. And you've told us so often in class about the unstable emotions of adolescents, their tantrums, their unpredictability, their unsocial behavior, their egocentricity and all the rest. We'd like to help, but there isn't much we can do, not really; you just want the machines we know how to make, not the ideas we've learned. We grew up, you see, on the day we turned the desert to gold. We found out what happens when you give children dangerous toys to play with.

  "We made our mistake, and we know how to straighten it out. We've only wai
ted for you to read this so that you would understand, at least for a moment. We have isolated ourselves in suspended time; we're right here in the workshop with you, but you can't see us, naturally, because we started standing still in time more than an hour ago. When you opened your envelope, you tripped the motor of a matter transposition machine which will throw all time backward to last Friday night. None of this will have happened then. That should straighten everything out, don't you think?

  "You'll find the rocket again, and you'll open it, just as you did before. But this time there'll be only a jar of bubble gum inside, because we've already consumed the learning capsules. There won't be any memory left for anyone--except ours. We've learned how to work with a planet of adolescents. We think we can help you mature in spite of yourselves; but this time no one will ever know how it is being done."

  Elvin looked up, but before the anger and frustration could crystalize in his mind, the yellow lamp dimmed, the walls of the workshop faded and vanished. He fought for a moment against the blackness rising in his mind. The light paled and paled and finally it was nothing more than a red streak in the sky.

  It moved closer and he saw that it was a falling object followed by a long plume of red flame. It flashed momentarily overhead and Elvin heard a dull thud as it fell in a field beyond the ranch house. He sprang up from the couch and moved off in the darkness. It had been a meteorite, of course; if it had survived the friction of the atmosphere, it would make an interesting exhibit for the science classroom....

  * * *

  Contents

  IMPACT

  By Irving E. Cox, Jr.

  They were languorous, anarchic, shameless in their pleasures ... were they lower than man ... or higher?

  Over the cabin 'phone, Ann's voice was crisp with anger. "Mr. Lord, I must see you at once."

  "Of course, Ann." Lord tried not to sound uncordial. It was all part of a trade agent's job, to listen to the recommendations and complaints of the teacher. But an interview with Ann Howard was always so arduous, so stiff with unrelieved righteousness. "I should be free until--"

  "Can you come down to the schoolroom, Mr. Lord?"

  "If it's necessary. But I told you yesterday, there's nothing we can do to make them take the lessons."

  "I understand your point of view, Mr. Lord." Her words were barely civil, brittle shafts of ice. "However, this concerns Don; he's gone."

  "Gone? Where?"

  "Jumped ship."

  "Are you sure, Ann? How long ago?"

  "I rather imagined you'd be interested," she answered with smug satisfaction. "Naturally you'll want to see his note. I'll be waiting for you."

  The 'phone clicked decisively as she broke the connection. Impotent fury lashed Lord's mind--anger at Don Howard, because the engineer was one of his key men; and, childishly, anger at Don's sister because she was the one who had broken the news. If it had come from almost anyone else it would, somehow, have seemed less disastrous. Don's was the fourth desertion in less than a week, and the loss of trained personnel was becoming serious aboard the Ceres. But what did Ann Howard expect Lord to do about it? This was a trading ship; he had no military authority over his crew.

  As Lord stood up, his desk chair collapsed with a quiet hiss against the cabin wall, and, on greased tubes, the desk dropped out of sight beneath the bunk bed, giving Lord the luxury of an uncluttered floor space eight feet square. He had the only private quarters on the ship--the usual distinction reserved for a trade agent in command.

  From a narrow wardrobe, curved to fit the projectile walls of the ship, Lord took a lightweight jacket, marked with the tooled shoulder insignia of command. He smiled a little as he put it on. He was Martin Lord, trade agent and heir to the fabulous industrial-trading empire of Hamilton Lord, Inc.; yet he was afraid to face Ann Howard without the visible trappings of authority.

  * * * * *

  He descended the spiral stairway to the midship airlock, a lead-walled chamber directly above the long power tubes of the Ceres. The lock door hung open, making an improvised landing porch fifty feet above the charred ground. Lord paused for a moment at the head of the runged landing ladder. Below him, in the clearing where the ship had come down, he saw the rows of plastic prefabs which his crew had thrown up--laboratories, sleeping quarters, a kitchen, and Ann Howard's schoolroom.

  Beyond the clearing was the edge of the magnificent forest which covered so much of this planet. Far away, in the foothills of a distant mountain range, Lord saw the houses of a village, gleaming in the scarlet blaze of the setting sun. A world at peace, uncrowded, unscarred by the feverish excavation and building of man. A world at the zenith of its native culture, about to be jerked awake by the rude din of civilization. Lord felt a twinge of the same guilt that had tormented his mind since the Ceres had first landed, and with an effort he drove it from his mind.

  He descended the ladder and crossed the clearing, still blackened from the landing blast; he pushed open the sliding door of the schoolroom. It was large and pleasantly yellow-walled, crowded with projectors, view-booths, stereo-miniatures, and picture books--all the visual aids which Ann Howard would have used to teach the natives the cultural philosophy of the Galactic Federation. But the rows of seats were empty, and the gleaming machines still stood in their cases. For no one had come to Ann's school, in spite of her extravagant offers of trade goods.

  Ann sat waiting, ramrod straight, in front of a green-tinged projectoscope. She made no compromise with the heat, which had driven the men to strip to their fatigue shorts. Ann wore the full, formal uniform. A less strong-willed woman might have appeared wilted after a day's work. Ann's face was expressionless, a block of cold ivory. Only a faint mist of perspiration on her upper lip betrayed her acute discomfort.

  "You came promptly, Mr. Lord." There was a faint gleam of triumph in her eyes. "That was good of you."

  She unfolded her brother's note and gave it to Lord. It was a clear, straight-forward statement of fact. Don Howard said he was deserting the mission, relinquishing his Federation citizenship. "I'm staying on this world; these people have something priceless, Ann. All my life I've been looking for it, dreaming of it. You wouldn't understand how I feel, but nothing else--nothing else--matters, Ann. Go home. Leave these people alone. Don't try to make them over."

  The last lines rang in sympathy with Lord's own feelings, and he knew that was absurd. Changes would have to be made when the trade city was built. That was Lord's business. Expansion and progress: the lifeblood of the Federation.

  "What do you want me to do?" he demanded.

  "Go after Don and bring him back."

  "And if he refuses--"

  "I won't leave him here."

  "I have no authority to force him against his will, Ann."

  "I'm sure you can get help from this--" her lip curled "--this native girl of yours. What's her name?"

  "Niaga."

  "Oh, yes; Niaga. Quaint, isn't it?" She smiled flatly.

  He felt an almost irresistible urge to smash his fist into her jaw. Straight-laced, hopelessly blind to every standard but her own--what right did Ann have to pass judgment on Niaga? It was a rhetorical question. Ann Howard represented the Federation no less than Lord did himself. By law, the teachers rode every trading ship; in the final analysis, their certification could make or break any new planetary franchise.

  * * * * *

  "Niaga has been very helpful, Ann; cooperative and--"

  "Oh, I'm sure she has, Mr. Lord."

  "I could threaten to cut off Don's bonus pay, I suppose, but it wouldn't do much good; money has no meaning to these people and, if Don intends to stay here, it won't mean much to him, either."

  "How you do it, Mr. Lord, is not my concern. But if Don doesn't go home with us--" She favored him with another icy smile. "I'm afraid I'll have to make an adverse report when you apply for the franchise."

  "You can't, Ann!" Lord was more surprised than angry. "Only in the case of a primitive and belligerent c
ulture--"

  "I've seen no evidence of technology here." She paused. "And not the slightest indication that these people have any conception of moral values."

  "Not by our standards, no; but we've never abandoned a planet for that reason alone."

  "I know what you're thinking, Mr. Lord. Men like you--the traders and the businessmen and the builders--you've never understood a teacher's responsibility. You make the big noise in the Federation; but we hold it together for you. I'm not particularly disturbed by the superficials I've seen here. The indecent dress of these people, their indolent villages, their congenital irresponsibility--all that disgusts me, but it has not affected my analysis. There's something else here--something far more terrible and more dangerous for us. I can't put it in words. It's horrible and it's deadly; it's the reason why our men have deserted. They've had attractive women on other worlds--in the trade cities, anything money could buy--but they never jumped ship before."

  "A certain percentage always will, Ann." Lord hoped he sounded reassuring, but he felt anything but reassured himself. Not because of what she said. These naive, altogether delightful people were harmless. But could the charming simplicity of their lives survive the impact of civilization? It was this world that was in danger, not by any stretch of the imagination the Federation.

  * * * * *

  As the thought occurred to him, he shrank from it with a kind of inner terror. It was heresy. The Federation represented the closest approximation of perfection mortal man would ever know: a brotherhood of countless species, a union of a thousand planets, created by the ingenuity and the energy of man. The Pax Humana; how could it be a threat to any people anywhere?

  "That would be my recommendation." Suddenly Ann's self-assurance collapsed. She reached for his hand; her fingers were cold and trembling. "But, if you bring Don back, I--I won't report against a franchise."

  "You're offering to make a deal? You know the penalty--"