Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  IV

  After the launching space-flight was normally a monotonous routine. The course was charted by automatic navigators and the vast pattern of interlocking machinery and safety devices was electronically controlled by robot relays from the pilot master-panel. The chief function of a trained space-pilot, aside from his services as a diplomat, was to handle emergency situations for which automatic responses could not be built into the machinery.

  Dirrul, however, could not depend a great deal upon the robot devices. He had to avoid the well-traveled and well-charted commercial space-lanes. He had to be constantly on the alert for the telltale white of a police cruiser. A cargo carrier was the slowest ship in the universe--Dirrul could outrun nothing, not even a playboy's sport jalopy, and inspection by the customs police would have been disastrous.

  He followed a roundabout route, keeping as far from inhabited planets as he could, and he made good time. In ninety-five days he had reached the mythical border in space, which divided the territory of the Planetary Union and the Vininese Confederacy.

  He was almost at midpoint in the galaxy. On the glazed screen of his space-map the mirrored pinpricks of sun systems glittered like microscopic gems scattered over the curve of a gigantic black saucer. Dirrul had never been so far from Agron. He felt a stifling sense of insignificance.

  The meaning of time as he understood it was somehow overwhelmed by the immensity of space. Now and yesterday, today and tomorrow, became a single unity. Dirrul had a new sense of the past in terms of the present. His mind groped for word symbols that he understood which could crystalize the shadowy new concept filling his mind.

  New understanding seemed to arise from the space-map. Somewhere among the glowing points of light was the Place of the Beginning, a single planet called Earth. In the far-distant past Earthmen had made themselves rational beings. But for centuries thereafter they had made no further progress, apparently appalled by the audacity of such presumptive evolution. They had fought through a long primitive period of violence, erecting system on system and philosophy upon philosophy to conceal, destroy and wipe out their own biological machinery.

  Then out of a final orgy of death and terror the Earthmen had grasped the meaning and the responsibility of the Rational Potential. They had understood the reality of being.

  Within a century after that they had conquered space. They had found peoples like themselves occasionally--but more often races that had followed different biological adaptations to different environments. Wherever there seemed to be a spark of primitive rationality the Earthmen had stayed and patiently taught the Rational Potential of being, which they had learned for themselves only after such bloodshed.

  The galaxy was theirs, in a sense, for it thought in the patterns of Earthmen, although long ago their direct influence had waned. They were a legend and an ideal, lost in the vastness of space, yet bound fast into the cultures of all peoples.

  Yet somewhere the Earthmen must have failed, somewhere there must have been a flaw in their teaching. Fifty years earlier, as the Agronians measured time, the galaxy had been torn apart by war. The Agronians had led one group of planets, the Vininese another. Planet after planet was seared by deadly new weapons--world after world died in the orange flame of gaudy atomic disintegration. Slowly the power of Vinin crept across the sky until the Vininese ruled half the galaxy.

  Their first defeat had come unexpectedly. Their great space-armada swung in on Agron, while the people crowded in terror in their flimsy raid shelters. But the Vininese ships had vanished high in the air. Not even debris had fallen on the planet.

  It was the first use of the Nuclear Beams. Dirrul had been a schoolboy when the Agronian scientists announced their discovery. He remembered the exciting thrill of pride, recalled how he and his schoolmates had dreamed of destroying the Vininese with the new weapon.

  He remembered too the galling bitterness he had felt when the scientists announced that they had made peace instead.

  They had had sound reasons, of course. They said the Beams had a limited value. They could be used only defensively to girdle a single planet in the stratospheric level of its atmosphere. Elsewhere they were harmless. To compound the spectacular timidity, the scientists had given away the secret to all comers, including the Vininese. They had an argument for that particular idiocy too--if each planet could protect itself so easily from all external attack its people could freely decide for themselves their galactic allegiance or maintain isolated independence.

  The Planetary Union had been formed and members of the Vininese Confederacy invited to join it. Not a people anywhere in the Confederacy made even tentative exploration of the offer while five sun systems of the Union later joined the Vininese. That was the fact that had ultimately prodded Dirrul into joining the Movement.

  Later, when he read the pamphlets brought from Vinin, he had clarified his purposes. On the one hand lay the waste, the confusion, the uncertainty of Agron. Scientists who talked forever of hypotheses and were afraid to stand firm for any absolute truths--moralists who qualified even the simplest standards of right and wrong--philosophers who glorified a condition of eternal chaos which they called an open mind.

  On the other hand lay the clean efficiency of Vinin. Scientific certainty, and the progress that stemmed from it--the Space-dragon instead of the Safe-sweet candy, a clear social organization in which the individual was directed by established and inflexible principles.

  The whole of it was history as Dirrul had learned it, the chronology of the past. As he looked on the star map of the galaxy, at midpoint between the two great unions of planets, the meaning of the past began to change. The chronology fell into a new perspective.

  Against the vast expanse of space time twisted into a new relationship. Time and space began to equate with an exciting synonymity. History was not the past, dead and numbered--history was now. All things, all space, all time, were forever fixed at the instant of now.

  In Dirrul's mind a tumult of facts trembled on the verge of a startling new order--the atomic structure of all energy and the black saucer of the galaxy. The violent spasms the Earthmen had suffered before they found the Rational Potential and the devastation of the Galactic War.

  But before he could assess such new values and verbalize the new generalization the antiquated warning system of his ship twanged tinnily. On the control panel screen he saw the trim outline of a white Agronian police ship. A moment later the voice came over the speaker, ordering him to state his permit registry and his destination.

  Dragged so suddenly back to reality, Dirrul reacted in panic. It was a routine inquiry. He might have bluffed his way clear. Instead he put the cargo ship at top speed toward Vinin and watched helplessly while the patrol cruiser closed relentlessly in.

  "Stand for search!" the voice commanded.

  When he did nothing the police shot a warning rocket over his bow. A second shot struck the rear of the cargo ship and tore away a section of landing gear. Swearing, Dirrul tried to maneuver out of range, and to a certain extent he was successful. But piloting skill could not make up for the cumbersome bulk of his unarmed ship. Two more blasts hit him, collapsing the forward compartment and knocking out one power tube.

  At the point of triumph, however, the police patrol turned away and left Dirrul limping alone in space. For a moment he was puzzled. In another ten minutes they could have boarded the cargo carrier and made him prisoner. But he understood when he glanced again at the star map--the Agronian police had pursued him far into Vininese territory. If Vininese patrols had found them there it might have created an unpleasant intergalactic incident.

  Dirrul made a quick survey of the damage. He had only one power tube intact--beyond that, the cargo carrier was wrecked and he had on board nothing with which to make repairs. He could move ahead only at quarter-speed.

  Sorgel had put a time limit of one hundred days on the trip to Vinin. Headquarters had to know by then of the Plan on Agron. Dirrul had five days left a
nd as the hours ran out he was still grinding slowly toward the outer atmosphere of Vinin. Quite aware that proper security demanded the message be delivered in person, Dirrul nonetheless faced the alternative of losing everything if he waited.

  Logically weighing all factors, he concluded he would not be risking too much, considering the stakes, if he used the teleray. Agron monitors could pick it up, of course, and no doubt the outpost stations were instructed to record all messages emanating from within the territory of Vinin. But Dirrul knew the Air-Command.

  They wallowed in the same luxury and comfort enjoyed by the rest of the Planetary Union. Outposts personnel, so far from the capital, would be even less likely to take their duties seriously than Dirrul's own unit.

  He tried to make the information enigmatic to the curious and at least suggestive to the Vininese. He used the landing Wave-code 373. The small red light on the control panel glowed and he knew he had established contact. In carefully chosen Vininese he spoke into the teleray mouthpiece.

  "Sorgel requires help for Glenna-Hurd Plan. Exactly fifty days, their time."

  He repeated the message. As an afterthought he gave his own position and asked for emergency repair assistance. The whole meaning hinged upon the names of Glenna and Hurd. However, since they had been taken to Vinin, they should already have outlined the Plan to the Vininese command. If there were any doubts Headquarters could teleray for clarification. When his speaker remained silent Dirrul assumed he had been understood.

  He began to feel the pull of Vininese gravity, found himself in trouble with his ship. He tried to keep the disabled cargo carrier relatively stationary, so that the Vininese repair ships could locate him. With only one power tube, however, maneuver was impossible. The battered ship plunged out of control toward the planet.

  For an hour Dirrul fought with all the skill he knew. A thousand feet above the surface he managed to force the ship to level off temporarily. He had no time to seek a proper landing area and in any case his gear had been shot away.

  There was a wide flat plain directly below him, in the distance the towering mass of a large city silhouetted against a range of mountains. Dirrul headed his ship for the open fields, setting the safety devices for a crash landing.

  He hung around his neck the identification disk Sorgel had given him, tucking it beneath his tunic. If he were hurt in the landing, a Vininese might find him, and the disk would indicate that he was important enough to be taken to the Headquarters Command. If his teleray hadn't been understood there might still be a chance for him to make his report in person.

  The ship crashed against the hard ground. Dirrul felt a wrenching pain as the automatic safety arms pinioned him fast to cushion the fall, before hurling him free of the blazing control room. After that he lost consciousness.

  V

  When Dirrul opened his eyes it was after dark but the triple moons of Vinin were full and the landscape glowed with a yellowish light. He had fallen into a ditch which ran beside a narrow, green-paved road. In the distance, hidden in a dense copse of blue tree-like vegetation, he saw the fragments of his wrecked ship. The purple grass of Vinin spread richly all around him, damp and warm. At the bottom of the ditch a reddish trickle of liquid washed over his feet.

  His throat ached with thirst. His tongue clung like sand to the roof of his mouth. He knew that an Agronian could live in the Vininese atmosphere but he was uncertain whether his body could assimilate the native liquids. Yet to ease the torture he dipped his hand into the red fluid and rubbed a few drops over his lips. The sting of salt increased his torment.

  His body shuddered with pain as he pulled himself to his feet. He crept a few feet along the green highway, and slowly his will mastered his strength so that he could walk erect. He began to orient himself a little. On the horizon he saw the skyline of the city he had observed from the air and he knew he was following the road in the right direction.

  But the distance was greater than he had estimated. He walked for an hour and the city still seemed no closer. Nor had he seen any sign of habitation where he might go for help, nothing except the towering endless yellow stone wall which he had been following for more than half an hour. There was neither gate nor break in the stone. Atop the wall regularly spaced brackets held three naked wires in place.

  The wall probably guarded the estate of a Vininese official, he decided. In that case the wires were either a warning device or a charged trap against thieves. Dirrul was puzzled by the obvious deduction. Such things were necessary on Agron to protect important installations like the Beam Transmitters--but he had hardly expected there would be a need for them on Vinin. Yet when he considered it objectively, why not? Every system of society, no matter how ideal, would produce inevitable malcontents--there were fools among the Vininese, as there were among other peoples.

  Dirrul saw a towering gate in the wall and ran ahead eagerly, only to fall in disappointment against the thick metal grille. The gate was locked by a concealed device he could not locate. At a considerable distance inside the wall was a second, higher than the first. Dirrul saw a faint light at the inner gate and assumed there was a guard of some sort stationed there. He tried with all his strength to cry out for help but his throat was dust-dry. He could utter only a faint whisper.

  When he tried to go on he was overcome with exhaustion. He staggered a few feet beyond the gate and collapsed into the ditch. He lay face down in the warm purple grass, his swollen tongue hanging limply from his mouth. Imperceptibly the thirst began to diminish. After a moment's speculation Dirrul understood why and crushed a handful of the purple grass against his lips. It was warm and sweet--a comforting liquid began to flow down his throat. He plunged his head luxuriously into a thick mass of the weed, breathing deeply the sweet odor of the crushed blades.

  A silent grey vehicle darted along the green road and jerked to a stop in front of the gate. It came so quickly Dirrul had no time to call out. The Vininese driver stood up and bawled orders at the inner gate. A faint voice replied. The driver shouted again. The gate swung open and the vehicle moved inside.

  Bewildered, Dirrul sat up, his head reeling. He understood a little Vininese, not enough to translate exactly what had been said but enough to make out a tantalizing half-meaning. The driver was searching all the work camps, he had said, for the Agronian girl, Glenna. He wanted to check something or other to see if she were here.

  Work camp? Dirrul decided he must have got the word wrong. Glenna and Hurd might still be in hospitals but if they had recovered they would be honored citizens of Vinin. Still--what sort of hospital would have both double walls and alarm wires?

  Only an asylum for hopeless mental cases! The realization made Dirrul cold with a terrible fear. Glenna--hopelessly insane!

  To save the Movement it was vital for Dirrul to make his report immediately. What help could the Vininese get from a madwoman? He sprang up and ran dizzily to the gate. Before he could shout for the guard shadowy figures rose up around him, silently closing great hairy hands over his mouth and dragging him back across the road.

  Tied and gagged Dirrul watched while the black-robed creatures worked stealthily at the central bars of the gate with tiny blue-flaming torches. Beneath their flowing capes they were beings like himself, which indicated that they were either Agronian or Vininese, for by the perverse chance of biological adaptation the people of the two planets were so structurally similar that even intermarriage was possible. One by one they cut out the bars until the span in the gate was wide enough for them to work their way through.

  For a moment the band stood in the road, apparently talking. At least their lips moved and their hands fluttered expressively but Dirrul heard no sound. Reaching a decision they went through the gate in single file, carrying long vicious weapons with them. Two of the black-caped men came and stood guard on either side of Dirrul.

  Whatever these vandals were doing they were working in stealth and fear and Dirrul realized their aim must be illegal. He fought t
o break free of his bonds so that he might warn the loyal Vininese garrison. The two guards shoved him back roughly. One of them grabbed Dirrul's tunic in a claw grip and the cloth tore open, revealing Sorgel's identification disk.

  Both guards bent over him, fingering the disk, talking soundlessly with their facile fingers. Suddenly they jerked the disk off, snapping the chain. At the same moment a rolling explosion from within the wall shook the earth.

  Dirrul heard a great noise and a terrifying fear filled his mind. It was a steady undiminishing fear that gripped every muscle of his body. His throat was ice-cold. His heart pounded and gasped for breath. Every nerve-end in his body quivered and his imagination was swamped with a flood of shattering ephemeral horrors.

  Nothing could shake off the terror. Dirrul's skill with reason and logic failed him. It was impossible to organize his thinking to combat the sensory shock waves disrupting his thoughts. Logical patterns made no sense. The very process of trying to build meaning into them--the process of thinking itself--left him weak and trembling.

  The guards watched his terror for a moment, watched while he clung close to the ground, trying to dig his fingers into it. Then one of them laughed--a piercing discordant shriek, shrilling louder than the din behind the wall. The second man, snarling viciously, kicked Dirrul in the ribs.

  For Dirrul the blaze of pain was almost a relief. As his body responded to it on a level of instinct, the chattering terror in his mind diminished. A second blow on the head sent him reeling close to the brink of unconsciousness. His perceptive reactions went slightly out of focus.

  In a wavering mist he saw the black figures emerge from the gate, dragging a dozen or more captives with them. A second explosion rocked the earth and flames leaped high behind the yellow wall. In the glare Dirrul recognized Glenna, struggling frantically in the arms of her masked captor.