Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  The name was Edward Anders.

  "You lost it when you were eleven. You wouldn't remember though. I found it in an attic where it lay unnoticed. As the years went by you gradually forgot about the knife, you see, and when your mind had completely abandoned the thoughts of it, it was mine--had I wanted it. As a matter of fact I didn't. I retrieved it just today."

  I put the knife down. Sweat was coming on my forehead now, I could feel it. I was remembering. I was remembering the knife and what was scaring me even more was I was remembering the very day I had lost it. In the attic.

  I said very carefully, "All right. You've made your point. You can take it from there."

  "Quite so, Mr. Anders. You now admit I exist, that I have extraordinary powers. I am your own creation, Mr. Anders. As I said before you have exceptional senses, including imagination. And yes, imagination is the greatest of all the senses.

  "Some humans with this gift often imagine ludicrous things, exciting things, horrifying things--depending don't you see, on mood, emotion. And the things these mortals imagine become real, are actually, created--only they don't know it, of course."

  He stopped. He was probably giving me time to soak that up. Then he went on. "You've forgotten to keep trying to remember where you put that Luger, Mr. Anders. I just picked up the abandoned thought as it left your consciousness just now."

  I gulped down something that tried to rise in my throat. I didn't like this guy.

  "You created me when you were fourteen, Mr. Anders. You imagined me as a swashbuckling pirate. The only difference between me and the others who have been created in times past is that I have attained the ninth dimension. I am the first to do that. Also the first to capture the secrets of your own third dimension. Naturally then, it would be a pity for me to die."

  "Get out," I said.

  "Forgive me, Mr. Anders. My time is short. I die tomorrow."

  "That's swell. Now get out."

  "We're not immortal, you see. When our creators die their imaginations die with them. We too die. It follows. But for some time I've had an idea."

  "Out," I said again. "Get the hell out of here!"

  "You're going to die tomorrow, Mr. Anders, in that new flying saucer. And I must die with you. Except that I've had this idea."

  There are times when you look yourself in the eye and don't like what you see. Or maybe what you see scares the living hell out of you. When those times come along some little something inside tells you you'd better watch out. Then the doubts creep in. After that the melancholy. And from that instant on you aren't very sane anymore.

  "Out!" I yelled. "Out, out, OUT! Get the hell out!"

  "One moment, Mr. Anders. Now as to this idea of mine. There's this woman--this Margie Hayman. This woman you call the Doll."

  That one jerked me around.

  "Exactly. Now listen very carefully. You aren't entirely you anymore, Mr. Anders. I mean, you aren't the complete whole individual you as you once were. You love this woman. Something inside you has gone out and is now a part of her."

  "Therefore, if you will just discard the thought of her sometime between now and when you take that ship up I can attach myself to her sentient being, don't you see, and thereby exist--at least partly--even though you yourself are dead."

  I pushed myself unsteadily to my feet. I stared at the entire black repulsive undulating mass before me. I took a step toward it.

  "It isn't much to ask, Mr. Anders. You've quarrelled with her. You want no more of her. You've practically told her that. All I ask is that you finish the job--forget her. Discard her--throw her into the mental junk pile of Abandonment."

  I didn't take any more steps. Something inside me was screaming, was ripping at my guts, was roaring with all the cacaphony of all the giant discords of all eternity. Something inside my brain was sucking all my strength in one tremendous, surging power-dive of wish fulfillment. I was willing the black mucous mass of him out of my consciousness.

  He was no longer there. The only thing to prove he'd ever been there at all was a very-old, very-rusty penknife over on the table in front of the davenport--the knife with my name carved on the bone handle.

  After that I went unsteadily to the dresser in the living room. I got the Doll's picture down off the dresser. I undressed. I took the picture to bed with me. The lights burned in my bedroom the entire night.

  * * * * *

  Lieutenant Colonel Melrose looked weatherbeaten. His graying hair was pulled here and there like a rag mop that's dried dirty--stiff. He had a freshly lit cigarette between his lips. He grinned nervously when he saw me, butted the cigarette, said in a thin voice, "This is it, Anders. Ship goes up in twenty minutes."

  "I know," I said.

  He poked another cigarette at his lips. He said, "What?" in a startled tone.

  "Nothing," I said. "All right, I'll get ready."

  He lit the cigarette, took a puff that made the smoke do a frenetic dance around his nostrils. He jabbed it at an ashtray, bobbed his head in a convulsive movement, said, "Righto!"

  They strapped me in. Pop came to the open hatch. He stuck his head in, grinned, said, "Hi, guy," softly. There was something in his eyes. The Doll had told him how I hate sour notes.

  "How's the Doll, Pop?" I forced myself to say it.

  "Swell, Ed. Just got a call from her. On her way out here to see you take off. Looks like she won't make it now though."

  I didn't say anything. His eyes went down to the wallet I had propped up on my knees. The wallet was open, celluloid window showing. Inside the window was the Doll's picture.

  "Tell her that, Pop," I said.

  "Yeah, guy. Luck."

  They shut the hatch.

  There was no doubt about the takeoff. If one thing was perfected in the XXE-1 it was that. The ship rose like the mercury in a thermometer on a hot day in July. I took it slow to fifty thousand feet.

  "Fifty thousand," I said into the throat mike.

  "Hear you, Anders." Melrose's voice.

  "Smooth," I said. "Radar on me?"

  "On you, Anders."

  I let the ship have a little head. This job used the clutch of a tax collector's claws for fuel. It just hooked itself on the nothing around us and yanked--and there we were.

  One hundred thousand.

  "Double that," I said into the mike.

  "Yeah, Anders. How is it?"

  "Haven't yet begun. Radar still on me?"

  I heard a nervous laugh. He was nervous. "The General--General Hotchkiss just said something, Anders. He--ha, ha--he said you're on plot like stitches in a fat lady's hip. Ha, ha! He's got us all in stitches. Ha, ha!"

  Ha, ha!

  This was it. I released my grip on the accelerator control, yet it slide up. They say you can't feel speed in the air unless there's something relative within vision to tip you off. They're going to have to revise that. You can not only feel speed you can reach out and break hunks off it--in the XXE-1, that is. I shook my head, took my eyes off the instruments and looked down at the Doll on my lap.

  "Melrose?"

  "Hear you, Anders."

  "This is it. Reaching me on radar still?"

  "Naturally."

  "All right."

  This was it. This was where the other four ships like the XXE-1--the radio controlled models--had disintegrated. This was where it happened, and they didn't come back anymore.

  I sucked in oxygen and let the accelerator control go over all the way.

  Pulling a ship out of a steep dive, yes. Blackout then, yes. If the wings stay with you everything's fine and you live to mention the incident at the bar a little while later. Blackout accelerating--climbing--is not in the books. But blackout, nevertheless. Not just plain blackout but a thick mucous, slimy undulating blackout--the very black.

  The very very black.

  * * * * *

  General Hotchkiss, "What's he saying, Melrose?"

  Melrose, "Doesn't answer."

  General Eaton, "Try again."<
br />
  Melrose, "Yes sir."

  General Hotchkiss, "What's he saying, Melrose?"

  General Eaton, "Still nothing?"

  Melrose, "Nothing."

  General Hotchkiss, "Dammit, you've still got him on radar, haven't you?"

  Melrose, "Yes sir."

  General Hotchkiss, "Well, dammit, what's he doing?"

  Melrose, "Still going up, sir."

  General Eaton, "How far up?"

  Melrose, "Signal takes sixty seconds to get back, sir."

  General Hotchkiss, "God in heaven! One hundred and twenty thousand miles out! Halfway to the moon. How much more fuel has he?"

  Melrose, "Five seconds, sir. Then the auto-switch cuts in. Power will go off until he nears atmosphere again. After that, if he isn't conscious--well, I'm awfully afraid we've lost another ship."

  General Eaton, "Cold blooded--"

  * * * * *

  The purple drapes before my eyes were wavering. Hung like rippled steel pieces of a caisson suspended by a perilously thin whisper of thread, they swayed, hesitated, shuddered their entire length, then began to bend in the middle from the combined weights of thirteen galaxies. The bend became a cracking bulge that in another second would explode destruction directly into my face. I screamed.

  "Is--is that you, Anders?"

  I screamed good this time.

  "An--Anders! You all right? What happened? I couldn't get through to you?"

  I took my hand from the accelerator control and stared numbly at it. The mark of it was deep in the skin. I sucked in oxygen.

  "Anders! Your power is off. When you hear the signal you've got just three more seconds. You know what to do then. You've been out of the envelope, Anders! You broke through the atmosphere!"

  And then I heard him speak to somebody else--he must have been speaking to somebody else, he couldn't have meant me--"Crissake, give me a cigarette. The guy's still alive."

  I suppose I was grinning when they unstrapped me and slid me out of the hatch. They were grinning back at any rate. The ground held me up surprisingly--like it always had all my life before. They'd stopped grinning now, their eyes were eating the inside of the ship. They weren't interested in me anymore--all they wanted was the instruments' readings.

  My feet could still move me. Knew where to go. Knew where to find the door that had the simple word Plotting on it.

  The Doll was there with her father. The two of them didn't say anything, just looked at me--just stared at me. I said, "He tried damned hard. He put everything he had in it. He got me. He had me down and there wasn't any up again for the rest of the world. For me there wasn't."

  They stared. Pop stared. The Doll stared.

  "Just one thing he forgot," I muttered. "He gave me the tip-off himself and then he forgot it. He told me I wasn't all me anymore, that a part of me had gone out to you since I was supposed to be in love with you. And that's where the tip-off lies. I wasn't all me anymore but I hadn't lost anything. You know why, Doll?"

  They stared.

  "Simple--any damn fool would tumble. If I wasn't all me, then you weren't all you. Part of you was me--get it? And you weren't scheduled to bust out today. Not you--me! And that's what he couldn't work over. That's what brought me down again. He couldn't touch that." I stopped for a moment.

  I said suddenly, "What the hell you guys staring at?" I growled.

  "That's my Baby," said the Doll.

  "No strings," I said.

  "Like we said." Her words were soft petals. "Like we said, Baby. Just like we said."

  "Sure. Only damn it, I don't like it that way. I want strings, see? I want meshes of 'em, balls of 'em, like what comes in yarn--get it?"

  The Doll grinned. "Sure, Baby--you're sure you want it that way?"

  "Sure I'm sure. I just said it, didn't I? Didn't I?"

  "You just said it, Baby." She left her father's side, came over to me, put her arm in mine, pulled close. We turned, started to go out the door.

  "Where you guys going?" asked Pop. We turned again. He looked like something was skipped somewhere on a sound track he'd been listening to. I grinned.

  "Gotta look for a Brown Bess," I said. "Museum just lost one."

  * * *

  Contents

  DEADLY CITY

  By Paul W. Fairman

  You're all alone in a deserted city. You walk down an empty street, yearning for the sight of one living face--one moving figure. Then you see a man on a corner and you know your terror has only begun.

  He awoke slowly, like a man plodding knee-deep through the thick stuff of nightmares. There was no definite line between the dream-state and wakefulness. Only a dawning knowledge that he was finally conscious and would have to do something about it.

  He opened his eyes, but this made no difference. The blackness remained. The pain in his head brightened and he reached up and found the big lump they'd evidently put on his head for good measure--a margin of safety.

  They must have been prudent people, because the bang on the head had hardly been necessary. The spiked drink which they had given him would have felled an ox. He remembered going down into the darkness after drinking it, and of knowing what it was. He remembered the helpless feeling.

  It did not worry him now. He was a philosophical person, and the fact he was still alive cancelled out the drink and its result. He thought, with savor, of the chestnut-haired girl who had watched him take the drink. She had worn a very low bodice, and that was where his eyes had been at the last moment--on the beautiful, tanned breasts--until they'd wavered and puddled into a blur and then into nothing.

  The chestnut-haired girl had been nice, but now she was gone and there were more pressing problems.

  He sat up, his hands behind him at the ends of stiff arms clawing into long-undisturbed dust and filth. His movement stirred the dust and it rose into his nostrils.

  He straightened and banged his head against a low ceiling. The pain made him sick for a minute and he sat down to regain his senses. He cursed the ceiling, as a matter of course, in an agonized whisper.

  Ready to move again, he got onto his hands and knees and crawled cautiously forward, exploring as he went. His hand pushed through cobwebs and found a rough, cement wall. He went around and around. It was all cement--all solid.

  Hell! They hadn't sealed him up in this place! There had been a way in so there had to be a way out. He went around again.

  Then he tried the ceiling and found the opening--a wooden trap covering a four-by-four hole--covering it snugly. He pushed the trap away and daylight streamed in. He raised himself up until he was eye-level with a discarded shaving cream jar lying on the bricks of an alley. He could read the trade mark on the jar, and the slogan: "For the Meticulous Man".

  He pulled himself up into the alley. As a result of an orderly childhood, he replaced the wooden trap and kicked the shaving cream jar against a garbage can. He rubbed his chin and looked up and down the alley.

  It was high noon. An uncovered sun blazed down to tell him this.

  And there was no one in sight.

  * * * * *

  He started walking toward the nearer mouth of the alley. He had been in that hole a long time, he decided. This conviction came from his hunger and the heavy growth of beard he'd sprouted. Twenty-four hours--maybe longer. That mickey must have been a lulu.

  He walked out into the cross street. It was empty. No people--no cars parked at the curbs--only a cat washing its dirty face on a tenement stoop across the street. He looked up at the tenement windows. They stared back. There was an empty, deserted look about them.

  The cat flowed down the front steps of the tenement and away toward the rear and he was truly alone. He rubbed his harsh chin. Must be Sunday, he thought. Then he knew it could not be Sunday. He'd gone into the tavern on a Tuesday night. That would make it five days. Too long.

  He had been walking and now he was at an intersection where he could look up and down a new street. There were no cars--no people. Not even
a cat.

  A sign overhanging the sidewalk said: Restaurant. He went in under the sign and tried the door. It was locked. There were no lights inside. He turned away--grinning to reassure himself. Everything was all right. Just some kind of a holiday. In a big city like Chicago the people go away on hot summer holidays. They go to the beaches and the parks and sometimes you can't see a living soul on the streets. And of course you can't find any cars because the people use them to drive to the beaches and the parks and out into the country. He breathed a little easier and started walking again.

  Sure--that was it. Now what the hell holiday was it? He tried to remember. He couldn't think of what holiday it could be. Maybe they'd dreamed up a new one. He grinned at that, but the grin was a little tight and he had to force it. He forced it carefully until his teeth showed white.

  Pretty soon he would come to a section where everybody hadn't gone to the beaches and the parks and a restaurant would be open and he'd get a good meal.

  A meal? He fumbled toward his pockets. He dug into them and found a handkerchief and a button from his cuff. He remembered that the button had hung loose so he'd pulled it off to keep from losing it. He hadn't lost the button, but everything else was gone. He scowled. The least they could have done was to leave a man eating money.

  He turned another corner--into another street--and it was like the one before. No cars--no people--not even any cats.

  Panic welled up. He stopped and whirled around to look behind him. No one was there. He walked in a tight circle, looking in all directions. Windows stared back at him--eyes that didn't care where everybody had gone or when they would come back. The windows could wait. The windows were not hungry. Their heads didn't ache. They weren't scared.

  He began walking and his path veered outward from the sidewalk until he was in the exact center of the silent street. He walked down the worn white line. When he got to the next corner he noticed that the traffic signals were not working. Black, empty eyes.

  His pace quickened. He walked faster--ever faster until he was trotting on the brittle pavement, his sharp steps echoing against the buildings. Faster. Another corner. And he was running, filled with panic, down the empty street.