Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  Behind me, I heard Howlet stir uneasily. The door began to close, but my foot was in the track. Howlet could not see that.

  "Don't shut it, sister," he said, "or we'll smash it down!"

  He could have too, in about ten seconds, the way they build on Mars.

  "You wanna get yourself lynched?" Lilac warned him.

  "Over a--on account of you?"

  "Shut up, Howlet!" I interrupted. "Let me talk to the lady alone!"

  He must have understood my tone; he let Meadows pull him away a few steps.

  "And less of the 'lady' business outa you," said Lilac, but low enough to keep it private. "We both know Mars, so let's take things the way they are."

  "That's why I came, Lilac. Taking things that way means he has to go."

  "What're you gonna say? He has a job to do, or some such canal dust?"

  "Not exactly. They might pick up another third pilot. They might manage somehow without any. But he won't like himself much, later, for missing his chance."

  She swung the edge of the door back and forth in impatient little jerks. Finally, she took her hand off the latch and let it roll free. She still blocked the opening, however, and I waited.

  "Look, Tony," she said after a pause, "what makes you think I couldn't settle down with him? I never figured to be an ... entertainer ... all my life. With the stake I already got together, we could start something. A mine, maybe, or a tractor service like yours. Mars is growing--"

  "Pull your head inside the dome and breathe right!" I snapped at her. "I don't mind your dreaming, Lilac, but there isn't any more time."

  It was light enough now to see her stiffen. She glared at me.

  "You tryin' to say I couldn't make a home here? You know better, Tony. Some of the best known women on Mars didn't exactly come here first-class!"

  I held up my hand. She was beginning to get loud.

  "It wouldn't matter if you were a princess. It's not what he'd think of you; it's what he'd wonder about himself, piloting a sand-buggy instead of a rocket."

  In the alley, one of the spacers shuffled his feet impatiently. I hurried on, hoping to clinch it before she turned stubborn.

  "You, at least, ought to understand men better than most, Lilac. Maybe it doesn't make sense, but it would be smarter to grab him after he's had his share of space instead of before."

  It was hard to breathe without sounding loud in the stillness. Just as I had to swallow or choke, Lilac's shoulders slumped an inch or two.

  "I'll wake him up," she said in a tired voice.

  Feeling as if I had struck her, I stepped back into the alley. A few minutes later, Konnel slipped out and shut the door behind him. No one said a word. From the set of his shoulders, it seemed that he might be just as glad the alley was dim; but he simply trailed along behind.

  * * * * *

  We walked back to Number Four Airlock in a silence that had me counting the footsteps. When we reached the tractor parking lot, I cleared my throat.

  "Wait a minute. I'll warm up my sand-saucer and give you a lift to your ship."

  "Maybe we won't need to impose on you any more, Tony," said Howlet. "Looks like those machines over there are going out."

  I followed his gesture and, by luck, caught the eye of a driver I knew. I waved and jerked my thumb at the spacers beside me.

  "Let's go!" said Howlet as the tractor slowed. "Thanks for everything, Tony. Get yourself some sleep; the night watches in these domes are rough."

  Konnel waited until they were a few steps away. Even then, he hesitated.

  "Forget it!" I said. "You aren't the first spacer they had to pump out of some odd corner. Look me up when you get back!"

  He shook hands and trotted after his friends. They scrambled up the ladder to the cab. The tractor picked up speed, lumbering into the airlock.

  Later, a little after noon, I crawled out of bed and watched the flare of their pipes as the ship streaked up into the dark Martian sky. I hoped they would make it--almost as much as I wished it could have been me.

  Well, I still come out to the wall of whatever dome I find myself in, to watch the sky a while--not that I'll see those boys coming down at this late date! They must have splattered to a puddle on Jupiter, or slipped back into the sun, or taken up a cold, dark orbit out where they'll never bother anyone. Nobody will ever know for sure, I suppose.

  If I had it to do over again?

  No, of course I don't feel funny about it. If they weren't the ones, it would have been another crew. By the law of averages, a certain number of bad tries seems to go with every new push out into space. Maybe there's no reason it has to be like that, but it always has. When the bad luck is used up, someone makes a new frontier.

  Why say "superstition"? Each new orbit out from the sun has cost plenty in money, ships, and lives; it's the admission price.

  Sure, it was too bad about Konnel and his little girl--who, by the way, later married a very important man in Asaph Dome. It would have been nice to see Meadows wind up rich, or for Howlet to become mayor of the dome, but what could I do? Which one should I have talked into staying for the sake of love or money or power, without even being able to go in his place?

  Every time Man pushes ahead a little, a percentage of the pushers pay the fare. Still, it will be healthier if we push out of this planetary system before someone else pushes in.

  For all we know, they may be on the way.

  * * *

  Contents

  FLAMEDOWN

  By H. B. Fyfe

  It was, of course, one Hell of an ending for a trip to Mars--

  Charlie Holmes lost touch with reality amid rending and shattering sounds that lingered dimly. Blackness engulfed him in a wave of agony.

  He was not sure exactly when the possibility of opening his eyes occurred to him. Vaguely, he could sense--"remember" was too definite--much tugging and hauling upon his supine body. It doubtless seemed justifiable, but he flinched from recalling more clearly that which must have been so extremely unpleasant.

  Gently, now, he tried rolling his head a few inches right, then left. When it hurt only one-tenth as much as he feared, he let his eyes open.

  "Hel-lo!" rasped the bulbous creature squatting beside his pallet.

  Charlie shut his eyes quickly, and very tightly.

  Something with a dampish, spongy tip, probably one of the grape-red tentacles he had glimpsed, prodded his shoulder.

  "Hel-lo!" insisted the scratchy voice.

  Charlie peeped warily, was trapped at it, and opened his eyes resignedly.

  "Where'n'ell am I?" he inquired.

  It sounded very trite, even in his confused condition. Sections of the dark red skin before him, especially on the barrel-shaped belly, quivered as he spoke.

  "Surely," grated the remarkable voice, "you remember something?"

  "The crash!" gasped Charlie, sitting up abruptly.

  He held his breath, awaiting the knifing pain it seemed natural to expect. When he felt none, he cautiously fingered his ribs, and then a horrid thought prompted him to wiggle his bare toes. Everything seemed to be in place.

  He lay in a small room, on a thin pallet of furs. Floor and walls of slick, ocher clay reflected the bright outside light pouring through a wide doorway.

  "What's all the sand?" he demanded, squinting at the heatwaves outside.

  "You do not recognize it? Look again, Earthman!"

  Earthman! thought Charlie. It must be real: I can still see him. What a whack on the head I must have got!

  "You are in pain?" asked the creature solicitously.

  "Oh ... no. Just ... I can't remember. The crash ... and then--"

  "Ah, yes. You have not been conscious for some time." His reddish host rippled upward to stand more or less erect upon three thick tentacles. "Even with us, memory is slow after shock. And you may be uneasy in the lighter gravity."

  Light gravity! reflected Charlie. This can only mean--MARS! Sure! That must be it--I was piloting a rocket
and cracked up somewhere on Mars.

  It felt right to him. He decided that the rest of his memory would return.

  "Are you able to rise?" asked the other, extending a helpful tentacle.

  The Earthman managed to haul himself stiffly to his feet.

  "Say, my name is Holmes," he introduced himself dizzily.

  "I am Kho Theki. In your language, learned years since from other spacemen, I might say 'Fiery Canalman.'"

  "Has to be Mars," muttered Charlie under his breath. "What a bump! When can you show me what's left of the ship?"

  "There will be no time," answered the Martian.

  Bunches of small muscles twitched here and there across the front of his round, pudgy head. Charlie was getting used to the single eye, half the size of an orange and not much duller. With imagination, the various lumps and organs surrounding it might be considered a face.

  "The priestesses will lead the crowd here," predicted Kho. "They know I took an Earthman, and I fear they have finished with the others."

  "Finished with--What?" demanded the Earthman, shaking his head in hopes of clearing it enough to figure out what was wrong.

  "It has been an extremely dry season." Kho rippled his tentacles and moved lissomely to the doorway, assuming a grotesquely furtive posture as he peered out. "The people are maddened by the drought. The will be aroused to sacrifice you to the Canal Gods, like the others who survived."

  "Canal gods!" croaked Charlie. "This can't be right! Aren't you civilized here? I can't be the only Earthman they've seen!"

  "It is true that Earthmen are perfectly safe at most times."

  "But the laws! The earth consul--"

  Kho snapped the tip of a tentacle at him.

  "The canals are low. You can feel the heat and dryness for yourself. The crowds are inflamed by temple prophecies. And then, your ship, flaming down from the skies--"

  He snapped all this tentacle tips at once.

  * * * * *

  From somewhere outside, a threatening murmur became audible. It was an unholy blend of rasping shouts and shriller chanting, punctuated by notes of a brassy gong. As Charlie listened, the volume rose noticeably.

  Kho reached out with one tentacle and wrapped six inches about the Earthman's wrist. When he plunged through the doorway, Charlie perforce went right with him.

  Whipping around a corner of the hut, he had time for a quick squint at the chanters. Kho alone had looked weirdly alien. Two hundred like him--!

  Led by a dozen bulgy figures in streaming robes, masked and decorated in brass, the natives were swarming over the sand toward the fugitives. They had evidently been busy. Above a distant cluster of low buildings, a column of smoke spiraled upward suggestively.

  Kho led the way at a flowing gallop over a sandstone ridge and down a long slope toward what looked like the junction of two gullies.

  "The canal," he wheezed. "With luck, we may find a boat."

  A frenzied screech went up as the mob topped the ridge and regained sight of them. Charlie, having all he could do to breathe in the thin air, tried to shake his wrist loose. Now that they were descending the slope, he saw where the water was. They slid down a four-foot drop in a cloud of fine, choking dust, and were faced by several puntlike craft stranded on the mudflat beyond. The water was fifty feet further.

  "We should have gone down-stream," said Kho, "but we can wade."

  Their momentum carried them several steps into the mud before Charlie realized how wrong that was. Then, as they floundered about to regain the solid bank, it became apparent that they would never reach it in time.

  "They are catching us," rasped Kho.

  The howling crowd was scarcely a hundred yards away. The heat waves shimmered above the reddish desert sand until the Martians were blurred before Charlie's burning eyes. His feet churned the clinging mud, and he felt as if he were running in a dream.

  "I'm sorry you're in it, too," he panted.

  "It does not matter. I act as I must."

  The Earthman rubbed sweat from his eyes with the back of a muddy hand.

  "Everything is wrong," he mumbled. "I still can't remember cracking up the ship. Why did I always want to be a rocket pilot? Well ... I made my bed!"

  The oncoming figures wavered and blurred in the heat. Kho emitted a grating sound reminiscent of an Earthly chuckle.

  "As do all you mortals--who finally have to lie in them," he rasped. "I will tell you now, since I can carry this episode little farther. You have never piloted a spaceship."

  Charlie gaped at him incredulously.

  "You ... you ... what about the wreck?"

  "It was a truck that hit you, Charles Holmes. You have no more sense than to be crossing the street with your nose in a magazine just purchased on the corner."

  With some dulled, creeping, semi-detached facet of his mind, Charlie noted that the running figures still floated above the sand without actually drawing near.

  "Are you--Do you mean I'm ... d-d-d--?"

  "Of course you are," grated Kho amiably. "And in view of certain actions during your life, there will be quite a period of--shall we say--probation. When I was assigned to you, your reading habits suggested an amusing series of variations. You cannot know how dull it is to keep frustrating the same old dreams!"

  "Amusing?" repeated Charlie, beyond caring about the whimper in his tone.

  The mob was dissolving into thin smoke, and the horizon was shrinking.

  Kbo himself was altering into something redder of skin but equipped with a normal number of limbs, discounting the barbed tail. The constant heat of the "desert" began, at last, to seem explicable.

  "For me a great amusement," grinned Kho, displaying hideous tusks. "Next time, I'll be a Venusian. You will lose again. Then we can visit other planets, and stars ... oh, we shall see a lot of each other!"

  He cheerfully polished one horn with a clawed finger.

  "You won't enjoy it!" he promised.

  * * *

  Contents

  IRRESISTIBLE WEAPON

  By H. B. Fyfe

  There's no such thing as a weapon too horrible to use; weapons will continue to become bigger, and deadlier. Like other things that can't be stopped....

  In the special observation dome of the colossal command ship just beyond Pluto, every nervous clearing of a throat rasped through the silence. Telescopes were available but most of the scientists and high officials preferred the view on the huge telescreen.

  This showed, from a distance of several million miles, one of the small moons of the frigid planet, so insignificant that it had not been discovered until man had pushed the boundaries of space exploration past the asteroids. The satellite was about to become spectacularly significant, however, as the first target of man's newest, most destructive weapon.

  "I need not remind you, gentlemen," white-haired Co-ordinator Evora of Mars had said, "that if we have actually succeeded in this race against our former Centaurian colonies, it may well prevent the imminent conflict entirely. In a few moments we shall know whether our scientists have developed a truly irresistible weapon."

  Of all the officials, soldiers, and scientists present, Arnold Gibson was perhaps the least excited. For one thing, he had labored hard to make the new horror succeed and felt reasonably confident that it would. The project had been given the attention of every first-class scientific mind in the Solar System; for the great fear was that the new states on the Centaurian planets might win the race of discovery and ...

  And bring a little order into this old-fashioned, inefficient fumbling toward progress, Gibson thought contemptuously. Look at them--fools for all their degrees and titles! They've stumbled on something with possibilities beyond their confused powers of application.

  A gasp rustled through the chamber, followed by an even more awed silence than had preceded the unbelievable, ultra-rapid action on the telescreen. Gibson permitted himself a tight smile of satisfaction.

  Now my work really begins, he reflected.<
br />
  A few quick steps brought him to Dr. Haas, director of the project, just before the less stunned observers surrounded that gentleman, babbling questions.

  "I'll start collecting the Number Three string of recorders," he reported.

  "All right, Arnold," agreed Haas. "Tell the others to get their ships out too. I'll be busy here."

  Not half as busy as you will be in about a day, thought Gibson, heading for the spaceship berths.

  * * * * *

  He had arranged to be assigned the recording machines drifting in space at the greatest distance from the command ship. The others would assume that he needed more time to locate and retrieve the apparatus--which would give him a head start toward Alpha Centauri.

  His ship was not large, but it was powerful and versatile to cope with any emergency that may have been encountered during the dangerous tests. Gibson watched his instruments carefully for signs of pursuit until he had put a few million miles between himself and the command ship. Then he eased his craft into subspace drive and relaxed his vigilance.

  He returned to normal space many "days" later in the vicinity of Alpha Centauri. They may have attempted to follow him for all he knew, but it hardly mattered by then. He broadcast the recognition signal he had been given to memorize long ago, when he had volunteered his services to the new states. Then he headed for the capital planet, Nessus. Long before reaching it, he acquired a lowering escort of warcraft, but he was permitted to land.

  "Well, well, it's young Gibson!" the Chairman of Nessus greeted him, after the newcomer had passed through the exhaustive screening designed to protect the elaborate underground headquarters. "I trust you have news for us, my boy. Watch outside the door, Colonel!"

  One of the ostentatiously armed guards stepped outside and closed the door as Gibson greeted the obese man sitting across the button-studded expanse of desk. The scientist was under no illusion as to the vagueness of the title "Chairman." He was facing the absolute power of the Centaurian planets--which, in a few months' time, would be the same as saying the ruler of all the human race in both systems. Gibson's file must have been available on the Chairman's desk telescreen within minutes of the reception of his recognition signal. He felt a thrill of admiration for the efficiency of the new states and their system of government.