Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  She might just as well have called him a tattered nonentity, though Henry was doing pretty well as a foreman in the local humandroid factory. He was stopped from reminding her by Phoebe's saying that she'd leave for a bit of shopping. She left abruptly.

  Henry watched her takeoff from the roof of their two-story fibroid house and went back to the dining room. Now, even his warmest admirers would give in that he had a streak of stubbornness in him a mile wide and six miles deep. Henry took the three-dimensional monstrosity off the wall, holding it hard by thumb and forefinger on its luminex frame, and prepared to say good-by to the picture of Don Manton.

  A foreman at one of the humandroid shops has to be able to consider alternatives and Henry had done this. If he only hid the picture there'd be a domestic crisis and the picture would sooner or later be back on the wall; if he destroyed it there'd also be a crisis, but one that would eventually blow over.

  Unluckily for him, these three-dimensional wall pictures were made out of glaseine, and when he tried setting fire to it he nearly burned down the house. Upon feeding it to the old-fashioned fireplace nothing grew hot except his temper. Ripping the picture to shreds would have been the next step, but you can't rip glaseine.

  For maybe the six millionth time he cursed out Don Manton, the well-known explorer in the realm of outer space. Henry understood in a general way that Don Manton had been among the first to chart the cities of Mars and Venus, and had accidentally died on a planet named Immel; but Henry had no intention of living in Don Manton's shadow.

  The picture, which showed the late explorer talking with three Venusians, had been hung up again when Phoebe came through the ceiling door along the extension stairway which flicked up to meet her.

  "You've been trying to get rid of Don's picture!"

  He'd hung it crookedly, and a diagonal slash of white wallpaper had given him away.

  "Just this one. You've got cans of telefilm in the cellar, but them I don't mind. This," he flicked it with a thumbnail, "I do mind."

  "As long as I stay," Phoebe said quietly, "my darling Don's picture stays."

  "But what about your darling Henry? Am I just a humandroid who looks and behaves and talks like a human being? Haven't I got feelings?" Henry strode around the room, hitting the fibroid floor like a prehistoric monster on a sandpaper bridge. "Either that picture goes," he said finally, definitely, "or I go!"

  Phoebe shook out her blonde hair, letting it fall about her shoulders. "Too bad."

  Inside of an hour he had packed his suitcases. Phoebe cried bitterly, but wouldn't budge about the picture. Henry took the plane. He put up at his club, went to the bar, and was gobbling down something called pressurized scotch, when he heard a noise back of him.

  "Get away from me!" said Henry, who was quite a few over the traditional eight by this time. "I've had enough of Don Manton, let alone his helpers."

  Speed Roggs, who had taken a couple of trips with Manton, was tall and thin as the barstool, and with a spaceman's ability to think fast when he had to. Loudly he ordered a Venuswiz, explaining to a disgusted Henry, "After the barkeep mixes the drink he melts the swizzle stick and pours that in, too." He gulped the stuff down gratefully, then said, "Tell me your troubles, Hank."

  Henry did. Speed Roggs looked disgusted. "Are you serious?" he asked, and when Henry swore to cut Speed's throat on asking that again, went on, "Women are space-mad!"

  As Henry agreed, Roggs said, "The one thing you don't understand about Don Manton is that he was maladjusted. He couldn't stay still, he always wanted what he couldn't have. That goes for his feelings for women, too."

  Henry looked up with bloodshot eyes nearly popping out of his head.

  Roggs kept going. "Don and Phoebe never got along once they were married. It was Manton's fault. Like all explorers he was unhappy over his lot and looked beyond the rainbow. In fact, he told me once that the only reason he went in for exploring space was to get away from his wife."

  Henry Weller suddenly rocked with laughter. He got to his feet, took Roggs, and went to his room, still laughing. He lay on the bed for half an hour. At the end of that time he sat up.

  "Tell the manager I won't be here for supper," he said to Speed. "I've got a little trip to make."

  "Where are you going?"

  "Home, to give the good tidings to my wife."

  Henry's fibroid house looked about the same. He parked the plane and let himself in by the roof door and down the extension staircase. He found Phoebe in the kitchen bent over a pot, and at sound of him she turned. A near-smile flickered in her blue eyes.

  "Phoebe ..."

  "Henry ..."

  They laughed together. Henry wanted to tell her what he knew as bitterly and maliciously as possible, but he simply opened his mouth a few times. He couldn't say it. Everyone is entitled to an illusion and this was Phoebe, his blonde wench, his wife, his woman. He looked a bit sick.

  She smiled. "Come into the dining room."

  The three-dimensional picture had been rolled up into the corner. Henry promised to put it away in the cellar and clean up the cellar as soon as he could. Phoebe said that her first husband had never liked to stay home, he'd always been afraid to live normally.

  "I was wrong about the picture," she told him, "and I didn't know till I saw you leave the house."

  It goes without saying that Henry and his Phoebe lived happily ever after, but it is perhaps not so well known that Phoebe was left with a little disposal problem, too. She had a rough time finding a buyer (in secret, of course) for her brand-new humandroid, who looked and behaved and talked so exactly like that well-known flyer, Speed Roggs.

  * * *

  Contents

  BEYOND THE THUNDER

  By H. B. Hickey

  What was this blinding force that came out of a hole in the sky, and was powerful enough to destroy an entire city? Case thought he knew...

  Ten thousand persons in New York looked skyward at the first rumble of sound. The flash caught them that way, seared them to cinder, liquefied their eyeballs, brought their vitals boiling out of the fissures of their bodies. They were the lucky ones. The rest died slowly, their monument the rubble which had once been a city.

  Of all that, Case Damon knew nothing. Rocketing up in the self-service elevator to his new cloud-reaching apartment in San Francisco, his thoughts were all on the girl who would be waiting for him.

  "She loves me, she loves me not," he said to himself. They were orchid petals, not those of daisies, that drifted to the floor of the car.

  "She loves me." The last one touched the floor softly, and Case laughed.

  Then the doors were opening and he was racing down the hall. No more lonely nights for him, no more hours wasted thumbing through the pages of his little black book wondering which girl to call. Case Damon, rocket-jockey, space-explorer, was now a married man, married to the most beautiful girl in the world.

  He scooped Karin off her feet and hugged her to him. Her lips were red velvet on his, her spun gold hair drifted around his shoulders.

  "Box seats for the best show in town, honey," he gloated in her ear.

  He fished around in his pockets with one hand while he held her against him with the other. They'd said you couldn't get tickets for that show. But what "they" said never stopped Case Damon, whether it was a matter of theatre tickets, or of opening a new field on a distant airless planet.

  "Turn off that telecast," he said. "I'm not interested in Interplan news these days. From now on, Case Damon keeps his feet on terra firma."

  And that was the way it was going to be. His interest in the uranium on Trehos alone should keep him and Karin in clover for the rest of their lives. They'd have fun, they'd have kids, they'd live like normal married people. The rest of the universe could go hang.

  "If you'd stop raving, I might get a word in edgewise," Karin begged.

  "The floor is yours. Also the walls, the building, the whole darned city if you want it," Case laughed.

&n
bsp; "That telecast is ticking for you. Washington calling Case Damon. Washington calling Case Damon. Since you left an hour ago it's been calling you."

  "Let it call. It's my constitutional right not to answer."

  But his mood was changing to match Karin's. His lean, firm-jawed features were turning serious. Tension tightened his powerful body.

  "It must be important, Case," Karin said. "They're using your code call. They wouldn't do that unless it was urgent."

  He listened to the tick of the machine. Unless you knew, it sounded only like the regular ticking that told the machine was in operation. But there were little breaks here and there. It was for him.

  Three long strides took him to the machine. His deft fingers flicked switches, brought a glow to the video tubes.

  "Case Damon," he said softly. "Come in, Washington."

  It was Cranly's face that filled the screen. But a Cranly Case barely recognized. The man had aged ten years in the last three days. His voice was desperate.

  "Good grief, man! Where've you been? Get down here fast. But fast!"

  "Listen, Cranly. I'm on my honeymoon. Or have you forgotten? Remember three days ago you were best man at a wedding? Well, the fellow at the altar was Case Damon."

  That should have gotten a smile out of Cranly. But it didn't. He was even a little angry now.

  "This is an order, Case! I'm giving you the honor of being the first non-official person to know about it. Supreme Emergency Mobilization and Evacuation Order. New York was blasted out of existence an hour ago!"

  * * * * *

  All flights grounded, the skyport in a turmoil, but that little silver card got him and Karin through. Nobody knew yet what was going on. They were readying for something big, but they didn't know what as yet.

  Case hurried Karin to his own hangar, bustled her into the small speeder.

  "The fishing cabin on the Columbia, honey. Stay there! And don't worry if you don't hear from me."

  He didn't even wait to see her take off. Karin would be safe enough. The cabin was a hundred miles from any possible military objective. All he had to do was sit tight until things were straightened out. New York blasted! That could have been an accident. It must have been an accident. The only alternative would be war. And there were no more wars. Somebody at Supreme Council must have lost his head to issue the E.M.E. order.

  Sure, that was it. Leave it to the politicos to get excited and jump out of their skins. Below him the glistening towers of Kansas City flashed and faded and were replaced minutes later by the towers of St. Louis. Chicago was batting out a "clear the sky order."

  All three of those cities would have been gone by now if there were really a war, Case told himself. But Cranly was no politician. And he wasn't the kind that scared easily.

  It was Cranly who met him at Washington skyport. Cranly was scared, all right. He was more frightened than he'd been the time their ship had started to tear loose from their mooring on that moon of Jupiter. His face was gray.

  "I'll fill you in as we go," he said. The official car jerked into high speed and Cranly talked. "It was no accident. Get that straight. New York was hit from the outside."

  "But how? By what? Under the Unified Council there's no one who'd have anything to gain by war. There isn't even anyone on Earth with the power to make war."

  "That's why we wanted you here. It figures to be an enemy from another planet."

  "That doesn't make sense." Case swivelled around to face Cranly. "You and I know our system as well as anyone alive. Cut out the guessing and give me the facts."

  "All right. Enough people saw the thing from Jersey so that we know what happened. They say there was a rumble like thunder. Out of a clear sky, mind you. Then--get this--the sky seemed to open! There was a blast of light. That's all. New York was gone."

  "Atom blast?"

  "Hardly. No mushroom cloud. Accident? No, and you'll learn why I'm so sure shortly."

  * * * * *

  Case Damon had met some of these men before. A few others he recognized from their pictures. The Supreme Council. They were plenty worried. Strogoff was chewing his mustache; Vargas drummed nervously with thick fingers. Cunningham and Osborn were pacing the floor.

  "Thank heaven for one thing," Osborn said. Vargas looked up at him quickly, his dark eyes slits in his swarthy face.

  "For what?" Vargas asked bitterly.

  "That there has been no panic. Urban evacuations are proceeding quietly."

  "I still think it could have been some natural phenomenon," Case interrupted. "Even a terrific bolt of lightning."

  Cranly's big shoulders lifted as a recorder was wheeled into the room. He indicated where the machine was to be set down.

  "We've wasted a little time in letting you make these guesses," he told Case. "All for a reason. We want you to realize fully what sort of weapon we are up against. Now listen to this message that was beamed onto the Council's private line a few minutes after the blast."

  He went to the recorder and tripped a lever. The instrument settled to a low whine that soon disappeared as the recording tape entered the converter. The voice might have been in the room with them.

  "To the Supreme Council of the Planet Earth: What happened to New York was only a token of what can be done to your entire planet. Our terms are complete and unconditional surrender, to be telecast within one week. To hasten your decision, there will be other tokens at twelve-hour intervals."

  "Now you know," Cranly said heavily. "Either give up or be destroyed. And that ultimatum from an enemy which has no compunction about murdering ten million people to prove its power."

  A thousand questions jumped to Case Damon's mind. The horror of the thing stilled most of them. He checked over possibilities quickly.

  "You say many people outside of New York saw the flash. What about skyports, observatories, the fleet base on the Moon? Did they try to get a triangulation?"

  "I can see why Cranly wanted you here," Vargas said, smiling faintly. His own people had been the last to join the Unified Council. He had held out to the last, had demanded and received concessions, but he was considered one of the Council's ablest men.

  "Naturally there were attempts at fixing the source of the flash," he continued. "Had those attempts met with success the fleet would already be on its way."

  "I don't get it," Case said bluntly. "If they attempted triangulation, they must have got it."

  "Precisely," Cranly interjected. "They got it. The source of the flash was an empty space between Mars and Venus!"

  * * * * *

  Case was rocked back on his heels by Cranly's disclosure. This was something. An enemy who loosed his blasts out of unoccupied space, who could cut into the Council's own line at will!

  "What about a fast moving asteroid? That could have been gone before it was observed."

  "Not a chance," Cranly said.

  And Cranly should know. So should the rest. Every one of them was in charge of a department of the Earth's services. But there was that emphasis on Mars and Venus. Strogoff interrupted that line of thought.

  "I say we might as well give in." Even his thick mustache drooped in despondency. "Why have millions more killed?"

  "Never!" Osborn thundered.

  "I should hesitate to admit defeat," Vargas shrugged. "But how can we defend ourselves?"

  Outside the chambers, in the corridor, Cranly gripped his friend's shoulder hard. "That's been going on for an hour," he said, "this one for, and that one against."

  "And meanwhile the fleet can't do a thing," Cranly added.

  "Exactly. Whoever blasted New York is doing it from an invisible base. That's my guess. It's an invader from space. My job will be to stay here and keep the Council from giving up. Your job is to find the base."

  "Are you sure the attack was from space?"

  "Positive."

  "Well," Case mused, "I've found uncharted planets, even discovered a city on Mars that the experts said didn't exist. Maybe I can get beyo
nd the thunder, through a hole in the sky."

  * * * * *

  It was night, and that was a good break. Cranly had been sure he could hold the Council together another twelve hours. Even through a second attack. Fine. For a job like this, Case thought, twelve hours of night were better than twenty of daylight.

  He grabbed an aero-cab for the skyport. The pilot looked twice at the silver tab, finally nodded. Case had a few minutes with his thoughts. He'd wanted to talk to Karin, but Cranly had turned thumbs down.

  "You can talk to her if and when you get back," he'd said. Fine stuff for a guy who was supposed to be enjoying a honeymoon.

  "Hey!" the pilot blurted, cutting into Case's thoughts. He pointed out the window.

  Case saw a red streak cut through the sky toward them. A rocket ship, and moving fast. It flashed closer. No mistake about this, it was aiming right for them. They were a couple of dead ducks.

  "Look out," Case said.

  His big hands flung the pilot out of his seat. Case took over the controls. A whoosh of fire swept past the cabin, missed them as Case sent the ship into a dive.

  "Break out the glider chutes," he called back over his shoulder.

  Luckily, the pilot didn't try to argue. He was too scared. He snapped a chute around his own shoulders, fought his way forward and got the other one around Case. Another blast cut past the cabin, then another. The rocket ship was using all guns now. They were over the Potomac, then over a wooded area.

  "We'll jump at a hundred feet," Case yelled.

  A streak of flame caught the cab's right edge, and Case told himself they'd be lucky to jump at all. The little craft was almost out of control. His pretended spin was turning into the real thing. Keeping his eyes glued on the plummeting altimeter, he got his left foot up and kicked out the side window. A flash melted the dial and singed his sleeve. One-fifty.

  "Go!" Case barked.

  The pilot's heels vanished out the window and Case banked sharply to the right and flung himself out of the seat. Hard earth of a clearing looked like it was going to smack him right in the face.