by Isaac Asimov
Loara Filip Sanat knew all this and more. Since his encounter with the battle cruiser on the way out from Earth, he had studied space war, and now, as the battle fleets fell into line, he felt his very fingers twitch for action.
He turned and said to Smitt, “I’m going down to the big guns.”
Smitt’s eye was on the grand ‘visor, his hand on the etherwave sender, “Go ahead, if you wish, but don’t get in the way.”
Sanat smiled. The captain’s private elevator carried him to the gun levels, and from there it was five hundred feet through an orderly mob of gunners and engineers to Tonite One. Space is at a premium in a battleship. Sanat could feel the crampedness of the room in which individual Humans dovetailed their work smoothly to create the gigantic machine that was a giant dreadnaught.
He mounted the six steep steps to Tonite One and motioned the gunner away. The gunner hesitated; his eye fell upon the purple tunic, and then he saluted and backed reluctantly down the steps.
Sanat turned to the co-ordinator at the gun’s visiplate, “Do • you mind working with me? My speed of reaction has been tested and grouped 1-A. I have my rating card, if you’d care to see it.”
The co-ordinator flushed and stammered, “No, sir! It’s an honor to work with you, sir.”
The amplifying system thundered, “To your stations!” and a deep silence fell, in which the cold purr of machinery sounded its ominous note.
Sanat spoke to the co-ordinator in a whisper, “This gun covers a full quadrant of space, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good, see if you can locate a dreadnaught with the sign of a double sun in partial eclipse.”
There was a long silence. The co-ordinator’s sensitive hands were on the Wheel, delicate pressure turning it this way and that, so that the field in view on the visiplate shifted. Keen eyes scanned the ordered array of enemy ships.
“There it is,” he said. “Why, it’s the flagship.”
“Exactly! Center that ship!”
As the Wheel turned, the space-field reeled, and the enemy flagship wobbled toward the point where the hairlines crossed. The pressure of the co-ordinator’s fingers became lighter and more expert.
“Centered!” he said. Where the hairlines crossed the tiny oval globe remained impaled.
“Keep it that way!” ordered Sanat, grimly. “Don’t lose it for a second as long as it stays in our quadrant. The enemy admiral is on that ship and we’re going to get him, you and I.”
The ships were getting within range of each other and Sanat felt tense. He knew it was going to be close-very close. The Humans had the edge in speed, but the Lhasinu were two to one in numbers.
A flickering beam shot out, another, ten more.
There was a sudden blinding flash of purple intensity!
“First hit,” breathed Sanat. He relaxed. One of the enemy ships drifted off helplessly, its stem a mass of fused and glowing metal.
The opposing ships were not at close grips. Shots were being exchanged at blinding speed. Twice, a purple beam showed at the extreme limits of the visiplate and Sanat realized with a queer sort of shiver down his spine that it was one of the adjacent Tonites of their own ship that was firing.
The fencing match was approaching a climax. Two flashes blazed into being, almost simultaneously, and Sanat groaned. One of the two had been a Human ship. And three times there came that disquieting hum as Atomo-engines in the lower level shot into high gear-and that meant that an enemy beam directed at their own ship had been stopped by the screen.
And, always, the co-ordinator kept the enemy flagship centered. An hour passed; an hour in which six Lhasinu and four Human ships had been whiffed to destruction; an hour in which the Wheel turned fractions of a degree this way, that way; in which it swivelled on its universal socket mere hairlines in half a dozen directions.
Sweat matted the co-ordinator’s hair and got into his eyes; his fingers half-lost all sensation, but that flagship never left the ominous spot where the hairlines crossed.
And Sanat watched; finger on trigger-watched-and waited.
Twice the flagship had glowed into purple luminosity, its guns blazing and its defensive screen down; and twice Sanat’s finger had quivered on the trigger and refrained. He hadn’t been quick enough.
And then Sanat rammed it home and rose to his feet tensely. The co-ordinator yelled and dropped the Wheel.
In a gigantic funeral pyre of purple-hued energy, the flagship with the Lhasinuic Admiral inside had ceased to exist.
Sanat laughed. His hand went out, and the co-ordinator’s came to meet it in a firm grasp of triumph.
But the triumph did not last long enough for the co-ordinator to speak the first jubilant words that were welling up in his throat, for the visiplate burst into a purple bombshell as five Human ships detonated simultaneously at the touch of deadly energy shafts.
The amplifiers thundered, “Up screens! Cease firing! Ease into Needle formation!”
Sanat felt the deadly pall of uncertainty squeeze his throat. He knew what had happened. The Lhasinu had finally managed to set up their big guns on Lunar Base; big guns with three times the range of even the largest ship guns-big guns that could pick off Human ships with no fear of reprisal.
And so the fencing match was over, and the real battle was to start. But it was to be a real battle of a type never before fought, and Sanat knew that that was the thought in every man’s mind. He could see it in their grim expressions and feel it in their silence.
It might work! And it might not!
The Earth squadron had resumed its spherical formation and drifted slowly outwards, its offensive batteries silent. The Lhasinu swept in for the kill. Cut off from power supply as the Earthmen were, and unable to retaliate with the gigantic guns of the Lunar batteries commanding near-by space, it seemed only a matter of time before either surrender or annihilation.
The enemy Tonite beams lashed out in continuous blasts of energy, and tortured screens on Human ships sparked and fluoresced under the harsh whips of radiation.
Sanat could hear the buzz of the Atomo-engines rise to a protesting squeal. Against his will, his eye flicked to the energy gauge, and the quivering needle sank as he watched, moving down the dial at perceptible speed.
The co-ordinator licked dry Ups, “Do you think we’ll make it, sir?”
“Certainly!” Sanat was far from feeling his expressed confidence. “We need hold out for an hour-provided they don’t fall back.”
And the Lhasinu didn’t. To have fallen back would have meant a thinning of the lines, with a possible break-through and escape on the part of the Humans.
The Human ships were down to crawling speed-scarcely above a hundred miles an hour. Idling along, they crept up the purple beams of energy, the imaginary sphere increasing in size, the distance between the opposing forces ever narrowing.
But inside the ship, the gauge-needle was dropping rapidly, and Sanat’s heart dropped with it. He crossed the gun level to where hard-bitten soldiers waited at a gigantic and gleaming lever, in anticipation of an order that had to come soon-or never.
The distance between opponents was now only a matter of one or two miles-almost contact from the viewpoint of space warfare-and then that order shot over the shielded etheric beams from ship to ship.
It reverberated through the gun level:
“Out needles!”
A score of hands reached for the lever, Sanat’s among them, and jerked downwards. Majestically, the lever bent in a curving are to the floor and as it did so, there was a vast scraping noise and a sharp thud that shook the ship.
The dreadnaught had become a “needle ship!”
At the prow, a section of armor plate had slid aside and a glittering shaft of metal had lunged outward viciously. One hundred feet long, it narrowed gracefully from a base ten feet in diameter to a needle-sharp diamond point. In the sunlight, the chrome-steel of the shaft gleamed in flaming splendor.
And every o
ther ship of the Human squadron was likewise equipped. Each had become ten, fifteen, twenty, fifty thousand tons of driving rapier.
Swordfish of space!
Somewhere in the Lhasinuic fleet, frantic orders must have been issued. Against this Oldest of all naval tactics-old even in the dim dawn of history when rival triremes had maneuvered and rammed each other to destruction with pointed prows-the super-modem equipment of a space-fleet has no defense.
Sanat forced his way to the visiplate and strapped himself into an anti-acceleration seat, and he felt the springs absorb the backward jerk as the ship sprang into sudden acceleration.
He didn’t bother with that, though. He wanted to watch the battle! There wasn’t one here, nor anywhere in the Galaxy, that risked what he did. They risked only their lives; and he risked a dream that he had, almost single-handed, created out of nothing.
He had taken an apathetic Galaxy and driven it into revolt against the reptile. He had taken an Earth on the point of destruction and dragged it from the brink, almost unaided. A Human victory would be a victory for Loara Filip Sanat and no one else.
He, and Earth, and the Galaxy were now lumped into one and thrown into the scale. And against it was weighed the outcome of this last battle, a battle hopelessly lost by his own purposeful treachery, unless the needles won.
And if they lost, the gigantic defeat-the ruin of Humanity-was also his.
The Lhasinuic ships were jumping aside, but not fast enough. While they were slowly gathering momentum and drifting away, the Human ships had cut the distance by three quarters. On the screen, a Lhasinuic ship had grown to colossal proportions. Its purple whip of energy had gone out as every ounce of power had gone into a man-killing attempt at rapid acceleration.
And nevertheless its image grew and the shining point that could be seen at the lower end of the screen aimed like a glittering javelin at its heart.
Sanat felt he could not bear the tension. Five minutes and he would take his place as the Galaxy’s greatest hero-or its greatest traitor! There was a horrible, unbearable pounding of blood in his temples.
Then it came.
Contact!!
The screen went wild in a chaotic fury of twisted metal. The anti-acceleration seats shrieked as springs absorbed the shock. Things cleared slowly. The screenview veered wildly as the ship slowly steadied. The ship’s needle had broken, the jagged stump twisted awry, but the enemy vessel it had pierced was a gutted wreck.
Sanat held his breath as he scanned space. It was a vast sea of wrecked ships, and on the outskirts tattered remnants of the enemy were in flight, with Human ships in pursuit.
There was the sound of colossal cheering behind him and a pair of strong hands on his shoulders.
He turned. It was Smitt-Smitt, the veteran of five wars, with tears in his eyes.
“Filip,” he said, “we’ve won. We’ve just received word from Vega. The Lhasinuic Home Fleet has been smashed- and also with the needles. The war is over, and we’ve woo
You’ve won, Filip! You! ”
His grip was painful, but Loara Filip Sanat did not mind that. For a single, ecstatic moment, he stood motionless, face transfigured.
Earth was free! Humanity was saved!
***
For some reason, possibly because of the awful title, for which I emphatically disclaim responsibility, “Black Friar of the Flame” is taken as the quintessence of my early incompetence. At least, fans who come across a copy think they can embarrass me by referring to it.
Well, it isn’t good, I admit, but it has its interesting points.
For one thing, it is an obvious precursor to my successful “Foundation” series. In “Black Friar of the Flame,” as in the “Foundation” series, human beings occupy many planets; and two worlds mentioned in the former, Trantor and Santanni, also play important roles in the latter. (Indeed, the first of the “Foundation” series was to appear only a couple of months after “Black Friar of the Flame,” thanks to the delay in selling the latter.)
Furthermore, there is also a strong suggestion in “Black Friar of the Flame” of my first book-length novel. Pebble in the Sky , which was to appear eight years later. In both, the situation I pictured on Earth was inspired by that of Judea under the Romans. The climactic battle in “Black Friar of the Flame,” however, was inspired by that of the Battle of Salamis, the great victory of the Greeks over the Persians. (In telling future-history I always felt it wisest to be guided by past-history. This was true in the “Foundation” series, too.)
“Black Friar of the Flame” cured me forever, by the way, of attempting repeated revisions. There may well be a connection between the consensus that the story is a poor one and the fact that it was revised six times. I know that there are writers who revise and revise and revise, polishing everything to a high gloss, but I can’t do that.
It is my habit now to begin by typing a first draft without an outline. I compose freely on the typewriter though I am frequently questioned about this by readers who seem to think an initial draft can be only in pencil. Actually, writing by hand begins to hurt my wrist after fifteen minutes or so, is very slow, and is hard to read. I can type, on the other hand, ninety words a minute and keep that up for hours without difficulty. As for outlines, I tried one once and it was disastrous, like trying to play the piano from inside a straitjacket.
Having completed the first draft, I go over it and correct it in pen and ink. I then retype the whole thing as the final copy. I revise no more, of my own volition. If ah editor asks for a clearly defined revision of a minor nature, with the philosophy of which I agree, I oblige. A request for a major, top-to-bottom revision, or a second revision after the first, is another matter altogether. Then I do refuse.
This is not out of arrogance or temperament. It is just that too large a revision, or too many revisions, indicate that the piece of writing is a failure. In the time it would take to salvage such a failure, I could write a new piece altogether and have infinitely more fun in the process. (Doing a revision is something like chewing used gum.) Failures are therefore put to one side and held for possible sale elsewhere-for what is a failure to one editor is not necessarily a failure to another.
About the time I was working on “Black Friar of the Flame” I was becoming enmeshed in fan activities. I had joined an organization called “The Futurians,” which contained a group of ardent science fiction readers, almost all of whom were to become important in the field as writers or editors or both. Included among them were Frederik Pohl, Donald A. Wollheim, Cyril Kornbluth, Richard Wilson, Damon Knight, and so on.
As I had occasion to say before, I became particularly friendly with Pohl. During the spring and summer of 1939, he visited me periodically, looking over my manuscripts and announcing that I had the “best bunch of rejected stories” he had ever seen.
The possibility began to arise that he might be my agent. He was no older than myself, but he had a great deal more practical experience with editors and knew a great deal more about the field. I was tempted, but was afraid this might mean I would not be allowed to see Campbell any more, and I valued my monthly visits with him too much to risk it.
In May 1939 I wrote a story I called “Robbie,” and on the twenty-third of that month I submitted it to Campbell. It was the first robot story I had ever written and it contained the germ of what later came to be known as the “Three Laws of Robotics.” Fred read my carbon and at once said it was a good story but that Campbell would reject it because it had a weak ending plus other shortcomings. Campbell did reject it on June 6, for precisely the reasons Pohl had given me.
I was very impressed by that, and any hesitation I had with respect to letting him represent me vanished-but I specified that his agentship must be confined to editors other than Campbell.
I gave him “Robbie” after the rejection, but he didn’t succeed in selling it either, though he even submitted it to a British science fiction magazine (something I would myself never have thought of doin
g). In October 1939, however, he himself became editor of Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories , and he therefore ceased being my agent. [A decade later he became my agent again for a few years. I never enjoyed being represented, however, and except for Pohl on these two occasions, I have never had an agent, despite the vast and complicated nature of my writing commitments. Nor do I intend ever having one.]
On March 25, 1940, however, he did as editor what he couldn’t do as agent. He placed the story-by taking it himself.
It appeared in Super Science Stories under a changed title. (Pohl was always changing titles.) He called the story “Strange Playfellow,” a miserable choice, in my opinion. Eventually the story was included as the first of the nine connected “positronic robot” series that made up my book I, Robot . In the book, I restored the/title to the original “Robbie,” and it has appeared as “Robbie” in every form in which the story has been published since.
Fifteen years later, a daughter was born to me. She was named Robyn and I call her Robbie. I have been asked more than once whether there is a connection. Did I deliberately give her a name close to “robot” because I made such a success of my robot stories? The answer is a flat negative. The whole thing is pure coincidence.
One more thing- In the course of my meeting with Campbell on June 6, 1939 (the one in which he rejected “Robbie”), I met a by then quite well established science fiction writer, L. Sprague de Camp. That started a close friendship -perhaps my closest within the science fiction fraternity-• that has continued to this day.
In June 1939 I wrote “Half-Breed” and decided to give Fred Pohl a fair chance. I did not submit it to Campbell, but gave it to Pohl directly to see what he could do with it. He tried Amazing , which rejected it. So I took it back and tried Campbell in the usual direct fashion. Campbell rejected it, too.
When Pohl became an editor, however, he announced the fact to me (on October 27, 1939) by saying that he was taking “Half-Breed.” In later months he also took first “Robbie,” then “The Callistan Menace.” He bought seven stories from me altogether during his editorial tenure.
