Modern Masterpieces of Science Fiction

by Sam Moskowitz

  It is a matter of record that part of the Mid-Western Electric research guys had been workin' on cold electron-emission for thirty years, to make vacuum tubes that wouldn't need a power source to heat the filament. And one of those fellas was intrigued by the "Ask your logic" flash. He asked how to get cold emission of electrons. And the logic integrates a few squintillion facts on the physics data plates and tells him. Just as casual as it told somebody over in the Fourth Ward how to serve left-over soup in a new attractive way, and somebody else on Mason Street how to dispose of a torso that somebody had left careless in his cellar after ceasing to use same.

  Laurine wouldn't never have found me if hadn't been for this new logics service. But now that it was started- Zowie! -She'd shot one husband and got acquitted. Suppose she got impatient because I was still married and asked logics service how to get me free and in a spot where I'd have to marry her by 8:30 p.m.? It woulda told her! Just like it told that woman out in the suburbs how to make sure her husband wouldn't run around no more. Br-r-r-r! And like it told that kid how to find some buried treasure. Remember? He was happy toting home the gold reserve of the Hanoverian Bank and Trust Company when they caught on to it. The logic had told him how to make some kinda machine that nobody has been able to figure how it works even yet, only they guess it dodges around a couple extra dimensions. If Laurine was to start asking questions with a technical aspect to them, that would be logics' service meat! And fella, I was scared! If you think a be-man oughtn't to be scared of just one blonde-you ain't met Laurine!

  I'm drivin' blind when a social-conscious guy asks how to bring about his own particular system of social organization at once. He don't ask if it's best or. if it'll work. He just wants to get it started. And the logic-or Joe-tells hint! Simultaneous, there's a retired preacher asks how can the human race be cured of concupiscence. Being seventy, he's pretty safe himself, but he wants to remove the peril to the spiritual welfare of the rest of us. He finds out. It involves constructing a sort of broadcasting station to emit a certain wave-pattern and turning it on. Just that. Nothing more. It's found out afterward, when he is soliciting funds to construct it. Fortunate, he didn't think to ask logics how to finance it, or it woulda told him that, too, and we woulda all been cured of the impulses we maybe regret afterward but never at the time. And there's another group of serious thinkers who are sure the human race would be a lot better off if everybody went back to nature and lived in the woods with the ants and poison ivy. They start askin' questions about how to cause humanity to abandon cities and artificial conditions of living. They practically got the answer in logics service!

  Maybe it didn't strike you serious at the time, but while I was driving aimless, sweating blood over Laurine being after me, the fate of civilization hung in the balance. I ain't kidding. For instance, the Superior Man gang that sneers at the rest of us was quietly asking questions on what kinda weapons could be made by which Superior men could take over and run things. But I drove here and there, sweating and talking to myself.

  "What I oughta do is ask this wacky logics service how to get outta this mess," I says. "But it'd just tell me an intricate and foolproof way to bump Laurine off. I wanna have peace! I wanna grow comfortably old and brag to other old guys about what a hellion I used to be, without having to go through it and lose my chance of living to be a elderly liar."

  I turn a corner at random, there in the Maintenance car.

  "It was a nice kinda world once," I says, bitter. "I could go home peaceful and not have belly-cramps wondering if a blonde has called up my wife to announce my engagement to her. I could punch keys on a logic without gazing into somebody's bedroom while she is giving her epidermis an air bath and being led to think things I gotta take out in thinkin'. I could-" -

  Then I groan, rememberin' that my wife, naturally, is gonna blame me for the fact that our private life ain't private any more if anybody has tried to peek into it.

  "It was a swell world," I says, homesick for the dear dead days-before-yesterday. "We was playin' happy with our toys like little innocent children until sometbin' happened. Like a guy named Joe come in and squashed all our mud pies."

  Then it hit me. I got the whole thing in one flash. There ain't nothing in the tank set-up to start relays choosing. Relays are closed exclusive by logics, to get the information the keys are punched for. Nothing but a logic coulda cooked up the relay patterns that constituted logics service. Humans wouldn't had been able to figure it out! Only a logic could integrate all the stuff that woulda made all the other logics work like this. There was one answer. I drove into a restaurant and went over to a pay-logic and dropped in a coin.

  "Can a logic be modified," I spell out, "to co-operate in long-term planning which human brains are too lim ited in scope to do?"

  The screen sputters. Then it says:

  "Definitely yes."

  "How great will the modifications be?" I punch.

  "Microscopically slight. Changes in dimensions," says the screen. "Even modern precision gauges are not exact enough to check them, however. They can only come about under present manufacturing methods by an extremely improbable accident, which has only happened once."

  "How can one get hold of that one accident which can do this highly necessary work?" I punch.

  The screen sputters. Sweat broke out on me. I ain't got it figured out -close, yet, but what I'm scared of is that whatever is Joe will be suspicious. But what I'm askin' is strictly logical. And logics can't lie. They gotta be accurate. They can't help it.

  "A complete logic capable of the work required," says the screen, "is now ordinary family use -"

  And it gives me the Korlanovitch address and then I go over there! Do I go over there fast! I pull up the Maintenance car in front of the place, and I take the extra logic outta the back, and I stagger up the Korlanovitch flat and I ring the bell. A kid answers the door.

  "I'm from Logics Maintenance," I tell the kid. "An inspection record has shown that your logic is apt to break down any minute. I come to put in a new one before it does." The kid says "O.K.!" real bright and runs back to the

  living-room where Joe-I got the habit of callin' him Joe later, through just meditating about him-is running somethin' the kids wanna look at. I hook in the other logic and turn it on, conscientious making sure it works.

  Then I say:

  "Now kiddies, you punch this one for what you want. I'm gonna take the old one away before it breaks down?"

  And I glance at the screen. The kiddies have apparently said they wanna look at some real cannibals. So the screen is presenting a anthropological expedition scientific record film of the fertility dance of the HubaJouba tribe of West Africa. It is supposed to be restricted to anthropological professors and post-graduate medical students. But there ain't any censor blocks working any movie and it's on. The kids are much interested. Me, bein' a old married man, I blush.

  I disconnect Joe. Careful. I turn to the other logic and punch keys for Maintenance. I do not get a services flash. I get Maintenance. I feel very good. I report that I am goin' home because I fell down a flight of steps and hurt my leg. I add, inspired:

  "And say, I was carryin' the logic I replaced and it's all busted. I left it for the dustman to pick up."

  "If you don't turn them in," says Stock, "you gotta pay for them."

  "Cheap at the price," I say.

  I go home. Laurine ain't called. I put Joe down in the cellar, careful. If I turned him in, he'd be inspected and his parts salvaged even if I busted something on him. Whatever part was off-normal might be used again and everything start all over. I can't risk it. I pay for him and leave him be.

  That's what happened. You might say I saved civilization and not be far wrong. I know I ain't going to take a chance on having Joe in action again. Not while Laurine is living. And there are other reasons. With all the nuts who wanna change the world to their own line of thinking, and the ones that wanna bump people off, and generally solve their problems- Ye
ah! Problems are bad, but I figure I better let sleeping problems lie.

  But on the other hand, if Joe could be tamed, somehow, and got to work just reasonable- He could make me a couple million dollars, easy. But even if I got sense enough not to get rich, and if I get retired and just loaf around fishing and lying to other old dufiers about what a great guy I used to be- Maybe I'll like it, but maybe I won't. And after all, if I get fed up with being old and confined strictly to thinking-why I could hook Joe in long enough to ask: "How can a old guy not stay old?" Joe'll be able to find out. And he'll tell me.

  That couldn't be allowed out general, of course. You gotta make room for kids to grow up. But it's a pretty good world, now Joe's turned off. Maybe I'll turn

  him on long enough to learn how to stay in it. But on the other hand, maybe

  REQUIEM

  by

  Edmond Hamilton

  Kellon thought sourly that he wasn't commanding a starship, he was running a travelling circus. He had aboard telaudio men with tons of equipment, pontifical commentators who knew the answer to anything, beautiful females who were ex-perts on the woman's angle, pompous bureaucrats after publi-city, and entertainment stars who had come along for the same reason.

  He had had a good ship and crew, one of the best in the Survey. Had had. They weren't any more. They had been taken off their proper job of pushing astrographical knowl-edge ever further into the remote regions of the galaxy, and had been sent off with this cargo of costly people on a totally unnecessary mission. He said bitterly to himself, "Damn all sentimentalists." He said aloud, "Does its position check with your calcu-lated orbit, Mr. Riney?" Riney, the Second, a young and serious man who had been fussing with instruments in the astrogation room, came out and said,

  "Yes. Right on the nose. Shall we go in and land now?" Kellon didn't answer for a moment, standing there in the front of the bridge, a middle-aged man, stocky, square-shouldered. and with his tanned, plain face showing none of the resentment he felt. He hated to give the order but he had to.

  "All right, take her in."

  He looked gloomily through the filter-windows as they went in. In this fringe-spiral of the galaxy, stars were rela-tively infrequent, and there were only ragged drifts of them across the darkness. Full ahead shone a small, compact sun like a diamond. It was a white dwarf and had been so for two thousand years, giving forth so little warmth that the pla-nets, which circled it had been frozen and ice-locked all that time. They still were, all except the innermost world.

  Kelton stared at that planet, a tawny blob. The ice that had sheathed it ever since its primary collapsed into a white dwarf, had now melted. Months before, a dark wandering body had passed very close to this lifeless system. Its passing had per-turbed the planetary orbits and the inner planets had started to spiral slowly in toward their sun, and the ice had begun to go—

  Viresson, one of the junior officers, came into the bridge looking harassed, He said to Kellon, "They want to see you down below, sir. Especially Mr. Borrodale. He says it's ur-gent."

  Kelton thought wearily, "Well, I might as well go down and face the pack of them. Here's where they really begin."

  He nodded to Viresson, and went down below to the main cabin. The sight of it revolted him. Instead of his own men in it, relaxing or chinning, it held a small and noisy mob of over-dressed, overloud men and women, all of whom seemed to be talking at once and uttering brittle, nervous laughter.

  "Captain Kelton, I want to ask you—"

  "Captain, if you please—"

  He patiently nodded and smiled and plowed through them to Borrodale. He had been given particular instructions to cooperate with Bormdale, the most famous telaudio commen-tator in the Federation.

  Borrodale was a slightly plump man with round pink face and incongrously large and solemn black eyes. When he spoke, one recognized at once that deep, incredibly rich and meaningful voice.

  "My first broadcast is set for thirty minutes from now, Captain. I shall want a view as we go in. If my men could take a mobile up to the bridge—" Kellon nodded. "Of course. Mr. Viresson is up there and will assist them in any way."

  "Thank you, Captain. Would you like to see the broadcast?"

  "I would, yes, but—"

  He was interrupted by Lorri Lee, whose glitteringly handsome face and figure and sophisticated drawl made her the idol of all female telaudio reporters.

  "My broadcast is to be right after landing—remember? I'd like to do it alone, with just the emptiness of that world as background. Can you keep the others from spoiling the ef-fect? Please?"

  "We'll do what we can," Kellon mumbled. And as the rest of the pack converged on him he added hastily, "I'll talk to you later. Mr. Borrodale's broadcast—" He got through them, following after Borrodale toward the cabin that had been set up as a telaudio-transmitter room. It had, Kellon thought bitterly, once served an honest purpose, holding the racks of soil and water and other samples from far worlds. But that had been when they were doing an hon-est Survey job, not chaperoning chattering fools on this senti-mental pilgrimage.

  The broadcasting set-up was beyond Kellon. He didn't want to hear this but it was better than the mob in the main cabin. He watched as Borrodale made a signal. The monitor-screen came alive.

  It showed a dun-colored globe spinning in space, growing visibly larger as they swept toward it. Now straggling seas were identifiable upon it. Moments passed and Borrodale did not speak, just letting the picture go out. Then his deep voice spoke over the picture, with dramatic simplicity.

  "You are looking at the Earth," he said.

  Silence again, and the spinning brownish ball was bigger now, with white clouds ragged upon it. And then Borrodale spoke again.

  "You who watch from many worlds in the galaxy—this is the homeland of our race. Speak its name to yourselves. The Earth."

  Kellon felt a deepening distaste. This was all true, but still it was phony. What was Earth now to him, or to Borrodale, or his billions of listeners? But it was a story, a sentimental occasion, so they had to pump it up into something big.

  "Some thirty-five hundred years ago," Borrodale was say-ing, "our ancestors lived on this world alone. That was when they first went into space. To these other planets first—but very soon, to other stars. And so our Federation began, our community of human civilization on many stars and worlds."

  Now, in the monitor, the view of Earth's dun globe had been replaced by the face of Borrodale in close-up. He paused dramatically.

  "Then, over two thousand years ago, it was discovered that the sun of Earth was about to collapse into a white dwarf. So those people who still remained on Earth left it forever and when the solar change came, it and the other planets became mantled in eternal ice. And now, within months the final end of the old planet of our origin is at hand. It is slowly spirall-ing toward the sun and soon it will plunge into it as Mercury and Venus have already done. And when that occurs, the world of man's origin will be gone forever."

  Again the pause, for just the right length of time, and then Borrodale continued in a voice expertly pitched in a lower key.

  "We on this ship—we humble reporters and servants of the vast telaudio audience on all the worlds—have come here so that in these next weeks we can give you this last look at our ancestral world. We think—we hope—that you'll find interest in recalling a past that is almost legend."

  And Kellon thought, "The bastard has no more interest in this old planet than I have, but he surely is smooth."

  As soon as the broadcast ended, Kellon found himself be-sieged once more by the clamoring crowd in the main cabin. He held up his hand in protest.

  "Please, not now—we have a landing to make first. Will you come with me, Doctor Darnow?"

  Darnow was from Historical Bureau, and was the titular head of the whole expedition, although no one paid him much attention. He was a sparrowy, elderly man who bab-bled excitedly as he went with Kellon to the bridge. He, at least, was sincere in his interest
, Kellon thought. For that matter, so were all the dozen-odd scientists who were aboard. But they were far outnumbered by the fat cats and big brass out for publicity, the professional enthusers and sentimentalists. A real hell of a job the Survey had given him!

  In the bridge, he glanced through the window at the dun-colored planet and its satellite. Then he asked Darnow, "You said something about a particular place where you wanted to land?"

  The historiographer bobbed his head, and began unfolding a big, old-fashioned chart.

  "See this continent here? Along its eastern coast were a lot of the biggest cities, like New York."

  Kellon remembered that name, he'd learned it in school history, a long time ago. Darnow's finger stabbed the chart. "If you could land there, right on the island—" Kellon studied the relief features, then shook his head. "Too low. There'll be great tides as time goes on and we can't take chances. That higher ground back inland a bit should be all right, though."

  Darnow looked disappointed. "Well, I suppose you're right." Kellon told Riney to set up the landing-pattern. Then he asked Darnow skeptically.

  "You surely don't expect to find much in those old cities now—not after they've had all that ice on them for two thousand years?"

  "They'll be badly damaged, of course," Darnow admitted. "But there should be a vast number of relics. I could study here for years—"

  "We haven't got years, we've got only a few months before this planet gets too close to the Sun," said Keilon. And he added mentally, "Thank God." The ship went into its landing-pattern. Atmosphere whined outside its hull and then thick gray clouds boiled and raced around it. It went down through the cloud layer and moved above a dull brown landscape that had flecks of white in its deeper valleys. Far ahead there was the glint of a gray ocean. But the ship came down toward a rolling brown plain and settled there, and then there was the expected thunderclap of silence that always followed the shutting off of all machinery. Kellon looked at Riney, who turned in a moment from the test-panel with a slight surprise on his face. "Pressure, oxygen, humidity, everything—all optimum." And then he said, "But of course. This place was optimum." Kellon nodded. He said, "Doctor Darnow and I will have a look out first. Viresson, you keep our passengers in."