The Space Opera Megapack: 20 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Tales

by John W. Campbell

  In the lounge and elsewhere, fastened against the walls, were such armor for emergency use. Bert tried to help his wife get into one. But she ordered sharply: “I can do this! Take care of yourself, Bert.”

  He didn’t do that. Nor did Lawler. They ran down a passage toward the rent in the ship, intent on stopping the gases that were flooding the craft’s interior. Seconds were important. The radioactive wind, much cooled during the long journey from its point of origin, but poisoned by invisible emanations, struck their unprotected bodies. Yet they kept on. They dared not breathe or speak; still they worked together with an efficiency of terrible need, stepping over the forms of men who had already fallen.

  Bert found a flat sheet of metal to use as a patch. He fitted it over the rent, and, while Lawler piled boxes of supplies against it to hold it in place, sealed the edges with a thick, tarry substance.

  When the job was done they staggered back to the lounge. Blotches of color danced before their vision. Many corpuscles in their blood had already been destroyed by radiation. They sank to the deck.

  Bert had a jangled impression of Alice, now in a spacesuit, holding his head. He saw her lips mouthing endearments.… Game little Allie.… His mind wandered off. He was going to die. Maybe everyone on the ship was going to die. Lauren’s last move had been meant to provide a real disaster, with many deaths! Prove the Big Pill a failure. Make sure that it would be banned for good by the Safe Products Approval Board. Put the stamp of crime on Doc Kramer, the gentle little scientist who had been murdered! And on him, Bert Kraskow. And where was the rat, Lauren? On his way to the colonized moons of Jupiter, or even Mars, yelling and accusing by radio all along the line?

  As consciousness faded further, Bert stopped thinking unpleasant things. His mind drifted into Doc Kramer’s dream—of the changes which would make the near-dead worlds of space really habitable and homelike, fit for human colonists. It was a beautiful, lost vision.

  He was out cold, then, for several Earth-days, and only dimly aware for many days afterward. He knew that he was in the ship’s sick-bay, and that Lawler and other men were there, too. He heard their voices, and his own, without remembering what was said. Alice often came to see him. Often he heard roaring, watery sounds, as of vast rains.

  Gradually he came out of the dreamlike period, learning of what had happened. Until the time when he walked from the sick-bay, unsteadily, but on the mend.

  Alice, at his elbow, spoke: “It was like Doc Kramer planned, Bert, solving the hardest problem.”

  He knew what this meant. Transmutation, or any atomic process, must involve the generation of much radioactivity that can destroy life. In the Big Pill, the problem was to make all the atoms break, and rearrange their components into new elements as cleanly and sharply as possible, so that residual atomic instability—radioactivity, that is—would not linger for years, but would disappear quickly.

  “Titan’s new atmosphere is clean and breathable, now, Bert,” Alice went on. “And likewise the radioactive poisons that made you and Lawler and the others very ill disappeared quickly from your bodies. However, two colonists were beyond saving.”

  Lawler was with the Kraskows. They went out of the ship without the cumbersome protection of spacesuits. A Space Patrolman hovered like a worried hawk, watching Bert, but the latter seemed not to mind.

  Far above, replacing the hard stars and blackness of space, common to the firmaments of all dead and near-dead worlds, were great fleecy clouds and blue sky. The atmosphere, because of Titan’s low gravity, was highly expanded and hence thin, but rich in oxygen. The breeze smelled cool and fresh. Overhead was a second sun, seemingly much larger in diameter than the distant central orb of the solar system. It crept with visible motion across the sky. It was the molten globe of what had been the Prometheus and its cargo, locked in its sub-lunar orbit around Titan. But it was calculated to provide sufficient warmth and light to a small world such as this, for ten Earth-years, without renewal.

  Colonists were clearing away the wreckage of the now useless airdomes, and putting their cottages in order. But they still looked around in awe at the miracles that ended their space-nostalgia, making them feel truly at home here. Down in the valley there was even a great lake of rainwater from condensed steam—one of the end-products of the process that had gone on in the rocks of the great crater on the other side of Titan. That process had died to a sleepy smoking, now; but all over this moon of Saturn there were many lakes.

  Big Lawler chuckled gleefully, the sound rumbling deep in his chest. “Rejuvenation of burnt-out spheres on a really progressive basis,” he growled. “No obsolete, jury-rigged junk! Expensive? Sure! But we can pay for it! Out there are Saturn’s metal-rich Rings!”

  Bert was thinking that the same trick could be used on any world with enough gravity to hold down a respectable atmosphere. Half-dead Mars. Jupiter’s four biggest moons. Some of the other satellites of Saturn. Mercury.

  “The one thing that burns me is that my brother, Nick, and Doc Kramer, and those two colonists, had to die!” Bert grated. “Poor Doc. He was rich from the atomic engines he invented. And I knew long ago that, by his will, all his stock is to be put in trust for the welfare of spacemen and colonists. Should we feel glad or humble?”

  Lawler’s grin had become a snarl. “Damn Trenton Lauren!” he said.

  Alice didn’t exactly smile. “I should have told you before this,” she offered seriously, “but death always upsets me. By radio report from a scouting Patrol boat an hour ago, Lauren and his stooges were found, smashed and burned in the crash of their craft a hundred miles from camp. Their half-repaired spaceboat killed them.”

  Bert and Lawler exchanged glances. Their anger faded.

  “What’s new from the Safe Products Approval Board, Allie?” Lawler asked at last. “You seem to find things out fast.”

  “Nothing new,” she answered. “The latest messages are much the same as those from a while ago. Guarded enthusiasm, and the statement that an okay for the Kramer Methods must be withheld pending complete and prompt investigation. Can’t blame them. Caution is important.”

  “Maybe, if you played your cards right, you could become the new president of the Prometheus outfit, Bert,” Lawler kidded.

  But the possibility was certainly there. Bert was proud of what he’d done. Prometheus owed him plenty. Still, looking across camp past cottages and shops to the red mud of the once-dry, frigid hills, and down to the blue lake in the valley, reflecting sky and clouds, he knew that his heart was here in this crescendoing colonial scene. Somewhere a circle-saw screamed. From the metals-shop came the clanging of a mechanical hammer. These were sounds of a great future here.

  “Nuts, pal,” Bert chuckled to Lawler. “I’ll leave the official pencil-pushing to the lab experts. The building and progress are here. You and Allie and I will all be back on Titan very soon.”

  These three began to be aware that a crowd of still befuddled but happy colonists were gathering around them. Another Space Patrol man approached, and said very officially:

  “Mr. and Mrs. Kraskow, and Mr. Lawler: Our large ship leaves for Earth in five hours. Be ready to blast off. As you are aware, certain still valid charges were lodged against you by Trenton Lauren. You used dangerous equipment, not yet legally approved. As you are also aware, you must go to answer these charges. Sorry. But we of the Patrol know the score. In the face of your success I’m sure that this is mere red tape.”

  Bert scowled until he saw the cop’s sly grin.

  “Worried?” Alice asked him, smiling. She was pretty. She had courage. She had everything.

  “Worried?” Bert echoed. In general he approved the S.P.A.B. “How can we lose on this last gamble with all the cards stacked in our favor. We even win a needed short vacation on Earth!”

  “What are you two gonna bring back for me?” an old man, grimed from the forges, demanded, grinning. It was old Stan Kraskow, who had buried his younger son in the camp cemetery.

 
“Hiyuh, Dad!” Bert greeted happily. “What’ll we bring him, Allie?”

  “Wildbirds, Pop,” Alice answered, her eyes twinkling. “You always liked wildbirds. No world is complete without them.”

  Bert noticed that the gardens of the camp, planted weeks ago under airdomes that were now being cleared away, were now showing a faint green. The beginning of a new and verdant Titan.

  WHERE ARE YOU, MR. BIGGS?, by Nelson S. Bond

  We’re supposed to be an Earth-Mars lugger, but when we got to Mars Central spaceport, the bug-pounder there gave me this solar gram from Terra. It said:

  “PROCEED URANUS IMMEDIATELY PICK UP CARGO GALLIUM.”

  So I shoved a frantic for the Old Man over the ship audio, and pretty soon he came lumbering up to my radio room, picking his teeth and scowling like a man with only a half a tummyfull of victuals.

  “It’s a fine state of affairs” he snarled, “when a skipper can’t even finish his dinner in peace! Well, what’s the matter now, Sparks? You seeing pink rhinoceroses again? ’Cause if you are—”

  “I’m not,” I told him with quiet dignity,” and they aren’t pink rhinos, they’re lavender lobsters, and anyway, I haven’t had a drink for months. Or maybe it’s since yesterday? Anyhow, here’s the grief.” And I gave him the wire.

  He read it. Read it, your Aunt Nellie—he screamed out loud.

  “Uranus!” he bellowed. “This crate make that trip? They must be stark, staring mad?

  “Them,” I agreed, “or me. Flip a coin. What shall I do, Skipper? Tell ’em we can’t do it? Tell ’em—?”

  “No, wait a minute.” Cap Hanson’s brow looked like a freshly ploughed field. I knew why. The Saturn is an old lugger. And by old, I do mean ancient. It was built before the turn of the century, and by all laws of logic and reason should have been taken off the spaceways long ago, only that Cap Hanson and our screwball First Mate, Lancelot Biggs, had demonstrated time and time again, and in startlingly devious ways, that the old scow was still spaceworthy.

  But if the Saturn were removed from active service, the chances were ten to one that Hanson would be junked with her. Which was Reason Numero Uno—and a damned good one—why the skipper couldn’t risk refusing this order.

  “We’ll go, Sparks,” he said slowly. “We’ve got to. But I could wring his scrawny neck, blast his jets!”

  I didn’t have to ask whom he meant. “Scrawny neck” would mean only one inmate of our void-perambulating asylum. Lancelot Biggs. Genius and crackpot, scarecrow and sage—and soon to become son-in-law of the skipper.

  I said, “But why blame Biggs for this, Skipper? Is it his fault if the Home Office has gone squirrelly?”

  “It is,” grumbled Hanson savagely. “I should never have agreed to let Diane marry him. He started this mess at my house. Colonel Brophy and him was having dinner with me and Biggs told Brophy all about that new ‘velocity intensifier’ he invented—”

  I shuddered. “You mean the gadget which got us all bolixed up in the negative universe? Till Hank Cleaver came from the past to get us out?”

  “That’s it. Well, he told Brophy about it, bragged that it would make the Saturn Ihe fastest ship in the ether. And now,” Hanson groaned, “just because he shot off his big face, we’ve to push this leaky old tin-can to Uranus!”

  I said consolingly, “Well, maybe everything will be all right, Skipper. I admit Mr. Biggs is a bit of a whacky-pot, but he’s pulled us out of plenty of tough spots before. Like the time he thwarted Red Hake and his pirate crew. And the time he beat the Slipstream—”

  Hanson stared at me somberly.

  “Nope, I guess you ain’t. You couldn’t have.”

  I said, “Which? Couldn’t have what, sir?”

  “You mustn’t have seen Mr. Biggs on this shuttle.”

  It was the first time I had realized it, but he was right! And that was funny, because Mr. Biggs and I were old buddies. We were bunkmates once, even. I said, “Well, lift my gravs! Come to think of it, I haven’t? Why, Skipper? I guess maybe it’s on account of he’s busy planning to get married so soon?”

  Hanson made sounds like a man being garotted.

  “Marriage! Don’t talk to me about marriage! Bert, what does marriage do to a man?”

  “Marriage,” I replied promptly, “makes the mare go. Or, no—that’s money, isn’t it? I give up, sir. What?”

  “It’s supposed,” boiled Hanson, “to make him settle down. Only it ain’t. Not in Biggs’ case. It’s having just the opposite effect. Making him flighty as a coot. Lancelot ain’t been worth a tinker’s dam on this trip. He can’t do a single thing right! Remember our take-off, Sparks? From Long Island port? The one where we—”

  “—lifted gravs two full minutes before schedule?” I finished. “Don’t I just! I almost did a swan dive through the aft bulkhead. Why? Did he—?”

  “Mmm-hmm! And he also plotted the course that took us nine degrees off trajectory. And he heaved the ship into a Van-Maeden spiral by signaling for a double-jet port blast in midspace. And he—” Hanson paused, panting with wrath. “But why go on? The point is, the very thought of marriage has ruined him. And we can’t depend on him to help us with this assignment. And Uranus is a long way from here. A lo-o-oong way!”

  I winced. I said, “Look, Skipper—must you say it thataway? With icicles in your voice, I mean?”

  But orders is orders. We lifted gravs as commanded at 11.20 Martian Constant Time—that’s 3-X-9 Solar Relative—and pointed our prow toward the spot in space where, some billion and a half odd miles away, Uranus was lounging about a wan and distant Sun like a gigantic snowball. That is, we attempted to point our prow in that direction. Cap Hanson’s astrogation came a cropper on this problem. He called me to the control turret. He asked, “Sparks, have you seen him?”

  “You mean Mr. Biggs? No, sir.”

  “Well, go find him. In the first place, none of us except him know how to chart to intersect Uranus’ orbit, and in the second place, we don’t know how to operate that crazy velocity intensifier of his’n, and—” Fretfully. “—and in the third place, I don’t like this in the first place!”

  So I made a tour of the ship, and found him where I should have looked first. In his own cabin, raptly fondling a cabinet photograph of Diane Hanson—soon-to-be Biggs. He glanced up as I entered, and his phenomenal Adam’s apple, an auricular escalator if I ever saw one, bobbed in greeting.

  “Hello, Sparks,” he said dreamily, and held out the picture for my inspection. “She’s lovely, isn’t she?”

  I said, “Don’t look now, Mr. Biggs, but that cheery little noise you’ve been ignoring is the audio buzzer beside your elbow. It’s for you. The skipper wants you topside.”

  Biggs looked startled.

  “Me? But there must be some mistake. I’m off duty until tomorrow morning.”

  “Guess again,” I told him. “It so happens that you are the only mugg—I mean—officer around here who knows how to finagle that velocity intensifier of yours. So you’re elected. After all, if we’re going to Uranus”—

  That got him. He popped off his hip pockets like a thunderbolt from the blooie!

  “What! Uranus!”

  “Okay,” I said gloomily. “And you watch yours.” I stared at him curiously, though. “What’s the matter; didn’t you know?”

  “Know! Of course not! B-but—” His fluid larynx did handsprings. “But I can’t go to Uranus! I told her I’d be home in ten days!”

  I said, “Then she’d better not hold her breath till you get there. You led with your chin, Lieutenant, when you told the president of our beloved corporation about your new invention. He’d decided to give it a workout. And as near as I can figure—” This was what had been worrying me from the start. “It will take us about ten months to get to Uranus, and another twelve to get back!”

  But, surprisingly, it was my dejection that snapped Biggs out of his. The impatient-bridegroom-look disappeared from his eyes, and he grinned.

&n
bsp; “My goodness, no, Sparks! Don’t you understand the operation of my velocity intensifier?’

  “I’m a bug pounder,” I told him. I understand the space code, and dots and dashes, and Ampies, and I know four languages. That’s par for the course.”

  “It’s really quite simple. My velocity intensifier is exactly what the name implies — a device that is attached to the hypatomic motors for the purpose of “stepping up” our normal velocity. It’s based on the principle of energy-conservation. A series of parallax-condensers absorb all waste energy, pass it through multiple amplifiers, rotors and—”

  “—and all points west!” I finished. “It’s no go, Lieutenant. That’s one of the languages I don’t talk. Give it to me in words of one syllable. How long will it take us to get to Uranus and back?”

  “Considering the mean distance of Uranus,” answered Biggs quietly, “as approximately 1,560,000,000 miles, and if we traveled at our hitherto ‘normal’ rate of speed, 200,000 m.p.h., it should take us 7,800 hours, or 325 days, to reach there. And slightly longer to return to Earth.”

  “Ten months? I wailed. “I knew it!”

  “But,” continued Biggs proudly, “with this velocity intensifier attachment, our potential speed is restrained by only one factor. The limiting velocity of light, or 186,000 miles per second”

  “In other words, the Saturn is now capable of a top speed of more than 650,000,000 miles per hour?

  I gasped. I said, “Huh? You mean,” I said, “the trip to Uranus will take only a little more than two hours?”

  Biggs smiled complacently.

  “Theoretically, yes; actually it will take somewhat longer. You see, we must allow time for acceleration, for a condensation-charge to build up in our super-chargers before setting the V-I unit in operation, and for deceleration upon reaching our objective. Also, we are forced to remain below the ‘limiting velocity’ as a measure of safety. Else we may suffer another translation into the negative universe, as we once did before I learned how to control the intensifier.