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

by John W. Campbell

  Those Sthorian people had evolved in a way that made the conditions endurable for savage or uncivilized people, but when a scientific civilization with a well-ordered mode of existence tried to establish itself, Mira was all sorts of a nuisance.

  Gresth Gkae was a peculiar individual to human ways of thinking. He stood some seven feet tall, on his strange, double-kneed legs and his four toed feet. His body was covered with little, short feather-like things that moved now with a volition of their own. They were moving very slowly and regularly. The spaceship was heated to a comfortable temperature, and the little fans were helping to cool Gresth Gkae. Had it been cold, every little feather would have lain down close against its neighbors, forming an admirable, wind-proof and cold-proof blanket.

  Nature, on Sthor, had original ideas of arrangement too. Sthorians possessed two eyes—one directly above the other, in the center of their faces. The face was so long, and narrow, it resembled a blunt hatchet, with the two eyes on the edge. To counterbalance this vertical arrangement of the eyes, the nostrils had been separated some four inches, with one on each of the sloping cheeks. His ears were little pink-flesh cups on short, muscular stems. His mouth was narrow, and small, but armed with quite solid teeth adapted to his diet, a diet consisting of almost anything any creature had ever considered edible. Like most successful forms of intelligent life, Gresth Gkae was omnivorous. An intelligent form of life is necessarily adaptable, and adaptation meant being able to eat what was at hand.

  One of his eyes, the upper one, was fully twice the size of the lower one. This was his telescopic eye. The lower, or microscopic eye was adapted to work for which a human being would have required a low power microscope, the upper eye possessed a more normal power of vision, plus considerable telescopic powers.

  Gresth Gkae was using it now to look ahead in the blank of space to where gigantic Mira appeared. On his screens now, Mira appeared deep violet, for he was approaching at a speed greater than that of light, and even this projected light of Mira was badly distorted.

  “The distance is half a light-year now, sir,” reported the navigation officer.

  “Reduce the speed, then, to normal velocity for these ranges. What reserve of fuel have we?”

  “Less than one thousand pounds. We will barely be able to stop. We were too free in the use of our weapons, I fear,” replied the Chief Technician.

  “Well, what would you? We needed those things in our reports. Besides, we could extract fuel from that ore we took on at Planet Nine of Phahlo. It is merely that I wish speed in the return.”

  “As we all do. How soon do you believe the Council will proceed against the new system?”

  “It will be fully a year, I fear. They must gather the expeditions together, and re-equip the ships. It will be a long time before all will have come in.”

  “Could they not send fast ships after them to recall them?”

  “Could they have traced us as we wove our way from Thart to Karst to Raloork to Phahlo? It would be impossible.”

  Steadily the great ship had been boring on her way. Mira had been a disc for nearly two days, gigantic, two-hundred-and-fifty-million-mile Mira took a great deal of dwarfing by distance to lose her disc. Even at the Twin Planets, eight thousand two hundred and fifty millions of miles out, Mira covered half the sky, it seemed, red and angry. Sometimes, though, to the disgust of the Sthorians it was just red-faced and lazy. Then Sthor froze.

  “Grih is in a descendant stage,” said the navigation officer presently. “Sthor will be cold when we arrive.”

  “It will warm quickly enough with our news!” Gresth laughed. “A system—a delightful system—discovered. A system of many close-grouped planets. Why think—from one side of that system to the other is less of a distance than from Ansthat, our first planet’s orbit, to Insthor’s orbit! That sun, as we know, is steady and warm. All will be well, when we have eliminated that rather peculiar race. Odd, that they should, in some ways, be so nearly like us! Nearly Sthorian in build. I would not have expected it. Though they did have some amazing peculiarities! Imagine—two eyes just alike, and in a horizontal row. And that flat face. They looked as though they had suffered some accident that smashed the front of the face in. And also the peculiar beak-like projection. Why should a race ever develop so amazing a projection in so peculiar and exposed a position? It sticks out inviting attack and injury. Right in the middle of the face. And to make it worse, there is the air-channel, and the only air channel. Why, one minor injury to the throat would be certain to damage that passage beyond repair, and bring death. Yet such relatively unimportant things as ears, and eyes are doubled. Surely you would expect that so important a member as the air-passage would be doubled for safety.

  “Those strange, awkward arms and legs were what puzzled me. I have been attempting to manipulate myself as they must be forced to, and I cannot see how delicate or accurate manual manipulation would be possible with those rigid, inflexible arms. In some ways I feel they must have had clever minds to overcome so great a handicap to constructive work. But I suppose single joints in the arms become as natural to them as our own more mobile two.

  “I wonder if life in any intelligent form wouldn’t develop somewhat similar formations, though. Think, in all parts of Sthor, before men became civilized and developed communication, even so much as twenty thousand years ago, our records show that seats and chairs were much as they are today, and much as they are, in all places among all groups. Then too, the eye has developed in many different species, and always reached much the same structure. When a thing is intended and developed to serve a given purpose, no matter who develops it, or where or how, is it not apt to have similar shapes and parts? A chair must have legs, and a seat and arm-rests and a back. You may vary their nature and their shape, but not widely, and they must be there. An eye must, anywhere, have a sensitive retina, an adjustable lens, and an adjustable device for controlling the entrance of light. Similarly there are certain functions that the body of an intelligent creature must serve which naturally tend to make intelligent creatures similar. He must have a tool—the hand—”

  “Yes, yes—I see your point. It must be so, for surely these creatures out there are strange enough in other ways.”

  “But tell me, have you calculated when we shall land?”

  “In twelve hours, thirty-three minutes, sir.”

  Eleven hours later, the expedition ship had slowed to a normal space-speed. On her left hung the giant globe of Asthor, rotating slowly, moving slowly in her orbit. Directly ahead, Sthor loomed even greater. Tiny Teelan, the thousand-mile diameter moon of the Insthor system shone dull red in the reflected light of gigantic Mira. Mira herself was gigantic, red and menacing across eight and a quarter billions of miles of space.

  One hundred thousand miles apart, the twin worlds Sthor and Asthor rotated about their common center of gravity, eternally facing each other. Ten million miles from their common center of gravity, Teelan rotated in a vast orbit.

  Sthor and Asthor were capped at each pole now by gigantic white icecaps. Mira was sulking, and as a consequence the planets were freezing.

  The expedition ship sank slowly toward Sthor. A swarm of smaller craft had flown up at its approach to meet it. A gaily-colored small ship marked the official greeting-ship. Gresth had withheld his news purposely. Now suddenly he began broadcasting it from the powerful transmitter on his ship. As the words came through on a thousand sets, all the little ships began to whirl, dance and break out into glowing, sparkling lights. On Sthor and Asthor even commotions began to be visible. A new planetary system had been found— They could move! Their overflowing populations could be spread out!

  The whole Insthor system went mad with delight as the great Expeditionary Ship settled downward.

  IV

  There was a glint of humor in Buck Kendall’s eyes as he passed the sheet over to McLaurin. Commander McLaurin looked down the columns with twinkling eyes.

  “‘Petition to establish t
he Lunar Mining Bank,’” he read. “What a bank! Officers: President, General James Logan, late of the IP; Vice-president, Colonel Warren Gerardhi, also late of the IP; Staff, consists of 90% ex-IP men, and a few scattered accountants. Designed by the well-known designer of IP stations, Colonel Richard Murray.” Commander McLaurin looked up at Kendall with a broad grin. “And you actually got Interplanetary Life to give you a mortgage on the structure?”

  “Why not? It’ll cut cost fifty-eight millions, with its twelve-foot tungsten-beryllium walls and the heavy defense weapons against those terrible pirates. You know we must defend our property.”

  “With the thing you’re setting up out there on Luna, you could more readily wipe out the IP than anything else I know of. Any new defense ideas?”

  “Plenty. Did you get any further appropriations from the IP Appropriations Board?”

  McLaurin looked sour. “No. The dear taxpayers might object, and those thickheaded, clogged rockets on the Board can’t see your data on the Stranger. They gave me just ten millions, and that only because you demonstrated you could shoot every living thing out of the latest IP cruiser with that neutron gun of yours. By the way, they may kick when I don’t install more than a few of those.”

  “Let ’em. You can stall for a few months. You’ll need that money more for other purposes. You’ve installed that paraffin lining?”

  “Yes—I got a report on that of ‘finished’ last week. How have you made out?”

  Buck Kendall’s face fell. “Not so hot. Devin’s been the biggest help—he did most of the work on that neutron gun really—”

  “After,” McLaurin interrupted, “you told him how.”

  “—but we’re pretty well stuck now, it seems. You’ll be off duty tomorrow evening, can’t you drop around to the lab? We’re going to try out a new system for releasing atomic energy.”

  “Isn’t that a pretty faint hope? We’ve been trying to get it for three centuries now, and haven’t yet. What chance at it within a year or so?—which is the time you allow yourself before the Stranger returns.”

  “It is, I’ll admit that. But there’s another factor, not to be forgotten. The data we got from correlating those ‘misreadings’ from the various IP posts mean a lot. We are working on an entirely different trail now. You come on out, and you can see our new apparatus. They are working on tremendous voltages, and hoping to smash the thing by a brutal bombardment of terrific voltage. We’re trying, thanks to the results of those instruments, to get results with small, terrifically intense fields.”

  “How do you know that’s their general system?”

  “They left traces on the records of the post instruments. These records show such intensities as we never got. They have atomic energy, necessarily, and they might have had material energy, actual destruction of matter, but apparently, from the field readings it’s the former. To be able to make those tremendous hops, light-years in length, they needed a real store of energy. They have accumulators, of course, but I don’t think they could store enough power by the system they use to do it.”

  “Well, how’s your trick ‘bank’ out on Luna, despite its twelve-foot walls, going to stand an atomic explosion?”

  “More protective devices to come is our only hope. I’m working on three trails: atomic energy, some type of magnetic shield that will stop any moving material particle, and their faster-than-light thing. Also, that fortress—I mean, of course, bank—is going to have a lot of lead-lined rooms.”

  “I wish I could use the remaining money the Board gave me to lead-line a lot of those IP ships,” said McLaurin wistfully. “Can’t you make a gamma-ray bomb of some sort?”

  “Not without their atomic energy release. With it, of course, it’s easy to flood a region with rays. It’ll be a million times worse than radium ‘C,’ which is bad enough.”

  “Well, I’ll send through this petition for armaments. They’ll pass it all right, I think. They may get some kicks from old Jacob Ezra Stubbs. Jacob Ezra doesn’t believe in anything war-like. I wish they’d find some way to keep him off of the Arms Petition Board. He might just as well stay home and let ’em vote his ticket uniformly ‘nay.’” Buck Kendall left with a laugh.

  Buck Kendall had his troubles though. When he had reached Earth again, he found that his properties totaled one hundred and three million dollars, roughly. One doesn’t sell properties of that magnitude, one borrows against them. But to all intents and purposes, Buck Kendall owned two half-completed ship’s hulls in the Baldwin Spaceship Yards, a great deal of massive metal work on its way to Luna, and contracts for some very extensive work on a “bank.” Beyond that, about eleven million was left.

  A large portion of the money had been invested in a laboratory, the like of which the world had never seen. It was devoted exclusively to physics, and principally the physics of destruction. Dr. Paul Devin was the Director, Cole was in charge of the technical work, and Buck Kendall was free to do all the work he thought needed doing.

  Returned to his laboratory, he looked sourly at the bench on which seven mechanicians were working. The ninth successive experiment on the release of atomic energy had failed. The tenth was in process of construction. A heavy pure tungsten dome, three feet in diameter, three inches thick, was being lowered over a clear insulum dome, a foot smaller. Inside, the real apparatus was arranged around the little pool of mercury. From it, two massive tungsten-copper alloy conductors led through the insulum housing, and outside. These, so Kendall had hoped, would surge with the power of broken atoms, but he was beginning to believe rather bitterly, they would never do so.

  Buck went on to his offices, and the main calculator room. There were ten calculator tables here, two of them in operation now.

  “Hello, Devin. Getting on?”

  “No,” said Devin bitterly, “I’m getting off. Look at these results.” He brought over a sheaf of graphs, with explanatory tables attached. Rapidly Buck ran through them with him. Most of them were graphs of functions of light, considered as a wave in these experiments.

  “H-m-m-m—not very encouraging. Looks like you’ve got the field—but it just snaps shut on itself and won’t work. The lack of volume makes it break down, if you establish it, and makes it impossible to establish in the first place without the energy of matter. Not so hot. That’s certainly cockeyed somewhere.”

  “I’m not. The math may be.”

  “Well”—Kendall grinned—“it amounts to the same thing. The point is, light doesn’t. Let’s run over that theory again. Light is not only magnetic; but electric. Somehow it transforms electric fields cyclically into magnetic fields and back again. Now what we want to do is to transform an electric into a magnetic field and have it stay there. That’s the first step. The second thing, is to have the lines of magnetic force you develop, lie down like a sheath around the ship, instead of standing out like the hairs on an angry cat, the way they want to. That means turning them ninety degrees, and turning an electric into a magnetic field means turning the space-strain ninety degrees. Light evidently forms a magnetic field whose lines of force reach along its direction of motion, so that’s your starting point.”

  “Yes, and that,” growled Devin, “seems to be the finishing point. Quite definitely and clearly, the graph looped down to zero. In other words, the field closed in on itself, and destroyed itself.”

  “Light doesn’t vanish.”

  “I’ll make you all the lights you want.”

  “I simply mean there must be something that will stop it.”

  “Certainly. Transform it back to electric field before it gets a chance to close in, then repeat the process—the way light does.”

  “That wouldn’t make such a good magnetic shield. Every time that field started pulsing out through the walls of the ship it would generate heat. We want a permanent field that will stay on the job out there. I wonder if you couldn’t make a conductor device that would open that field out—some special type of oscillating field that would keep it ope
n.”

  “H-m-m-m—that’s an angle I might try. Any suggestions?”

  Kendall had suggestions, and rapidly he outlined a development that appeared from some of the earlier mathematics on light, and might be what they wanted.

  Kendall, however, had problems of his own to work on. The question of atomic energy he was leaving alone, till the present experiment either succeeded, or, as he rather suspected, failed as had its predecessors. His present problem was to develop more fully some interesting lines of research he had run across in investigating mathematically the trick of turning electric to magnetic fields and then turning them back again. It might be that along this line he would find the answer to the speed greater than that of light. At any rate, he was interested.

  He worked the rest of that day, and most of the next on that line—till he ran it into the ground with a pair of equations that ended with the expression: dx.dv=h/(4πm). Then Kendall looked at them for a long moment, then he sighed gently and threw them into a file cabinet. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty. He’d reduced the thing to a form that simply told him it was beyond the limits of certainty and he ran it into the normal, natural uncertainty inevitable in Nature.

  Anyway he had real work to do now. The machine was about ready for his attention. The mechanicians had finished putting it in shape for demonstration and trial. He himself would have to test it over the rest of the afternoon and arrange for power and so forth.

  By evening, when Commander McLaurin called around with some of the other investors in Kendall’s “bank” on Luna, the thing was already started, warming up. The fields were being fed and the various scientists of the group were watching with interest. Power was flowing in already at a rate of nearly one hundred thousand horsepower per minute, thanks to a special line given them by New York Power (a Kendall property). At ten o’clock they were beginning to expect the reaction to start. By this time the fields weren’t gaining in intensity very rapidly, a maximum intensity had been reached that should, they felt, break the atoms soon.