Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  She was white and trembling; she was very evidently on the verge of being violently sick; but she was far from being out of control. "Can do, sir."

  "Good girl, sweetheart. Hang on one minute more and we'll have gravity and you'll be O. K."

  The first five doors he tried were locked; and, since they were made of armor plate, there was nothing he could do about them except give each one a resounding kick with a heavy steel boot. The sixth was unlocked, but the passengers--a man and a woman--were very evidently and very gruesomely dead.

  So was everyone else he could find until he came to a room in which a man in a spacesuit was floundering helplessly in the air. He glanced at his telltale. Thirty-two. High in the red, almost against the pin.

  "Bobby! What do you read?"

  "Twenty-six."

  "Good. I've found only one, but we're running out of time. I'm coming in."

  * * * * *

  In the lifecraft he closed the port and slammed on full drive away from the ship. Then, wheeling, he shucked Barbara out of her suit like an ear of corn and shed his own. He picked up a fire-extinguisher-like affair and jerked open the door of a room a little larger than a clothes closet. "Jump in here!" He slammed the door shut. "Now strip, quick!" He picked the canister up and twisted four valves.

  Before he could get the gun into working position she was out of her pajamas--the fact that she had been wondering visibly what it was all about had done nothing whatever to cut down her speed. A flood of thick, creamy foam almost hid her from sight and Deston began to talk--quietly.

  "Thanks, sweetheart, for not slowing us down by arguing and wanting explanations. This stuff is DEKON--short for Decontaminant, Complete; Compound, Adsorbent, and Chelating, Type DCQ-429.' Used soon enough, it takes care of radiation. Rub it in good, all over you--like this." He set the foam-gun down on the floor and went vigorously to work. "Yes, hair, too. Every square millimeter of skin and mucous membrane. Yes, into your eyes. It stings 'em a little, but that's a lot better than going blind. And your mouth. Swallow six good big mouthfuls--it's tasteless and goes down easy.

  "Now the soles of your feet--O. K. The last will hurt plenty, but we've got to get some of it into your lungs and we can't do it the hospital way. So when I slap a gob of it over your mouth and nose inhale hard and deep. Just once is all anybody can do, but that's enough. And don't fight. Any ordinary woman I could handle, but I can't handle you fast enough. So if you don't inhale deep I'll have to knock you cold. Otherwise you die of lung cancer. Will do?"

  "Will do, sweetheart. Good and deep. No fight," and she emptied her lungs.

  He slapped it on. She inhaled, good and deep; and went into convulsive paroxysms of coughing. He held her in his arms until the worst of it was over; but she was still coughing hard when she pulled herself away from him.

  "But ... how ... about ... you?" She could just barely talk; her voice was distorted, almost inaudible. "Let ... me ... help ... you ... quick!"

  "No need, darling. Two other men out there. The old man probably won't need it--I think I got him into the safe quick enough--the other guy and I will help each other. So lie down there on the bunk and take it easy until I come back here and help you get the gunkum off. So-long for half an hour, pet."

  Forty-five minutes later, while all four were still cleaning up the messes of foam, something began to buzz sharply. Deston stepped over to the board and flipped a switch. The communicator came on. Since everything aboard a starship is designed to fail safe, they were, of course, in normal space. On the visiplates hundreds of stars blazed in vari-colored points of hard, bright light.

  "Baby Two acknowledging," Deston said. "First Officer Deston and three passengers. Deconned to zero. Report, please."

  "Baby Three. Second Officer Jones and four passengers. Deconned to----"

  "Thank God, Herc!" Formality vanished. "With you to astrogate us, we may have a chance. But how'd you make it? I'd've sworn a flying saucer couldn't've got down from the Top in the time we had."

  "Same thing right back at you, Babe. I didn't have to come down. We were in Baby Three when it happened." Full vision was on; a big, square-jawed, lean, tanned face looked out at them from the screen.

  "Huh? How come? And who's 'we'?"

  "My wife and I." Second Officer Theodore "Hercules" Jones was somewhat embarrassed. "I got married, too, day before yesterday. After the way the old man chewed you out, though, I knew he'd slap irons on me without saying a word, so we kept it dark and hid out in Baby Three. These three are all we could find before our meters went high red. I deconned Bun, then----"

  "Bun?" Barbara broke in. "Bernice Burns? How wonderful!"

  "Formerly Bernice Burns." The face of a platinum-blonde beauty appeared on the screen beside Jones'. "And am I glad to see you, Barbara, even if I did just meet you yesterday! I didn't know whether I'd ever see another girl's face or not!"

  "Let's cut the chat," Deston said then. "Herc, give me course, blast, and time for rendezvous ... hey! My watch stopped!"

  "So did mine," Jones said. "So just hold one gravity on eighteen dash forty-seven dash two seventy-one and I'll correct you as necessary."

  After setting course, and still thinking of his watch, Deston said; "But it's nonmagnetic. It never stopped before."

  The gray-haired man spoke. "It was never in such a field before. You see, those two observations of fact invalidate twenty-four of the thirty-eight best theories of hyper-space. But tell me--am I correct in saying that none of you were in direct contact with the metal of the ship when it happened?"

  "We avoid it in case of trouble. You? Name and job?" Deston jerked his head at the younger stranger.

  "I know that much. Henry Newman. Crew-chief, normal space jobs, unlimited."

  "Your passengers, Herc?"

  "Vincent Lopresto, financier, and his two bodyguards. They were sleeping in their suits, on air-mattresses. Grounders. Don't like subspace--or space, either."

  "Just so." The gray-haired man nodded, almost happily. "We survivors, then, absorbed the charge gradually----"

  "But what the----" Deston began.

  "One moment, please, young man. You perhaps saw some of the bodies. What were they like?"

  "They looked ... well, not exactly as though they had exploded, but----" he paused.

  "Precisely." Gray-Hair beamed. "That eliminates all the others except three--Morton's, Sebring's, and Rothstein's."

  "You're a specialist in subspace, then?"

  "Oh, no, I'm not a specialist at all. I'm a dabbler, really. A specialist, you know, is one who learns more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing at all. I'm just the opposite. I'm learning less and less about more and more; hoping in time to know nothing at all about everything."

  "In other words, a Fellow of the College. I'm glad you're aboard, sir."

  "Oh, a Theoretician?" Barbara's face lit up and she held out her hand. "With dozens of doctorates in everything from Astronomy to Zoology? I've never met ... I'm ever so glad to meet you, Doctor----?"

  "Adams. Andrew Adams. But I have only eight at the moment. Earned degrees, that is."

  "But what were you doing in this lifecraft? No, let me guess. You were X-ray-eying it and fine-toothing it for improvements made since your last trip, and storing the details away in your eidetic memory."

  "Not eidetic, by any means. Merely very good."

  "And how many metric tons of apparatus have you got in the hold?" Deston asked.

  "Less than six. Just what I must have in order to----"

  "Babe!" Jones' voice cut in. "Course change. Stay on alpha eighteen. Shift beta to forty-four and gamma to two sixty-five."

  * * * * *

  Rendezvous was made. Both lifecraft hung motionless relative to the Procyon's hulk. No other lifecraft had escaped. A conference was held.

  Weeks of work would be necessary before Deston and Jones could learn even approximately what the damage to the Procyon had been. Decontamination was automatic, of
course, but there would be literally hundreds of hot spots, each of which would have to be sought out and neutralized by hand. The passengers' effects would have to be listed and stored in the proper cabins. Each body would have to be given velocity away from the ship. And so on. Every survivor would have to work, and work hard.

  The two girls wanted to be together. The two officers almost had to be together, to discuss matters at unhampered length and to make decisions. Each was, of course, almost as well versed in engineering as he was in his own specialty. All ships' officers from First to Fifth had to be. And, as long as they lived or until the Procyon made port, all responsibility rested: First, upon First Officer Deston; and second, upon Second Officer Jones. Therefore Theodore and Bernice Jones came aboard Lifecraft Two, and Deston asked Newman to flit across to Lifecraft Three.

  "Not me; I like the scenery here better." Newman's eyes raked Bernice's five-feet-eight of scantily-clad sheer beauty from ankles to coiffure. "If you're too crowded--I know a lifecraft carries only fifty people--go yourself."

  "As a crew-chief, you know the law." Deston spoke quietly--too quietly, as the other man should have known. "I am in command."

  "You ain't in command of me, pretty boy!" Newman sneered. "You can play God when you're on sked, with a ship-full of trained dogs to bite for you, but out here where nobody has ever come back from I make my own law--with this!" He patted his side pocket.

  "Draw it, then!" Deston's voice now had all the top-deck rasp of his rank. "Or crawl!"

  The First Officer had not moved; his right hand still hung quietly at his side. Newman glanced at the girls, both of whom were frozen; at Jones, who smiled at him pityingly; at Adams, who was merely interested. "I ... my ... yours is right where you can get at it," he faltered.

  "You should have thought of that sooner. But, this once, I won't move a finger until your hand is in your pocket."

  "Just wing him, Babe," Jones said then. "He looks strong enough, except for his head. We can use him to shovel out the gunkum and clean up."

  "Uh-uh. I'll have to kill him sometime, and the sooner the better. Square between the eyes. Do you want a hundred limit at ten bucks a millimeter on how far the hole is off dead center?"

  The two girls gasped; stared at each other and at the two officers in horror; but Jones said calmly, without losing any part of his smile: "I don't want a dime's worth of that. I've lost too much money that way already." At which outrageous statement both girls knew what was going on and smiled in relief.

  And Newman misinterpreted those smiles completely; especially Bernice's. The words came hard, but he managed to say then. "I crawl."

  "Crawl, what?"

  "I crawl, sir. You'll want my gun----"

  "Keep it. There's a lot more difference than that between us. How close can you count seconds?"

  "Plus or minus five per cent, sir."

  "Close enough. Your first job will be to build some kind of a brute-force, belt-or-gear thing to act as a clock. You will really work. Any more insubordination or any malingering at all and I'll put you into a lifecraft and launch you into space, where you can make your own laws and be monarch of all you survey. Dismissed! Now--flit!"

  * * * * *

  Newman flitted--fast--and Barbara, turning to her husband, opened her mouth to speak and shut it. No, he would have killed the man; he would have had to. He still might have to. Wherefore she said instead: "Why'd you let him keep his pistol? The ... the slime! And after you actually saved his life, too!"

  "With some people what's past doesn't count. The other was just a gesture. Psychology. It'll slow him down, I think. Besides, he'd have another one as soon as we get back into the Procyon."

  "But you can lock up all their guns, can't you?" Bernice asked.

  "I'm afraid not. How about the other three, Herc?"

  "With thanks to you, Barbara, for the word; slime. If Lopresto is a financier, I'm an angel, with wings and halo complete. Gangsters; hoodlums; racketeers; you'd have to open every can of concentrate aboard to find all their spare artillery."

  "Check. The first thing to do is----"

  "One word first," Bernice put in. "I want to thank you, First Off--no, not First Officer, but I could hardly----"

  "Sure you can. I'm 'Babe' to us all, and you're 'Bun'. As to the other, forget it. You and I, Herc, will go over and----"

  "And I," Adams put in, definitely. "I must photograph everything, before it is touched; therefore I must be the first on board. I must do some autopsies and also----"

  "Of course. You're right," Deston said. "And if I haven't said it before, I'm tremendously glad to have a Big Brain along ... oh, excuse that crack, please, Dr. Adams. It slipped out on me."

  Adams laughed. "In context, I regard that as the highest compliment I have ever received. To you youngsters my advanced age of fifty-two represents senility. Nevertheless, you men need not 'Doctor' me. Either 'Adams' or 'Andy' will do very nicely. As for you two young women----"

  "I'm going to call you 'Uncle Andy'," Barbara said, with a grin. "Now, Uncle Andy, you being a Big Brain--the term being used in its most complimentary sense--and the way you talked, one of your eight doctorates is in medicine."

  "Of course."

  "Are you any good at obstetrics?"

  "In the present instance I am perfectly safe in saying----"

  "Wait a minute!" Deston snapped. "Bobby, you are not----"

  "I am too! That is, I don't suppose I am yet, since we were married only last Tuesday, but if he's competent--and I'm sure he is--I'm certainly going to! If we get back to Earth I want to, and if we don't, both Bun and I have got to. Castaways' Code, you know. So how about it, Uncle Andy?"

  "I know what you two girls are," Adams said, quietly. "I know what you two men must of necessity be. Therefore I can say without reservation that none of you need feel any apprehension whatever."

  Deston was about to say something, but Barbara forestalled him. "Well, we can think about it, anyway, and talk it over. But for right now, I think it's high time we all got some sleep. Don't you?"

  * * * * *

  It was; and they did; and after they had slept and had eaten "breakfast" the three men wafted themselves across a couple of hundred yards of space to the crippled starship. Powerful floodlights were rigged.

  "What ... a ... mess." Deston's voice was low and wondering. "The whole Top looks as though she'd crash-landed and spun out for eight miles. But the Middle and Tail look untouched."

  Inside, however, devastation had gone deep into the Middle. Bulkheads, walls, floors, structural members; were torn, sheared, twisted into weirdly-distorted shapes impossible to understand or explain. And, much worse, were the absences; for in dozens of volumes, of as many sizes and of shapes incompatible with any three-dimensional geometry, every solid thing had vanished--without leaving any clue whatever as to where or how it had gone.

  After three long days of hard work, Adams was satisfied. He had taken pictures as fast as both officers could process the film; he had covered many miles of tape with words only half of which either spaceman could understand. Then, finally, he said:

  "Well, that covers the preliminary observations as well as I know how to do it. Thank you, boys, for your forbearance and your help. Now, if you'll help me find my stuff and bring some of it--a computer and so on--up to the lounge?" They did so; the "and so on" proving to be a bewildering miscellany indeed. "Thank you immensely, gentlemen; now I won't bother you any more."

  "You've learned a lot, Doc, and we haven't learned much of anything." Deston grinned ruefully. "That makes you the director. You'll have to tell us, in general terms, what to do."

  "Oh? I can offer a few suggestions. It is virtually certain: One, that no subspace equipment will function. Two, that all normal-space equipment, except for some items you know about, will function normally. Three, that we can't do anything about subspace without landing on a planet. Four, that such landing will require extreme--I might almost say fantastic--precautions."
/>   Although both officers thought that they understood Item Four, neither of them had any inkling as to what Adams really meant. They did understand thoroughly, however, Items One, Two, and Three.

  "Hell's jets!" Deston exclaimed. "Do you mean we'll have to blast normal to a system?"

  "It isn't as bad as you think, Babe," Jones said. "Stars are much thicker here--we're in the center somewhere--than around Sol. The probability is point nine plus that any emergence would put us less than point four light-years away from a star. A couple of them show disks. I haven't measured any yet; have you, Doc?"

  "Yes. Point two two, approximately, to the closest."

  "So what?" Deston demanded. "What's the chance of it having an Earth-type planet?"

  "Any solid planet will do," Adams said. "Just so it has plenty of mass."

  "That's still quite a trip." Deston was coming around. "Especially since we can't use more than one point----"

  "One point zero gravities," Jones put in.

  "Over the long pull--and the women--you're right," Deston agreed, and took out his slide rule. "Let's see ... one gravity, plus and minus ... velocity ... time ... it'll take about eleven months?"

  "Just about," Jones agreed, and Adams nodded.

  "Well, if that's what the cards say, there's no use yowling about it," and all nine survivors went to work.

  Deston, besides working, directed the activities of all the others except Adams; who worked harder and longer than did anyone else. He barely took time out to eat and to sleep. Nor did either Deston or Jones ask him what he was doing. Both knew that it would take five years of advanced study before either of them could understand the simplest material on the doctor's tapes.

  III.

  The tremendous engines of the Procyon were again putting out their wonted torrents of power. The starship, now a mere spaceship, was on course at one gravity. The lifecraft were in their slots, but the five and the four still lived in them rather than in the vast and oppressive emptiness that the ship itself now was. And socially, outside of working hours, the two groups did not mix.