Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  ‘Don’t talk silly.’ snapped Gleed. ‘A Moon-boat is the best a very rich man could afford. Puttering to and fro between a satellite and its primary is no fun when you’re used to Blieder-zips across the galaxy. The smallest space-going craft is far beyond reach of the wealthiest. Only governments can foot the bill for them.’

  ‘By “governments” you mean communities?’

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘Well, then, what are you going to treat yourself to when your space-roaming days are over?’

  ‘I’m not like Big Ears here.’ Gleed jerked an indicative thumb at Harrison. ‘I’m a trooper and not a technician. So my choice will be limited by my lack of qualifications.’ He scratched his head and looked wistful. ‘I was born and brought up on a farm. I still know a good deal about farming. So I think I’d like to get a small one of my own and settle down.’

  ‘Think you’ll manage to do it?’ asked Seth, watching him intently.

  ‘On Falder or Hygeia or Norton’s Pink Heaven or some other planet. But not on Terra. My savings won’t extend to that. I couldn’t find half enough to meet Earth costs.’

  ‘Meaning you can’t pile up sufficient obs?’

  ‘I can’t,’ agreed Gleed lugubriously. ‘Not even if I save until I’ve got a white beard four feet long.’

  ‘So that is Terra’s reward for a long, long spell of faithful service—forego your heart’s desire or get out?’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘I won’t,’ said Seth. ‘Why do you think four million Gands came here, Doukhobors and Naturists to Hygeia, Quakers and others to all their selected haunts? Because Terra’s reward for http://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.php - index

  good citizenship has always been a peremptory order to knuckle down or get out. So we got out.’

  Chapter 6

  The battleship’s caller-system bawled imperatively, ‘Fanshaw, Folsom, Fuller, Carson, Gleed, Gregory, Haines, Harrison, Hope—’ and so on down through the alphabet.

  A steady trickle of men flowed along the passages, catwalks and alleyways toward the forward chartroom. They gathered outside it in small clusters, chattering in undertones and sending odd scraps of conversation echoing down the corridor.

  ‘Wouldn’t say anything to us but, “Myob!” We became sick and tired of it after a while.’

  ‘You should have split up, like we did. That show-place on the outskirts just doesn’t know what a Terran looks like. I walked in and took a seat with no trouble at all.’

  ‘If ten of you stick together, all in the same uniform, you must expect to be identified on sight. That and your depraved faces is a complete giveaway.’

  ‘Did you hear about Meakin? He mended a leaky roof, chose a bottle of double-dith in payment and mopped the lot. He was dead flat when we found him. Snoring like a hog. Had to be carried back.’

  ‘Some guys have all the luck. We got the brush-off wherever we showed our faces. Man, it was wearing.’

  ‘You should have separated, like I said.’

  ‘Half the mess must still be lying in the gutter—they haven’t turned up yet.’

  ‘Grayder will be hopping mad. He’d have stopped this morning’s second quota if he’d known in time.’

  ‘When my turn comes the technique will be to get down that gangway and run like hell before they’ve a chance to call me back.’

  ‘Sammy, you’ll be mighty lucky if you get a turn.’ Every now and again First Mate Morgan stuck his head out of the chartroom doorway and yelled a name already voiced on the caller. Frequently there was no response.

  ‘Harrison!’ he bawled.

  With a puzzled expression, Harrison went inside. Captain Grayder was there seated behind his desk and gazing moodily at a list lying before him. Colonel Shelton was stiff and erect to one side with Major Hame slightly behind. Both wore the pained look of those tolerating a bad smell while a half-witted plumber searches in vain for the leak.

  In front of the desk the Ambassador was tramping steadily to and fro, muttering deep down in his chins. ‘Barely five days and already the rot has set in.’ He halted as Harrison entered, fired off sharply, ‘So it’s you, Mister. When did you return from leave?’

  ‘The evening before last, sir.’

  ‘Ahead of time, eh? That’s curious. Did you get a puncture or something?’

  ‘No sir. I didn’t take my bicycle with me.’

  ‘Which is just as well,’ approved the Ambassador. ‘If you had done so you’d now be a thousand miles away and still pushing hard.’

  ‘Why, sir?’

  ‘Why? He asks me why! That is precisely what I want to know—why?’ He fumed a bit, then inquired, ‘Did you visit this town by yourself or in company?’

  ‘I went with Sergeant Gleed, sir.’

  ‘Call him,’ ordered the Ambassador, looking at Morgan.

  Opening the door, Morgan shouted, ‘Gleed! Gleed!’

  No answer.

  He tried again, without result. Once more they put it over the caller-system. The name resounded all over the ship from nose to tail. Sergeant Gleed refused to be among those present.

  ‘Has he signed in?’

  Grayder consulted his list. ‘Yes. In early. Twenty-four hours ahead of time. He may have sneaked out again with the second liberty quota this morning and omitted to put it in the book. That’s a double crime.’

  ‘If he’s not on the ship he’s off the ship, crime or no crime.’

  ‘Yes, Your Excellency.’ Grayder registered slight weariness.

  ‘GLEED!’ howled Morgan outside the door. A moment later he poked his head within and said, ‘Your Excellency, one of the men tells me that Sergeant Gleed cannot be aboard because he saw him in town an hour ago.’

  ‘Send him in.’ The Ambassador made an impatient gesture at Harrison. ‘Stay where you are, Mister, and keep those confounded ears from flapping. I’ve not finished with you yet.’

  A tall, gangling grease-monkey came in, blinked around obviously awed by the assembly of top brass.

  ‘What do you know about Sergeant Gleed?’ demanded the Ambassador.

  The other nervously licked his lips, sorry that he had mentioned the missing man. ‘It’s like this, your honour,—’

  ‘Call me “sir.”.’

  ‘Yes, your honour.’ More disconcerted blinking. ‘I went out with the second party early this morning but came back a short time ago because my stomach was acting up. On the way here I saw Sergeant Gleed and spoke to him.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In town, your honour, sir. He was sitting in one of those big, long-distance coaches. I thought it a bit queer.’

  ‘Get down to the roots of it, man! What did he tell you, if anything?’

  ‘Not much, sir, your honour. He seemed pretty chipper about something. Mentioned a young widow struggling to look after two hundred acres. Someone had told him about her and he thought he’d take a peek.’ He hesitated, backed off warily and finished, ‘He also said that I’d see him in irons or never.’

  ‘One of your men,’ said the Ambassador to Shelton. ‘A hardened space-trooper, allegedly experienced, loyal and well-disciplined. One with long service, three stripes and a pension to lose.’ His attention returned to the informant. ‘Did he say exactly where he was going?’

  ‘No, sir, your. . . uh. I asked him but he grinned like an ape and said, “Myob!” So I came back to the ship.’

  ‘All right. You may go.’ The Ambassador watched the other depart then continued with Harrison.

  ‘You were one of that first quota?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Let me tell you something, Mister. Over four hundred men went out. About two hundred have returned. Forty of those were in various stages of alcoholic turpitude. Ten of them are locked in the brig yelling, “I won’t” in steady chorus. Doubtless they’ll continue to scream it until they’ve sobered up.’

  He stared at Harrison as if holding that worthy personally responsible for the mess, then went on, ‘There is
something paradoxical about this situation. I can understand the drunks. There are always a few morons who blow their tops first day on land. But of the two hundred who have condescended to come back about half returned before time, the same as you did. Their reasons were identical: the town was unfriendly, everyone treated them like ghosts until they’d had enough.’

  Harrison made no comment.

  ‘So we have two diametrically opposed reactions,’ the Ambassador complained. ‘One lot of men say the place stinks so much they’d far rather be back on the ship. Another lot finds the town so hospitable that either they get filled to the gills with some horrible muck called double-dith or they stay sober and desert the service. I want an explanation. There has to be one somewhere. You’ve been twice in this town. What can you tell us?’

  Carefully, Harrison said, ‘It all depends upon whether or not one is immediately recognizable as a Terran. Also on whether you happen to make contact with Gands who’d rather convert you than give you the brush-off.’ He pondered a few seconds, added, ‘Uniforms are a bad factor. The Gands seem to hate the sight of them.’

  ‘You mean they’re allergic to uniforms?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Any idea why?’

  ‘I couldn’t say for certain, sir. I don’t know enough about them yet. As a guess, 1 think they may have been taught to associate uniforms with the Terran regime from which their ancestors escaped.’

  ‘Escaped? Nonsense!’ exclaimed the Ambassador. ‘They grabbed the benefit of Terran inventions, Terran techniques, and Terran manufacturing ability to go someplace where they’d have more elbow- room.’ He gave Harrison the sour eye. ‘Don’t any of them wear uniforms?’

  ‘Not that I could recognize as such. They seem to take pleasure in expressing their individual personalities by wearing anything from pigtails to pink boots; oddity in attire is the norm among the Gands. To them, uniformity is the real oddity—they think it’s submissive and degrading.’

  ‘You refer to them as Gands. From where did they get that name?’

  Harrison told him, thinking back to Elissa and her explanation. In his mind’s eye he could see her now. And Seth’s place with its inviting tables and steam rising behind the counter and mouth-watering smells oozing from the background. Now that he came to visualize the scene again it appeared to embody a subtle, elusive but essential something that the ship had never possessed.

  ‘And this person,’ he concluded, ‘invented what they call The Weapon.’

  ‘H’m-m-m! And they say he was a Terran, eh? What did he look like? Did you see a photograph or statue?’

  ‘They don’t erect statues, sir. They don’t consider that any person is more important than any other.’

  ‘Bunkum!’ snapped the Ambassador, instinctively rejecting that viewpoint. ‘Did it occur to you to gather any revealing details about him or, at least, find out at what period in history this wonderful weapon first appeared?’

  ‘No, sir,’ confessed Harrison. ‘I didn’t think it important.’

  ‘You wouldn’t. Some of you men are too slow to catch a Callistrian sloth wandering in its sleep. I don’t criticize your abilities as spacemen but as intelligence-agents you’re a dead loss.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Harrison.

  Sorry? You louse! whispered something deep within his own mind. Why should you be sorry? He’s only a pompous fat man who couldn’t cancel an ob if he tried. He’s no better than you. Those raw boys prancing around on Hygeia would maintain that he’s not as good as you because he’s got a pot-belly. Yet you keep staring at his pot-belly and saying, ‘Sir ’and, ‘I’m sorry.’ If he tried to ride your bike he’d fall off before he’d gone ten yards. He’s just another Terran freak. Go spit in his eye and say, I won’t! ’You’re not scared, are you?

  ‘No!’ announced Harrison, loudly and emphatically.

  Captain Grayder glanced up in surprise. ‘If you’re going to start answering questions before they’ve been asked, you’d better see the medic. Or have we a telepath on board?’

  ‘I was thinking,’ Harrison said.

  ‘I approve of that,’ put in the Ambassador. He lugged a couple of huge tomes off the wall-shelves, began to thumb rapidly through them. ‘Do plenty of thinking whenever you’ve the chance and it will become a habit. It will get easier and easier in time until eventually a day may come when it can be performed without great pain.’

  Shoving the books back, be pulled out two more, spoke to Major Hame who happened to be at his elbow. ‘Don’t pose there glassy-eyed like a relic propped up in a military museum. Lend a hand with this mountain of knowledge. I want Gandhi, anywhere from four hundred to a thousand Earth-years ago.’

  Hame came to life, started dragging out books and searching through them. So did Colonel Shelton. Grayder remained at his deck and continued to mourn the missing.

  ‘Ah, here it is, nearly six hundred years back.’ The Ambassador ran a plump finger along the printed lines. ‘Gandhi, sometimes called Bapu, or Father. Citizen of Hindi. Politico-philosopher. Opposed authority by means of an ingenious system called Civil Disobedience. Last remnants disappeared with the Great Explosion but may still persist on some planet out of contact.’

  ‘Evidently it does,’ commented Grayder dryly.

  ‘Civil disobedience,’ repeated the Ambassador, screwing up his eyes. He had the air of trying to study something turned upside-down and inside-out. ‘They can’t make that a social basis. It just won’t work.’

  ‘It does work,’ asserted Harrison, forgetting to put in the sir.

  ‘Are you contradicting me, Mister?’

  ‘I’m stating a fact.’

  ‘Your Excellency,’ put in Grayder, ‘I suggest—’

  ‘Leave this to me.’ His colour deepening, the Ambassador waved him away. His gaze remained angrily on Harrison. ‘You are very far from being an expert upon socio-economic problems. Get that into your head, Mister. Anyone of your calibre can be fooled by superficial appearances.’

  ‘It works,’ persisted Harrison, finding cause to marvel at his own stubbornness.

  ‘So does your damnfool bicycle. You’ve a bicycle mentality.’ Something snapped and a voice remarkably like his own said, ‘Nuts!’ Astounded by this phenomenon, Harrison waggled his ears.

  ‘What was that, Mister?’

  ‘Nuts!’ he repeated, feeling that what has been done cannot be undone.

  Beating the purpling Ambassador to the draw, Grayder stood up, his expression severe, and exercized his own authority.

  ‘Regardless of further leave-quotas, if any, you are confined to the ship. Now get out!’

  Harrison departed, his mind in a whirl but his soul strangely satisfied. Outside, First Mate Morgan glowered at him.

  ‘How long d’you think it’s going to take me to work through this list of names when guys like you squat in there for a week?’ He grunted with ire, cupped hands around his mouth and bellowed, ‘Hope! Hope!’

  No reply.

  ‘Hope’s been abandoned,’ informed Trooper Kinvig. ‘That’s really funny,’ sneered Morgan. ‘Look at me rolling all over the deck.’ He cupped hands again and tried the next name. ‘Hyland! Hyland!’

  No response.

  Four more days, long, tedious, dragging ones. That made nine in all since the battleship formed the rut in which it was still sitting.

  There was trouble on board. Put off repeatedly, the third and fourth leave-quotas were becoming impatient, irritable.

  ‘Morgan showed him the third roster again this morning. Same result. Grayder was forced to admit that this world cannot be defined as hostile and that we’re legally entitled to run free.’

  ‘Well, why the blazes doesn’t he keep to the book? The Space Committee could crucify him for ignoring it.’

  ‘Same excuse. He says he’s not denying leave, he’s merely postponing it. That’s a crafty evasion, isn’t it? He says he’ll allow us to go out immediately the missing men come back.’

&nbs
p; ‘That might be never. Darn him, he’s using them as a pretext to gyp me out of my liberty.’

  It was a powerful and legitimate complaint. Weeks, months, years of close confinement in a constantly vibrating metal bottle, no matter how big and comfortable, demands ultimate release. Men need fresh air, the good earth, the broad, clear-cut horizon, bulk-food, feminine companionship, new faces.

  ‘He would ram home the stopper just when we’ve learned the best way to get around. Civilian clothes and behave like Gands, that’s the secret. Even the first-quota boys are ready for another try.’

  ‘Grayder daren’t take the risk. He’s lost too many men already. One more quota cut in half and he won’t have sufficient crew to lift the ship and take it home. We’d be stuck here for keeps. How’d you like that, freak?’

  ‘I wouldn’t grieve.’

  ‘He could train the bureaucrats to run the ship. It’s high time those myopic bums did some honest work.’

  ‘That would take three years. Your training lasted three years, didn’t it?’

  Harrison came along holding a small envelope. Three of them picked on him at sight.

  ‘Look who sauced His Loftiness and got confined to ship—same as us.’

  ‘That’s what I like about it,’ observed Harrison. ‘Better to be fastened down for something than for nothing.’

  ‘It won’t be for much longer, you’ll see! We’re not going to hang around bellyaching for ever. Mighty soon we’ll do something.’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘We’re thinking it over,’ evaded the other, not liking to be taken up so quickly. He noticed the envelope. ‘What’s that you’ve got there?—the morning mail?’

  ‘Exactly that,’ Harrison agreed.

  ‘Have it your own way. I wasn’t being nosey. I thought perhaps you’d got some more written orders. You engineers usually pick up the paper-stuff first.’

  ‘It is mail,’ said Harrison.

  ‘Don’t be daft. Nobody receives letters in this part of the cosmos.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Well, how did you get that one?’