Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  ‘Worrall brought it in from town a few minutes ago. A friend of mine gave him dinner and let him bring the letter to wipe out the ob.’ He pulled a large ear and smirked at them. ‘Influence, that’s what you boys need.’

  Showing annoyance, one demanded, ‘What’s Worrall doing off the boat? Is he privileged?’

  ‘In a way. He’s married and has three kids.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘The Ambassador figures that some people can be trusted more than others. They’re not as likely to disappear, having too much to lose. So a few have been sorted out and sent into town to seek information about the missing ones.’

  ‘Have they found out anything?’

  ‘Not much. Worrall says the quest is sheer waste of time. He traced a few of our men here and there, tried to persuade them to return but each said, “I won’t.” The Gands all said, “Myob!” And that was that.’

  ‘There must be something in this Gand business,’ said one of them thoughtfully. ‘I’d give a lot to look into it for myself.’

  ‘That’s what Grayder is afraid of.’

  ‘We’ll give him more than that to worry about if he doesn’t become reasonable pretty soon. Our patience is evaporating fast.’

  ‘Mutinous talk,’ Harrison reproved. He shook his head and displayed great sorrow. ‘You fellows shock me.’

  Continuing along the corridor, he reached his tiny cabin, fingered the envelope in pleased anticipation. The writing inside might be feminine. He hoped so. Tearing it open, he had a look. It wasn’t.

  Signed by Gleed, the missive said, ‘Never mind where I am or what I’m doing—this note might get into the wrong hands. All I’ll tell you is that I expect to be fixed up topnotch providing I wait a decent interval to improve acquaintance. The rest of this directly concerns you.’

  ‘Huh?’ He lay back on his bunk and held the letter nearer the light. ‘I found a little fat guy running an empty shop. He does nothing but sit there waiting. Next, I learned that he has established possession by occupation of the premises. He’s doing it on behalf of a factory that makes two-ball rollers, you know, those fan-driven motor-bikes. They want someone to operate the place as a local roller sales and service depot. The little fat man has had four applications to date but none from anyone with engineering ability and experience. The one who eventually gains this post will thereby plant a functional ob on the town, whatever that means. Anyway, this lovely business proposition is measured to your size. It’s yours for the taking. Don’t be freaky, freak. Jump in with me—the water’s fine!’

  ‘Zipping meteors!’ said Harrison. His eyes moved on to the footnote at bottom.

  ‘P.S. Seth will give you the address. P.P.S. This place where I am right now is your brunette’s home town and she’s thinking of coming back. She wants to live near her sister. So do I, man! The said sister is a honey!’

  Stirring restlessly, he read it through a second time and a third, got up and paced around the cabin.

  There were sixteen hundred occupied worlds within the scope of the Terran Empire. He’d seen less than one-twentieth of them. No spaceman could live long enough to visit the lot. The service was divided into cosmic groups each dealing with its own relatively small section of the galaxy.

  Except by hearsay—of which there was plenty and most of it highly coloured—he would never know what heavens or pseudo-heavens existed in the other sections. In any case, it would be a blind gamble to pick on an unfamiliar world for landbound life solely on somebody else’s recommendation. Not all think alike or have the same tastes. One man’s meat may be another’s poison.

  The choice for retirement—which was the ugly name for beginning another, different but vigorous life—was high-priced Terra or some more desirable planet in his own section. There was the Epsilon group, for instance, fourteen of them, all attractive providing you could suffer the gravity and endure lumbering around like a tired elephant. And there was Norton’s Pink Paradise if, for the sake of getting by in peace, you could pander to Septimus Norton’s rajah-complex and put up with his delusions of grandeur.

  Out near the edge of the Milky Way was a matriarchy bossed by blonde Amazons, and a world of self-styled wizards, and a Pentecostal planet, and a globe where semi-sentient vegetables cultivated themselves in obedience to human masters. All these scattered across many light-years of space but readily accessible by Blieder-drive.

  There were more than fifty known to him by personal experience, though only a tithe of the whole. All offered life and that human company which is the essence of life. But this world of the Gands had something all the others lacked; it had the quality of being present, in the here and now. It was part of the existing environment from which he drew data on which to build his decisions. The others were not. They lost virtue by being absent and far away.

  Quietly he made his way to the Blieder-room lockers, spent an hour cleaning and oiling his bicycle. Twilight was approaching when he returned. Taking a thin plaque from his pocket, he hung it on the wall, lay on his bunk and contemplated it.

  F.—I.W.

  The caller-system clicked, cleared its throat and announced, ‘All personnel will stand by for general instructions at eight hours tomorrow.’

  ‘I won’t,’ said Harrison, and closed his eyes.

  It was seven-twenty in the morning but nobody thought it early. There is little sense of earliness or lateness among space-roamers; to regain it they have to be landbound a month, watching a sun rise and set.

  The chartroom was empty but there was considerable activity in the control-cabin. Grayder was there with Shelton and Hame, also Chief Navigators Adamson, Werth and Yates, and, of course, His Excellency.

  ‘I never thought the day would come,’ groused the latter, scowling at the star-map over which the navigators pored. ‘Less than a couple of weeks and we retreat, admitting complete defeat.’

  ‘With all respect, Your Excellency, it doesn’t look like that to me,’ said Grayder. ‘One can be defeated only by avowed enemies. These people are not enemies. That is where, they’ve got us by the short hairs. They’re not definable as hostile.’

  ‘That may be. I still say it’s defeat. What else can you call it?’

  ‘We’ve been outwitted by awkward relatives. There’s nothing we can do about it. A man doesn’t beat up his nephews and nieces merely because they refuse to speak to him.’

  ‘That is your viewpoint as a ship’s commander. You have been confronted with a situation that requires you to return to base and report. It’s routine. The entire space service is hidebound with routine.’ The Ambassador again eyed the star map as if he considered it offensive. ‘My own status is different. If I get out without so much as leaving a consul, it’s diplomatic defeat, an insult to the dignity and prestige of Terra. I’m far from sure that I ought to go. It might be better if I stayed put even though circumstances would prevent me from functioning effectively and even though my presence would give these Gands endless opportunities for further insults.’

  ‘I wouldn’t presume to advise you what to do for the best,’ Grayder said. ‘All I know is this: we carry troops and armaments for any protective or policing purposes that might be necessary here. But we cannot use them offensively against the Gands because they have provided no real excuse for doing so, also because we cannot influence a government that doesn’t exist, and also because our full strength isn’t enough to crush a population numbering many millions. We’d need an armada to make an impression upon this world. Even then we’d be fighting at the extreme limit of our reach and the reward of victory would be an area of destruction not worth having.’

  ‘Don’t remind me. I have examined the problem from every angle until I’m sick of it.’

  Grayder shrugged. He was a man of action so long as it was action in deep space. Planetary shenanigans were not properly his responsibility. Now that the decisive moment was drawing near, when he would be back in his own attenuated element, he was becoming phlegmatic. To him, the
Gand world was a visiting-place among a big number of them. And there were plenty more to come.

  ‘Your Excellency, if you’re in serious doubt about remaining here or returning with us, I’d appreciate it if you’d reach a decision fairly soon. First Mate Morgan has given me the tip that if I haven’t approved the third leave-quota by ten o’clock the men intend to take matters into their own hands and walk out.’

  ‘That kind of conduct would get them into trouble of a really hot kind, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know, really I just don’t know,’ confessed Grayder.

  ‘You mean they can actually defy you and get away with it?’

  ‘Their idea is to turn my own quibbling against me. Since I’ve said repeatedly that I’m not officially forbidding leave, a walk-out cannot be construed as mutiny. As you know, Your Excellency, I have been postponing leave. Therefore the men could plead before the Space Committee that I have ignored regulations. It is quite possible that the plea might succeed if the Space Committee happened to be in the mood to assert its authority.’

  ‘The Space Committee ought to be taken on a few long flights,’ opined the Ambassador. ‘They’d discover a lot of things they’ll never learn behind a desk.’ He became mockingly hopeful. ‘How about us accidentally dropping our cargo of bureaucrats overboard on the way home? Such a misfortune should benefit the spaceways if not humanity in general.’

  ‘The suggestion strikes me as Gandish,’ said Grayder.

  ‘The Gands wouldn’t think of it. Their one and only technique is to say no, no, a thousand times no. That’s all. But to judge by what has happened here it is more than enough.’

  Morosely, the Ambassador pondered his predicament decided, ‘I’m coming with you. It goes against the grain because it smacks of abject surrender. To stay would be a defiant gesture but I have to face the fact that it wouldn’t serve any useful purpose at the present stage.’

  ‘Would you like us to return you to Hygeia?’

  ‘No. The consul there is welcome to that crowd of nakes. Besides, I think I should give Terra the benefit of my personal report about this trip.’

  ‘Very well, Your Excellency.’ Going to a port, Grayder looked through it toward the town. ‘We have lost approximately four hundred men. Some of them have deserted for keeps. The others will return in their own good time and if I wait long enough. The latter have struck lucky, got their legs under somebody’s table and are likely to extend their leave for as long as the fun lasts. They’ll come back when it suits them, thinking they may as well be hung for sheep as for lambs. I have that sort of trouble on every long trip. It isn’t so bad on the short ones.’ Moodily he surveyed a terrain bare of returning prodigals. ‘But we dare not wait for them. Not here.’

  ‘No, I reckon not.’

  ‘If we hang around much longer we’re going to lose another two hundred. There won’t be enough skilled men to take the boat up. The only way in which I can beat them to the draw is to give the order to prepare for take-off. They’ll all come under flight regulations from that moment.’ He put on a pained smile. ‘That will give the space-lawyers among them plenty to think about.’

  ‘All right, make the order as soon as you like,’ approved the Ambassador. He joined the other at the port, studied the distant road, watched three Gand coaches whirl along it without stopping. He frowned, still upset by the type of mind which insists on pretending that a metal mountain is not there. Then his attention turned aside toward the tail-end. ‘What are those men doing outside?’

  Shooting a swift glance in the same direction, Grayder grabbed the caller-microphone and rapped, ‘All personnel will prepare for take-off at once!’ Then he seized his intercom phone and spoke on that. ‘Who’s there? Sergeant Major Bidworthy? Look, Sergeant Major, there are half a dozen men loafing outside the midway lock. Order them in immediately—we’re lifting as soon as everything is ready.’

  By now the fore and aft gangways had been rolled into their stowage spaces. The midway one swiftly followed. Some fast-thinking quartermaster prevented further escapes by operating the midship ladder-wind, thus trapping Bidworthy along with an unknown number of would-be sinners.

  Finding himself stalled by the fifty-foot drop, Bidworthy stood in the rim of the airlock and glared at those outside. His moustache not only bristled, but quivered. Five of the objects of his fierce attention had been members of the first leave-quota. One of them was Trooper Casartelli. That got Bidworthy’s rag out, a trooper. The sixth was Harrison, complete with bicycle polished and shining.

  Searing the lot of them, especially the trooper, Bidworthy grated, ‘Get back on board. No funny business. We’re about to go up.’

  ‘Hear that Mortimer?’ asked one, nudging the nearest. ‘Get back on board. If you can’t jump fifty feet you’d better flap your arms and fly.’

  ‘No sauce from you,’ roared Bidworthy. ‘I have my orders.’

  ‘Ye gods, he actually takes orders! At his age!’

  Bidworthy scrabbled at the lock’s smooth rim in vain search of something to grasp. A ridge, a knob, any kind of projection was needed to help take the strain.

  ‘I warn you men that if you try me too—’

  ‘Quiet, freak.’

  ‘Save your breath, Rufus,’ put in Casartelli. ‘From now on I’m a Gand.’ With that, he turned away and walked rapidly toward the road. Four followed him.

  Getting astride his bike, Harrison put a foot on the pedal. His back tyre promptly sank with a loud whee-e-e.

  ‘Come back!’ howled Bidworthy at the retreating five. ‘Come back!’ He made extravagant motions, tried to tear the ladder from its automatic grips. A siren keened thinly inside the vessel and that upped his agitation by several ergs.

  ‘Hear that?’ His expression murderous, he watched Harrison calmly tighten the rear valve and apply a hand-pump. ‘We’re about to lift. For the last time—’

  Again the siren, this time in a rapid series of shrill toots. Bidworthy jumped backward as the airlock seal came down. The lock closed. Harrison again mounted his machine, settled a foot on a pedal but remained watching.

  The metal monster shivered from nose to tail then arose slowly and in complete silence. There was stately magnificence in this ascent of such enormous bulk. The ship gradually increased its rate of climb, went faster, faster, became a toy, a dot, and finally disappeared.

  For a brief moment Harrison felt a touch of doubt, a hint of regret. It soon passed away. He glanced toward the road.

  The five self-elected Gands had thumbed a coach which was now picking them up. That was helpfulness apparently precipitated by the ship’s vanishing. Quick on the uptake, these people. He saw it move off on huge rubber balls bearing the five with it. A fan-cycle raced in the opposite direction, hummed into the distance.

  ‘Your brunette,’ was how Gleed had described her. What had given him that idea? Had she made some remark that he’d construed as complimentary because it had contained no reference to outsize ears?

  He had a last look around. The earth bore a great curved rut one mile long by ten feet deep. Two thousand Terrans had been there.

  Then about eighteen hundred.

  Then sixteen hundred.

  Less five.

  ‘One left’, he said to himself. ‘Me.’

  Giving a fatalistic shrug, he put on the pressure and rode to town.http://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.php - index

  And then there were none.

  EDMOND HAMILTON

  A popular author of science fiction stories and novels during the mid-twentieth century. Born in Youngstown, Ohio, he was raised there and in nearby New Castle, Pennsylvania. Something of a child prodigy, he graduated high school and started college (Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pennsylvania) at the age of 14–but washed out at 17.

  His career as a science fiction writer began with the publication of the story, "The Monster God of Mamurth," which appeared in the August 1926 issue of the classic magazine of alternative fiction, Weir
d Tales. Hamilton quickly became a central member of the remarkable group of Weird Tales writers assembled by editor Farnsworth Wright, that included H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. Hamilton would publish 79 works of fiction in Weird Tales between 1926 and 1948, making him one of the most prolific of the magazine's contributors (only Seabury Quinn and August Derleth appeared more frequently). Hamilton became a friend and associate of several Weird Tales veterans, including E. Hoffmann Price and Otis Adelbert Kline; most notably, he struck up a 40-year friendship with close contemporary Jack Williamson, as Williamson records in his 1984 autobiography Wonder's Child. In the late 1930s Weird Tales printed several striking fantasy tales by Hamilton, most notably "He That Hath Wings" (July 1938), one of his most popular and frequently-reprinted pieces.

  Through the late 1920s and early '30s Hamilton wrote for all of the SF pulp magazines then publishing, and contributed horror-thriller stories to various other magazines as well. He was very popular as an author of space opera, a sub-genre he created along with E.E. "Doc" Smith. His story "The Island of Unreason" (Wonder Stories, May 1933) won the first Jules Verne Prize as the best SF story of the year (this was the first SF prize awarded by the votes of fans, a precursor of the later Hugo Awards). In the later 1930s, in response to the economic strictures of the Great Depression, he also wrote detective and crime stories. In the 1940s, Hamilton was the primary force behind the "Captain Future" franchise, an SF pulp designed for juvenile readers that won him many fans, but diminished his reputation in later years when science fiction moved away from its space-opera roots. Hamilton was always associated with an extravagant, romantic, high-adventure style of SF, perhaps best represented by his 1947 novel The Star Kings. As the SF field grew more sophisticated, his brand of extreme adventure seemed ever more quaint, corny, and dated.

  In 1946 Hamilton began writing for DC Comics, specializing in stories for their characters Superman and Batman. One of his best known Superman stories was "Superman Under the Red Sun" which appeared in Action Comics #300 in 1963 and which has numerous elements in common with his novel City At World's End (1951). He wrote other works for DC Comics, including the short-lived science fiction series Chris KL-99 (in Strange Adventures), which was loosely based on his Captain Future character. He retired from comics in 1966.