Takeoff!

by Randall Garrett

  He didn’t understand it until one evening when Devris broke into song. Durnbrowski was not in the little common room when it happened; he was in his own cabin.

  Devris was singing: “Old MacDonald had a ship, E,I,E,I,O! And on this ship, he had some ducks, E,I,E,I,O! With a Quack! Quack! here and a Quack! Quack! there, here a Quack! there a Quack! everywhere a Quack! Quack! Old MacDonald had a ship, E,I,E,I,O-O-O-O!”

  When he’d reached the part where he said “here a Quack!” he’d indicated Drake with a thumb. The doctor grinned good-humoredly. MacDonald was laughing uproariously.

  Devris had started with the second verse: “Old MacDonald got the itch, E,I,E,I,O!”

  “That’s a lie!” bellowed Dumbrowski’s voice from the door. They all stopped and looked at him. It was quite obvious that he had been hitting the Irish bottle.

  “No it isn’t, skipper,” Devris said. “He does have the itch.”

  “I mean about the ship! This is my ship! It ain’t Old MacDonald’s ship, or Drake’s ship, or the ducks’ ship! It’s my ship, and I’m captain here!” He swung around to Drake. “You understand that, Quack?”

  Drake didn’t mind Devris calling him that, but when Dumbrowski did, it made him see red. He stood up. “What makes you think I care who runs this dirty tub?”

  “Dirty tub! Who made it dirty? You! You and your carte blanche orders from the Commission!”

  MacDonald and Devris were both on their feet, moving to block off the captain.

  But Drake said: “Wait a minute! What’s all this about? What carte blanche? I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  Dumbrowski said something foul. Then he added: “And I don’t care what the Commission does, either! I’m captain here! See!” He turned back into his cabin and came out again with two sheets of flimsy. “Here!” He threw them at Drake. Then he slammed the door, leaving the three men alone.

  Drake picked up the papers and read them.

  “What does it say, Doc?” MacDonald asked.

  Drake looked up slowly. “He must have got this before takeoff. It says that Dr. Rouen Drake is entirely responsible for the cargo, and that any orders pertaining to the cargo should be obeyed.”

  Devris whistled softly. “Wow!”

  “No wonder he’s been sore!” MacDonald said.

  Drake swore, borrowing some of Dumbrowski’s vocabulary. “How stupid can they get! I swear to you, I didn’t ask for any such thing. I thought I was just bucking the skipper’s bullheadedness. I wonder why he didn’t say something about this before?”

  “He probably assumed you knew,” Devris said. “He should have said something about it though.”

  “I’m glad he didn’t,” Drake said softly. “I’ve learned a lot in the past eight and a half months.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was so stupid then that I might have tried to give orders.” Drake’s voice was very low.

  The captain of the cargo ship Stramaglia looked out of his control blister at the mass ahead.

  “It most certainly does not look like the Constanza,” he said, “I wonder what those things are sticking out allover it? And why is it painted white?”

  “Mayas well find out,” said his engineer. He held his helmet globe under his arm. “Jones and I will go over and take a look.”

  Captain Dumbrowski and his crew were waiting for the men from the Stramaglia as soon as they came in from the air lock, their spacesuits coated with white powder.

  Martin, the engineer, and Jones, the navigator of the rescue ship, were confronted by three tired-looking, almost emaciated men. The newcomers found one-point-five gees difficult to bear, but the men from the Constanza seemed to be used to it.

  “Don’t take your helmets off just yet,” Dumbrowski said. “The air pressure in here is pretty high. Let it leak in”.

  “O.K.,” said Martin. “By the way, what is that white stuff we got all over us. ?” At the same moment he cracked his helmet just a little, and a hissing jet of the ship’s atmosphere hit him in the face. He flinched. “And what’s that smell?”

  “Duck excrement,” said Dumbrowski, answering two questions with two syllables.

  “These two men are Lieutenant Devris, my navigator, and Dr. Drake, in charge of ducks. My engineer, MacDonald, is confined to quarters for being allergic to ducks.”

  “Uh...I...uh, yeah. Sure. Are you ready to start work on the control systems?”

  “Let’s go,” said Dumbrowski. “And mind the ducks.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind—come along.”

  “This place isn’t so bad,” said Devris. “It isn’t nearly as hot as I thought.”

  Dumbrowski looked around him at the scenery of Okeefenokee. Overhead hung drifts of clouds, through which a bright yellow sun blazed. “It isn’t as hot as it was on the ship. This is in the southern hemisphere; the ducks are to be set free farther north, nearer the equator.”

  “Have they got the ducks unloaded yet?”

  “Yeah,” said Dumbrowski. “Now they’re airing it out and washing it down.”

  The Constanza and the Stramaglia towered high over the little cluster of buildings around the planet’s one small spaceport. So far, the planet only had a population of eighty, and these were mostly ecologists and biologists studying the planet. It wouldn’t be fit to really colonize for a while yet.

  They had been on the planet less than twenty-four hours, but they had been ordered to return to Earth as soon as practicable—which meant immediately.

  MacDonald was walking toward Dumbrowski and Devris, holding a sheet of paper in his hand. “Communication from Earth,” he said, handing the sheet to the captain.

  Dumbrowski read it and said: “What the devil? Listen to this: ‘Excellent job on preserving shipment to Okeefenokee. Citation is being placed in your promotion file for job above and beyond call of duty. Congratulations.’” He looked wonderingly at MacDonald and Devris. “How could that be?”

  “Devris—tell him,” said MacDonald. “Drake worked it out,” Devris explained. “That stupid order wasn’t his idea. He didn’t even know anything about it. So he wrote a report that ought to keep the top brass from ever pulling a stunt like that again.”

  “But...but...how?”

  “They’d put him in charge of the cargo, hadn’t they? Well, remember Section XIX, Paragraph Seven?”

  “No.”

  “Well, Drake did after seeing it once. It says that the cargo officer is responsible for all damage due to shifting cargo, because it’s his job to make sure it doesn’t shift—follow? Well, technically, a duck is cargo in this case, and if it shifted—or walked, or flew—in such a way as to damage the ship, it’s the cargo officer’s fault. And that message you got from the Commission technically appointed him cargo officer. And that’s against regs, because the Constanza only rates a three-man crew. Drake tied ‘em up good.”

  “But what will they do to him?” MacDonald asked.

  Dumbrowski grinned. “Nothing. What can they do? He’s not a member of the Space Service.”

  “They could give him a commission and then bust him,” Devris said helpfully.

  The voyage home would be pure vacation. It would be cool and comfortable, and a one-gee pull all the way. Nothing to do but loaf and get soft after eighteen weeks of hell.

  The Constanza lifted comfortably from the surface of Okeefenokee and speared Earthwards at ten thousand light speeds.

  “Ahhhh!” said Dumbrowski. “Feel that air! Smell that air! Deelightfull! Open another beer.”

  “Glad to,” said Drake. “I am going to enjoy this trip.” Dumbrowski hadn’t apologized, and Drake hadn’t even worried about it. Each knew how the other felt.

  “I’m going to have to juggle my books,” Drake said, sipping at his beer. “Otherwise, I’ll get hell when we get home.”

  “How’s that?” Devris asked interestedly.

  “Evidently my egg count was off. I know how many ducks died en route�
��about average. But I must have miscounted the number of eggs that didn’t hatch. I was one short.”

  “What’ll they do? Charge you two thousand bucks for it?”

  “Nope. I’ll just add one to my bad egg count, that’s all.”

  “Damn!” said MacDonald. “I itch?” He scratched furiously at his arm.

  “Maybe there’s a duck feather around,” said Devris.

  Then they heard a far-off sound, and all four men stared at each other in horror. They knew, then, why MacDonald itched, and what had happened to the extra duck.

  The sound came again.

  Somewhere a duck quacked.

  MASTERS OF THE METROPOLIS

  By Randall Garret

  and Lin Carter

  Well, you see, it was like this:

  Lin Carter and I were having a few drinks one night.

  More than a few.

  Several.

  We were discussing Hugo Gernsback’s classic, Ralph 124C41+, the first novel written as science fiction, back in 1912. The term “science fiction” had not been invented yet, and would not be until Hugo Gernsback himself invented it in the Thirties. (He had previously invented the word “scientifiction,” but it didn’t work out right. If you want to research this, see the several works of my friend, Sam Moskowitz, one of the outstanding historians of science fiction.)

  Anyway, Lin pointed out that the trouble with Ralph was that the folk of the future were always so amazed at what was going on about them, whereas we, in the mid-fifties, were not. Lin was right. We, today, take scientific miracles for granted. The man on the street does not gawp at flights to the moon or the fantastic things computers can do.

  But—suppose he did!

  CHAPTER I

  The Journey Begins

  It was in the Eighth Month of the Year 1956 that Sam IM4 SF+ strode down the surging, crowded streets of Newark, one of the many cities of its kind in the State of New Jersey. He had just left his apartment in one of the vast, soaring pylons of the city. There. living in universal accord, hundreds of families dwelt side by side in the same great tower, one of many which loomed as many as forty stories above the street.

  He paused to board a bus which stopped at regularly-spaced intervals to take on new passengers. The bus, or Omnibus, was a streamlined, self-propelled public vehicle, powered by the exploding gases of distilled petroleum, ignited in a sealed cylinder by means of an electrical spark. The energy thus obtained was applied as torque to a long metal bar known as the “drive-shaft,” which turned a set of gears in a complex apparatus known as the “differential housing.” These gears, in turn, caused the rear wheels to revolve about their axes, thus propelling the vehicle forward smoothly at velocities as great as eighty miles every hour!

  Dropping a coin into the receptacle by the driver’s cubicle, and receiving a courteous welcome from the technician employed to pilot the machine, he took his seat inside the vehicle. Marveling anew at the luxurious comfort of the form-fitting seats, Sam IM4 SF+ gazed out of the window at the gorgeous spectacle of the city as it raced past.

  Within a very few moments, the vehicle decelerated to a smooth stop before Pennsylvania Station, a mammoth terminal where the far-flung lines of public transportation converged.

  Entering the great building, he paused to marvel anew at the inspiring architectural genius capable of erecting such an imposing monument to modern civilization—a building which would have struck with awe the simpler citizens of earlier times.

  Threading his way through the crowds which thronged the vaulted interior of the terminal, he came to a turnstile, an artifact not unlike a rimless wheel, whose spokes revolved to allow his passage. He placed a coin in the mechanism, and the marvelous machine—but one of the many mechanical marvels of the age—recorded his passage on a small dial and automatically added the value of his coin to the total theretofore accumulated. All this, mind, without a single human hand at the controls!

  Once past the turnstile, Sam IM4 SF+ followed the ingenious directional signs on the walls, which led him to a vast, artificially-lighted underground cavern. There he waited for his second conveyance to arrive.

  Sam IM4 SF+, a typical citizen of his age, towered a full six feet above the ground. His handsome face was crowned by a massive, intellectual forehead. His hair was dark and smooth, neatly trimmed to follow the contours of his skull. He was clad in complex and attractive garments, according to the fashion of his century. His trousers were woven of a fabric synthetically formulated from a clever mixture of chemicals, as was his coat, for these favored people no longer depended upon herds of domesticated quadrupeds for their raiment. These garments were fastened, not by buttons, but by an ingenious system of automatically interlocking metallic teeth known as a zipper.

  Suspended from his ears, a frame of stiff wires supported a pair of polished lenses before his eyes, which served not only to protect those orbs from the rushing winds that were a natural hazard of this Age of Speed, but also to implement his vision, lending it an almost telescopic power.

  As he stood on the platform, his sensitive ears detected the distant roar of a subway train. Gazing down the dark tunnel by whose egress the platform stood, he observed the cyclopean glare of the artificial light affixed to the blunt nose of the onrushing all-metallic projectile. The entire cavern reverberated to the roar of the vehicle as it emerged from the tunnel with a mighty rush of wind and braked smoothly to a dead stop before his very feet.

  The marvel of modern transportation which was to bear him on his journey to the great Metropolis of New York had arrived!

  CHAPTER II

  Aboard the Subway Train

  The automatic door slid open, and our hero entered the car and was offered a seat by one of the courteous, uniformed crewmembers.

  Pausing to marvel anew at this miracle of modern science, Sam IM4 SF+ turned to a fellow traveler and remarked conversationally: “Ah, fellow citizen; is it not wonderful to reflect that the same Energy which propels us through the very bowels of the Earth is identical with the lightning that flames in stormy skies, far above these Stygiall depths? For thousands of years, the simple peasants of a ruder age looked upon the lightning bolt as the awesome weapon of angry gods; little did they surmise that their descendants would one day chain this Gargantuan power and harness it to serve their will!”

  “How true!” remarked his companion. “And could one of them now be with us as we speed through this fantastic system of tunnels, would he not be struck dumb with terror and think us gods?”

  “Would he not, indeed,” smiled Sam, “commonplace though it is to us.”

  As they were speaking, the subway train sprang to life and plunged into the ebon mouth of another tunnel. In an instant, the vast, lighted cavern was lost to view, and the car was swallowed in the blackness of the tunnel, illuminated only by the colored lights set at intervals along the cavern walls as signals to the pilot.

  The mighty engine thundered through the darkness like some mythical monster of a bygone age. Sam, however, experienced no difficulty in observing his fellow passengers, since the interior of the vehicle was brilliantly illuminated by ingenious artificial lighting. These light bulbs consisted of cleverly blown globes of glass which contained a delicate and intricate filament of tungsten wire. Upon the application of sufficient electrical current, the wire heated up to many hundreds of degrees, thus emitting a bright and pleasant light. Indeed, so great was the temperature at which they operated, the globes were filled with inert gas in order to prevent even the highly refractive tungsten from burning in the air!

  Sam spent his time pleasantly by reading the various colorful and informative signs within the car. These advertisements portrayed the many necessities and luxuries which all citizens of this age might acquire. Each told of its own product in glowing, descriptive terms. Here. a poster told of a harmless chemical mixture which, when applied to the skin, destroyed the unpleasant body odors with which earlier ages had been plagued; there, another card told
of a confection which, when masticated, acted as a tooth-cleansing agent, thus serving as an aid to the buoyant health of the people of this era.

  Within a few minutes, the vehicle had passed beneath the rolling waters of the mighty Hudson River, and emerged from the darkness into another vast cavern, larger than, though similar to, the one in which our hero first boarded the conveyance.

  As the passengers emerged in orderly rows from the subway train, Sam joined them and thus beheld the awe-inspiring vastness of Grand Central Station. Breathtaking was the panorama that greeted his dazzled orbs as he joined the motley throng that surged and eddied beneath the tremendous dome. A traveler from an earlier age would have been confused and lost in the orderly chaos of the great terminal. Level upon level, tier upon tier, exit upon exit met the eye at every turn.

  But Sam IM4 SF+ was no stranger here; indeed, he gave scarcely a glance to the confusion through which he made his way. In a very few moments, he left the building to gaze in awe at the fantastic sight of the great Metropolis of New York, the hugest city ever constructed—vast, even on the mammoth scale of other cities of this advanced age.

  CHAPTER III

  Through the Vast Metropolis

  All about him soared the incredible towers, spires, pylons, monuments, buildings, palaces, temples, cathedrals, domes, and other breath-taking constructions of the Metropolis. Through its broad streets moved the traffic of the great city. Row on row of metallic projectiles called automobiles passed smoothly, silently, and swiftly through the streets. Powered by the same “internal combustion ‘engine” that powered the Omnibus, they were marvels of mechanical genius. So common were they to the favored children of this Mechanical Age that the gayly-costumed passersby scarcely gave them a glance, even when crossing the streets through which the autos ran.