(1/15) The Golden Age of Science Fiction: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

by Various

  "It is obvious, therefore, that every one of the indicators points in the same direction. The City was not--could not have been--self-supporting. There is no source of organic material on the planet great enough to support such a city; therefore, foodstuffs must have been imported. On the other hand, it is necessary to postulate some reason for establishing a city on an otherwise barren planet and populating it with an estimated six hundred thousand individuals.

  "There can be only one answer: The race that built the City did so for the same reason that human beings built such megalopolises as New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and London--because it was a focal point for important trade routes. Only such trade routes could support such a city; only such trade routes give reason for the City's very existence.

  "And when those trade routes changed or were supplanted by others in the course of time, the reason for the City's existence vanished."

  Turnbull closed the book and shoved it back into place. Certainly the theory made sense, and had for a century. Had Duckworth come across information that would seem to smash that theory?

  The planet itself seemed to be perfectly constructed for a gigantic landing field for interstellar ships. It was almost flat, and if the transhipping between the interstellar vessels had been done by air, there would be no need to build a hard surface for the field. And there were other indications. Every fact that had come to light in the ensuing century had been in support of the Greek-German xenologist's theory.

  Had Duckworth come up with something new?

  If so, why had he decided to discard it and forget his new theory?

  If not, why had he formulated the new theory, and on what grounds?

  Turnbull lit a cigarette and looked sourly at the smoke that drifted up from its tip. What the devil was eating him? He'd spent too much time away from Earth, that was the trouble. He'd been too deeply immersed in his study of Lobon for the past year. Now all he had to do was get a little hint of something connected with cultural xenology, and his mind went off on dizzy tizzies.

  Forget it. Duckworth had thought he was on to something, found out that he wasn't, and discarded the whole idea. And if someone like Scholar James Duckworth had decided it wasn't worth fooling with, then why was a common Ph. D. like Turnbull worrying about it? Especially when he had no idea what had started Duckworth off in the first place.

  And his thoughts came back around to that again. If Duckworth had thought enough of the idea to get excited over it, what had set him off? Even if it had later proved to be a bad lead, Turnbull felt he'd like to know what had made Duckworth think--even for a short time--that there was some other explanation for the City.

  Ah, hell! He'd ask Duckworth some day. There was plenty of time.

  He went over to the phone, dialed a number, and sat down comfortably in his fat blue overstuffed chair. It buzzed for half a minute, then the telltale lit up, but the screen remained dark.

  "Dave!" said a feminine voice. "Are you back? Where on Earth have you been?"

  "I haven't," said Turnbull. "How come no vision?"

  "I was in the hammam, silly. And what do you mean 'I haven't'? You haven't what?"

  "You asked me where on Earth I'd been, and I said I haven't."

  "Oh! Lucky man! Gallivanting around the starways while us poor humans have to stay home."

  "Yeah, great fun. Now look, Dee, get some clothes on and turn on your pickup. I don't like talking to gray screens."

  "Half a sec." There was a minute's pause, then the screen came on, showing the girl's face. "Now, what do you have on your purported mind?"

  "Simple. I've been off Earth for a year, staring at bearded faces and listening to baritone voices. If it isn't too short notice, I'd like to take you to dinner and a show and whatever else suggests itself afterward."

  "Done!" she said. "What time?"

  "Twenty hundred? At your place?"

  "I'll be waiting."

  Dave Turnbull cut the circuit, grinning. The Duckworth problem had almost faded from his mind. But it flared back up again when he glanced at the mail tubes on his desk.

  "Damn!" he said.

  He turned back to the phone, jammed a finger into the dial and spun it angrily. After a moment, the screen came to life with the features of a beautifully smiling but obviously efficient blond girl.

  "Interstellar Communications. May I serve you, sir?"

  "How long will it take to get a message to Mendez? And what will it cost?"

  "One moment, sir." Her right hand moved off-screen, and her eyes shifted to look at a screen that Turnbull couldn't see. "Mendez," she said shortly. "The message will reach there in five hours and thirty-six minutes total transmission time. Allow an hour's delay for getting the message on the tapes for beaming.

  "The cost is one seventy-five per symbol. Spaces and punctuation marks are considered symbols. A, an, and, and the are symbols."

  Turnbull thought a moment. It was high--damned high. But then a man with a bona fide Ph. D. was not exactly a poor man if he worked at his specialty or taught.

  "I'll call you back as soon as I've composed the message," he said.

  "Very well, sir."

  He cut the circuit, grabbed a pencil and started scribbling. When he'd finished reducing the thing to its bare minimum, he started to dial the number again. Then he scowled and dialed another number.

  This time, a mild-faced young man in his middle twenties appeared. "University of California in Los Angeles. Personnel Office. May I serve you?"

  "This is Dr. Dave Turnbull, in New York. I understand that Scholar Duckworth is on leave. I'd like his present address."

  The young man looked politely firm. "I'm sorry, doctor; we can not give out that information."

  "Oh, yap! Look here; I know where he is; just give me--" He stopped. "Never mind. Let me talk to Thornwald."

  Thornwald was easier to deal with, since he knew both Duckworth and Turnbull. Turnbull showed him Duckworth's letter on the screen. "I know he's on Mendez; I just don't want to have to look all over the planet for him."

  "I know, Dave. I'm sure it's all right. The address is Landing City, Hotel Byron, Mendez."

  "Thanks, Thorn; I'll do you a favor some day."

  "Sure. See you."

  Turnbull cut off, dialed Interstellar Communications, sent his message, and relaxed. He was ready to make a night of it. He was going to make his first night back on Earth a night to remember.

  He did.

  * * * * *

  The next morning, he was feeling almost flighty. He buzzed and flitted around his apartment as though he'd hit a high point on a manic cycle, happily burbling utter nonsense in the form of a perfectly ridiculous popular song.

  My dear, the merest touch of you Has opened up my eyes; And if I get too much of you, You really paralyze! Donna, Donna, bella Donna, Clad in crimson bright, Though I'm near you, I don't wanna See the falling shades of night!

  Even when the phone chimed in its urgent message, it didn't disturb his frothy mood. But three minutes later he had dropped down to earth with a heavy clunk.

  His message to Mendez had not been delivered. There was not now, and never had been a Scholar James Duckworth registered at the Hotel Byron in Landing City. Neither was his name on the incoming passenger lists at the spaceport at Landing City.

  He forced himself to forget about it; he had a date with Dee again that night, and he was not going to let something silly like this bother him. But bother him it did. Unlike the night before, the date was an utter fiasco, a complete flop. Dee sensed his mood, misinterpreted it, complained of a headache, and went home early. Turnbull slept badly that night.

  Next morning, he had an appointment with one of the executives of U.C.L.I.--University of Columbia in Long Island--and, on the way back he stopped at the spaceport to see what he could find out. But all he got was purely negative information.

  On his way back to Manhattan, he sat in the autocab and fumed.

  When he reached home, he stalked around
the apartment for an hour, smoking half a dozen cigarettes, chain fashion, and polishing off three glasses of Bristol Cream without even tasting it.

  Dave Turnbull, like any really top-flight investigator, had developed intuitive thinking to a fine art. Ever since the Lancaster Method had shown the natural laws applying to intuitive reasoning, no scientist worthy of the name failed to apply it consistently in making his investigations. Only when exact measurement became both possible and necessary was there any need to apply logic to a given problem.

  A logician adds two and two and gets four; an intuitionist multiplies them and gets the same answer. But a logician, faced with three twos, gets six--an intuitionist gets eight. Intuition will get higher orders of answers from a given set of facts than logic will.

  Turnbull applied intuition to the facts he knew and came up with an answer. Then he phoned the New York Public Library, had his phone connected with the stacks, and spent an hour checking for data that would either prove or disprove his theory. He found plenty of the former and none of the latter.

  Then he called his superiors at Columbia.

  He had to write up his report on the Lobon explorations. Would it be possible for him to take a six-month leave of absence for the purpose?

  It would.

  The following Saturday, Dr. Dave F. Turnbull was on the interstellar liner Oriona, bound for Sirius.

  * * * * *

  If ever there was a Gold Mine In The Sky, it was Centaurus City. To the cultural xenologists who worked on its mysterious riches, it seemed to present an almost inexhaustible supply of new data. The former inhabitants had left everything behind, as though it were no longer of any value whatever. No other trace of them had as yet been found anywhere in the known galaxy, but they had left enough material in Centaurus City to satisfy the curiosity of Mankind for years to come, and enough mystery and complexity to whet that curiosity to an even sharper degree.

  It's difficult for the average person to grasp just how much information can be packed into a city covering ten thousand square miles with a population density equal to that of Manhattan. How long would it take the hypothetical Man From Mars to investigate New York or London if he had only the City to work with, if he found them just as they stand except that the inhabitants had vanished?

  The technological level of the aliens could not be said to be either "above" or "below" that of Man: it could only be said to be "different." It was as if the two cultures complemented each other; the areas of knowledge which the aliens had explored seemed to be those which Mankind had not yet touched, while, at the same time, there appeared to be many levels of common human knowledge which the aliens had never approached.

  From the combination of the two, whole new fields of human thought and endeavor had been opened.

  No trace of the alien spaceships had been uncovered, but the anti-gravitational devices in their aircraft, plus the basic principles of Man's own near-light-velocity drive had given Man the ultralight drive.

  Their knowledge of social organization and function far exceeded that of Man, and the hints taken from the deciphered writings of the aliens had radically changed Man's notions of government. Now humanity could build a Galactic Civilization--a unity that was neither a pure democracy nor an absolute dictatorship, but resulted in optimum governmental control combined with optimum individual freedom. It was e pluribus unum plus. Their technological writings were few, insofar as physics and chemistry were concerned. What there were turned out to be elementary texts rather than advanced studies--which was fortunate, because it had been through these that the cultural xenologists had been able to decipher the language of the aliens, a language that was no more alien to the modern mind than, say, ancient Egyptian or Cretan.

  But without any advanced texts, deciphering the workings of the thousands of devices that the aliens had left behind was a tedious job. The elementary textbooks seemed to deal with the same sort of science that human beings were used to, but, at some point beyond, the aliens had taken a slightly different course, and, at first, only the very simplest of their mechanisms could be analyzed. But the investigators learned from the simpler mechanisms, and found themselves able to take the next step forward to more complex ones. However, it still remained a fact that the majority of the devices were as incomprehensible to the investigators as would the function of a transistor have been to James Clerk Maxwell.

  In the areas of the social sciences, data was deciphered at a fairly rapid rate; the aliens seemed to have concentrated all their efforts on that. Psionics, on the other hand, seemed never to have occurred to them, much less to have been investigated. And yet, there were devices in Centaurus City that bore queer generic resemblances to common Terrestrial psionic machines. But there was no hint of such things in the alien literature.

  And the physical sciences were deciphered only slowly, by a process of cut-and-try and cut-and-try again.

  The investigations would take time. There were only a relatively small handful of men working on the problems that the City posed. Not because there weren't plenty of men who would have sacrificed their time and efforts to further the work, but because the planet, being hostile to Man, simply would not support very many investigators. It was not economically feasible to pour more men and material into the project after the point of diminishing returns had been reached. Theoretically, it would have been possible to re-seal the City's dome and pump in an atmosphere that human beings could live with, but, aside from every other consideration, it was likely that such an atmosphere would ruin many of the artifacts within the City.

  Besides, the work in the City was heady stuff. Investigation of the City took a particular type of high-level mind, and that kind of mind did not occur in vast numbers.

  It was not, Turnbull thought, his particular dish of tea. The physical sciences were not his realm, and the work of translating the alien writings could be done on Earth, from 'stat copies, if he'd cared to do that kind of work.

  * * * * *

  Sirius VI was a busy planet--a planet that was as Earthlike as a planet could be without being Earth itself. It had a single moon, smaller than Earth's and somewhat nearer to the planet itself. The Oriona landed there, and Dave Turnbull took a shuttle ship to Sirius VI, dropping down at the spaceport near Noiberlin, the capital.

  It took less than an hour to find that Scholar Duckworth had gone no farther on his journey to Mendez than Sirius VI. He hadn't cashed in his ticket; if he had, they'd have known about it on Earth. But he certainly hadn't taken a ship toward the Central Stars, either.

  Turnbull got himself a hotel room and began checking through the Noiberlin city directory. There it was, big as life and fifteen times as significant. Rawlings Scientific Corporation.

  Turnbull decided he might as well tackle them right off the bat; there was nothing to be gained by pussyfooting around.

  He used the phone, and, after browbeating several of the employees and pulling his position on a couple of executives, he managed to get an appointment with the Assistant Director, Lawrence Drawford. The Director, Scholar Jason Rawlings, was not on Sirius VI at the time.

  The appointment was scheduled for oh nine hundred the following morning, and Turnbull showed up promptly. He entered through the big main door and walked to the reception desk.

  "Yes?" said the girl at the desk.

  "How do you do," Turnbull said. "My name is Turnbull; I think I'm expected."

  "Just a moment." She checked with the information panel on her desk, then said: "Go right on up, Dr. Turnbull. Take Number Four Lift Chute to the eighteenth floor and turn left. Dr. Drawford's office is at the end of the hall."

  Turnbull followed directions.

  Drawford was a heavy-set, florid-faced man with an easy smile and a rather too hearty voice.

  "Come in, Dr. Turnbull; it's a pleasure to meet you. What can I do for you?" He waved Turnbull to a chair and sat down behind his desk.

  Turnbull said carefully: "I'd just like to get a little informa
tion, Dr. Drawford."

  Drawford selected a cigar from the humidor on his desk and offered one to Turnbull. "Cigar? No? Well, if I can be of any help to you, I'll certainly do the best I can." But there was a puzzled look on his face as he lit his cigar.

  "First," said Turnbull, "am I correct in saying that Rawlings Scientific is in charge of the research program at Centaurus City?"

  Drawford exhaled a cloud of blue-gray smoke. "Not precisely. We work as a liaison between the Advanced Study Board and the Centaurus group, and we supply the equipment that's needed for the work there. We build instruments to order--that sort of thing. Scholar Rawlings is a member of the Board, of course, which admits of a somewhat closer liaison than might otherwise be possible.

  "But I'd hardly say we were in charge of the research. That's handled entirely by the Group leaders at the City itself."

  Turnbull lit a cigarette. "What happened to Scholar Duckworth?" he said suddenly.

  Drawford blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

  Again Turnbull's intuitive reasoning leaped far ahead of logic; he knew that Drawford was honestly innocent of any knowledge of the whereabouts of Scholar James Duckworth.

  "I was under the impression," Turnbull said easily, "that Scholar Duckworth was engaged in some sort of work with Scholar Rawlings."

  Drawford smiled and spread his hands. "Well, now, that may be. Dr. Turnbull. If so, then they're engaged in something that's above my level."

  "Oh?"

  Drawford pursed his lips for a moment, frowning. Then he said: "I must admit that I'm not a good intuitive thinker, Dr. Turnbull. I have not the capacity for it, I suppose. That's why I'm an engineer instead of a basic research man; that's why I'll never get a Scholar's degree." Again he paused before continuing. "For that reason, Scholar Rawlings leaves the logic to me and doesn't burden me with his own business. Nominally, he is the head of the Corporation; actually, we operate in different areas--areas which, naturally, overlap in places, but which are not congruent by any means."

  "In other words," said Turnbull, "if Duckworth and Rawlings were working together, you wouldn't be told about it."