Sci Fiction Classics Volume 1

by Vol 1 (v1. 2) (epub)

  "Stay out of the shed, huh? You can't speak the language, anyhow, and I want you in one piece when I come back." He hesitated. "If I come back."

  "You'll be fine," Nerishev said.

  "Sure I will. I—oh, Lord!"

  "What's it? What's wrong?"

  "Boulder coming down! Talk to you later!"

  Clayton turned his attention to the boulder, a rapidly growing black speck to windward. It was heading directly toward his anchored and immobilized truck. He glanced at the windspeed indicator. Impossible—174 miles a hour! And yet, he reminded himself, winds in the stratospheric jet stream on Earth blow at 200 miles an hour.

  The boulder, large as a house, still growing as it approached, was rolling directly his way.

  "Swerve! Turn!" Clayton bellowed at the boulder, pounding the instrument panel with his fist.

  The boulder was coming at him, straight as a ruler line, rolling right down the wind.

  With a yell of agony, Clayton touched a button, releasing both anchors at the cable end. There was no time to winch them in, even assuming the winch could take the strain. Still the boulder grew.

  Clayton released the brakes.

  The Brute, shoved by a wind of 178 miles an hour, began to pick up speed. Within seconds, he was traveling at 38 miles an hour, staring through his rear-vision mirror at the boulder overtaking him.

  As the boulder rolled up, Clayton twisted the steering wheel hard to the left. The truck tilted over precariously, swerved, fishtailed on the hard ground, and tried to turn itself over. He fought the wheel, trying to bring the Brute back to equilibrium. He thought: I'm probably the first man who ever jibed a twelve-ton truck!

  The boulder, looking like a whole city block, roared past. The heavy truck teetered for a moment, then came to rest on its six wheels.

  "Clayton! What happened? Are you all right?"

  "Fine," Clayton gasped. "But I had to slip the cables. I'm running downwind."

  "Can you turn?"

  "Almost knocked her over, trying to."

  "How far can you run?"

  Clayton stared ahead. In the distance, he could make out the dramatic black cliffs that rimmed the plain.

  "I got about fifteen miles to go before I pile into the cliffs. Not much time, at the speed I'm traveling." He locked his brakes. The tires began to scream and the brake linings smoked furiously. But the wind, at 183 miles an hour, didn't even notice the difference. His speed over the ground had picked up to 44 miles an hour.

  "Try sailing her out!" Nerishev said.

  "She won't take it."

  "Try, man! What else can you do? The wind's hit 185 here. The whole station's shaking! Boulders are tearing up the whole post defense. I'm afraid some boulders are going to get through and flatten—"

  "Stow it," Clayton said. "I got troubles of my own."

  "I don't know if the station will stand! Clayton, listen to me. Try the—"

  The radio suddenly and dismayingly went dead.

  Clayton banged it a few times, then gave up. His speed over the ground reached 49 miles an hour. The cliffs were already looming large before him.

  "So all right," Clayton said. "Here we go." He released his last anchor, a small emergency job. At its full length of 250 feet of steel cable, it slowed him to 30 miles an hour. The anchor was breaking and ripping through the ground like a jet-propelled plow.

  Clayton then turned on the sail mechanism. This had been installed by the Earth engineers upon much the same theory that has small ocean-going motor boats carry a small mast and auxiliary sail. The sails are insurance, in case the engine fails. On Carella, a man could never walk home from a stranded vehicle. He had to come in under power.

  The mast, a short, powerful steel pillar, extruded itself through a gasketed hole in the roof. Magnetic shrouds and stays snapped into place, supporting it. From the mast fluttered a sail made of link-woven metal. For a mainsheet, Clayton had a three-part flexible-steel cable, working through a winch.

  The sail was only a few square feet in area. It could drive a twelve-ton monster with its brakes locked and an anchor out on 250 feet of line—

  Easily—with the wind blowing 185 miles an hour.

  Clayton winched in the mainsheet and turned, taking the wind on the quarter. But a quartering course wasn't good enough. He winched the sail in still more and turned further into the wind.

  With the super-hurricane on his beam, the ponderous truck heeled over, lifting one entire side into the air. Quickly Clayton released a few feet of mainsheet. The metal-link sail screamed and chattered as the wind whipped it.

  Driving now with just the sail's leading edge, Clayton was able to keep the truck on its feet and make good a course to the windward.

  Through the rear-vision mirror, he could see the black, jagged cliffs behind him. They were his lee shore, his coast of wrecks. But he was sailing out of the trap. Foot by foot, he was pulling away.

  "That's my baby!" Clayton shouted to the battling Brute.

  His sense of victory snapped almost at once, for he heard an ear-splitting clang and something whizzed past his head. At 187 miles an hour, pebbles were piercing his armor plating. He was undergoing the Carellan equivalent of a machine-gun barrage. The wind shrieked through the holes, trying to batter him out of his seat.

  Desperately he clung to the steering wheel. He could hear the sail wrenching. It was made out of the toughest flexible alloys available, but it wasn't going to hold up for long. The short, thick mast, supported by six heavy cables, was whipping like a fishing rod.

  His brake linings were worn out, and his speed over the ground came up to 57 miles an hour.

  He was too tired to think. He steered, his hands locked to the wheel, his slitted eyes glaring ahead into the storm.

  The sail ripped with a scream. The tatters flogged for a moment, then brought the mast down. Wind gusts were approaching 190 miles an hour.

  The wind now was driving him back toward the cliffs. At 192 miles an hour of wind, the Brute was lifted bodily, thrown for a dozen yards, slammed back on its wheels. A front tire blew under the pressure, then two rear ones. Clayton put his head on his arms and waited for the end.

  Suddenly, the Brute stopped short. Clayton was flung forward. His safety belt checked him for a moment, then snapped. He banged against the instrument panel and fell back, dazed and bleeding.

  He lay on the floor, half conscious, trying to figure out what had happened. Slowly he pulled himself back into the seat, foggily aware that he hadn't broken any limbs. His stomach was one great bruise. His mouth was bleeding.

  At last, looking through the rear-vision mirror, he saw what had happened. The emergency anchor, trailing at 250 feet of steel cable, had caught in a deep outcropping of rock. A fouled anchor had brought him up short, less than half a mile from the cliffs. He was saved—

  For the moment, at least.

  But the wind hadn't given up yet. The 193-mile-an-hour wind bellowed, lifted the truck bodily, slammed it down, lifted it again, slammed it down. The steel cable hummed like a guitar string. Clayton wrapped his arms and legs around the seat. He couldn't hold on much longer. And if he let go, the madly leaping Brute would smear him over the walls like toothpaste—

  If the cable didn't part first and send him hurtling into the cliffs.

  He held on. At the top of one swing, he caught a glimpse of the windspeed indicator. The sight of it sickened him. He was through, finished, done for. How would he be expected to hold on through the force of a 187-mile-an-hour wind? It was too much.

  It was—187 miles an hour? That meant that the wind was dropping!

  He could hardly believe it at first. But slowly, steadily, the dial hand crept down. At 160 miles an hour, the truck stopped slamming and lay passively at the end of its anchor line. At 153, the wind veered—a sure sign that the blow was nearly over.

  When it had dropped to 142 miles an hour, Clayton allowed himself the luxury of passing out.

  Carellan natives came out for him
later in the day. Skillfully they maneuvered two big land ships up to the Brute, fastened on their long vines—which tested out stronger than steel—and towed the derelict truck back to the station.

  They brought him into the receiving shed and Nerishev carried him into the station's dead air.

  "You didn't break anything except a couple of teeth," said Nerishev. "But there isn't an unbruised inch on you."

  "We came through it," Clayton said.

  "Just. Our boulder defense is completely flattened. The station took two direct hits from boulders and barely contained them. I've checked the foundations; they're badly strained. Another blow like that—"

  "—and we'd make out somehow. Us Earth lads, we come through! That was the worst in eight months. Four months more and the relief ship comes! Buck up, Nerishev. Come with me."

  "Where are we going?"

  "I want to talk to that damned Smanik!"

  They came into the shed. It was filled to overflowing with Carellans. Outside, in the lee of the station, several dozen land ships were moored.

  "Smanik!" Clayton called. "What's going on here?"

  "It is the Festival of Summer," Smanik said. "Our great yearly holiday."

  "Hm. What about that blow? What did you think of it?"

  "I would classify it as a moderate gale," said Smanik. "Nothing dangerous, but somewhat unpleasant for sailing."

  "Unpleasant! I hope you get your forecasts a little more accurate in the future."

  "One cannot always outguess the weather," Smanik said. "It is regrettable that my last forecast should be wrong."

  "Your last? How come? What's the matter?"

  "These people," Smanik said, gesturing around him, "are my entire tribe, the Seremai. We have celebrated the Festival of Summer. Now summer is ended and we must go away."

  "Where to?"

  "To the caverns in the far west. They are two weeks' sail from here. We will go into the caverns and live there for three months. In that way, we will find safety."

  Clayton had a sudden sinking feeling in his stomach. "Safety from what, Smanik?"

  "I told you. Summer is over. We need safety now from the winds—the powerful storm winds of winter."

  "What is it?" Nerishev said.

  "In a moment." Clayton thought very quickly of the super-hurricane he had just passed through, which Smanik had classified as a moderate and harmless gale. He thought of their immobility, the ruined Brute, the strained foundations of the station, the wrecked boulder barrier, the relief ship four months away. "We could go with you in the land ships, Smanik, and take refuge in the caverns with you—be protected—"

  "Of course," said Smanik hospitably.

  "No, we couldn't," Clayton answered himself, his sinking feeling even lower that during the storm. "We'd need extra oxygen, our own food, a water supply—"

  "What is it?" Nerishev repeated impatiently. "What the devil did he say to make you look like that?"

  "He says the really big winds are just coming," Clayton replied.

  The two men stared at each other.

  Outside, a wind was rising.

  The End

  © 1957 by Robert Sheckley. First appeared in Galaxy Magazine, 1957.

  To Bell the Cat

  Joan D. Vinge

  Another squeal of animal pain reached them from the bubble tent twenty meters away. Juah-u Corouda jerked involuntarily as he tossed the carved gaming pieces from the cup, spoiling his throw. "Hell, a triad.… Damn that noise; it's like fingernails on metal."

  "Orr doesn't know the meaning of 'surrender.'" Albe Hyacin-Soong caught up the cup. "It must be driving him crazy that he can't figure out how those scaly little rats survive all that radioactivity. How they ever evolved in the first place—"

  "He doesn't know the meaning of the word 'mercy.' " Xena Soong-Hyacin frowned at her husband, her hands clasping her elbows. "Why doesn't he anesthetize them?"

  "Come on, Xena," Corouda said. "They're just animals. They don't feel pain like we do."

  "And what are any of us, Juah-u, but animals trying to play God?"

  "I just want to play squamish," Albe muttered.

  Corouda smiled faintly, looking away from Xena toward the edge of the camp. A few complaints, hers among them, had forced Orr to move his lab tent away from the rest. Corouda was just as glad. The noises annoyed him, but he didn't take them personally. Research was necessary; Xena—any scientist should be able to accept that. But the bleeding hearts are always with us. No matter how comfortable a society became, no matter how fair, no matter how nearly perfect, there was always someone who wanted flaws to pick at. Some people were never satisfied; he was glad he wasn't one of them. And glad he wasn't married to one of them. But then, Albe always liked a good argument.

  "Next you'll be telling me that he doesn't feel anything either!" Xena pointed.

  "Keep your voice down, Xena. He'll hear you. He's right over there. And don't pull down straw men; he's got nothing to do with this. He's Piper Alvarian Jary; he's supposed to suffer."

  "He's been brainwiped. That's like punishing an amnesiac; he's not the same man—"

  "I don't want to get into that again," Albe said, unconvincingly.

  Corouda shook his head, pushed the blond curls back under his peaked cap and moved further into the shade. They sat cross-legged on the soft, gray-brown earth with the studied primitivism all wardens affected. He turned his head slightly to look at Piper Alvarian Jary, sitting on a rock in the sun; alone as usual, and as usual within summoning range of Hoban Orr, his master. Piper Alvarian Jary, who for six years—six years! Was it only six?—had been serving a sentence at Simeu Biomedical Research Institute, being punished in kind for the greatness of his sin.

  Not that he looked like a monster now, as he sat toying endlessly with a pile of stones. He wore a plain, pale coverall sealed shut to the neck in spite of the heat; dark hair fell forward into his eyes above a nondescript sunburned face. He could have been anyone's menial assistant, ill at ease in this group of ecological experts on an unexplored world. He could have been anyone—

  Corouda looked away, remembering the scars that the sealed suit probably covered. But he was Piper Alvarian Jary, who had supported the dictator Naron—who had bloodied his hands in one of the most brutal regimes in mankind's long history of inhumanity to man. It had surprised Corouda that Jary was still young. But a lifetime spent as a Catspaw for Simeu Institute would age a man fast. Maybe that's why he's sitting in the sun; maybe he wants to fry his brains out.

  "—that's why I wanted to become a warden, Albe!" Xena's insistent voice pulled his attention back. "So that we wouldn't have to be a part of things like this … so that I wouldn't have to sit here beating my head against a stone wall about the injustice and the indifference of this society—"

  Albe reached out distractingly and tucked a strand of her bound-up hair behind her ear. "But you've got to admit this is a remarkable discovery we've made here. After all, a natural reactor—a concentration of uranium ore so rich that it's fissioning. The only comparable thing we know of happened on Terra a billion years before anybody was around to care." He waved his hand at the cave mouth 200 meters away. "And right in that soggy cave over there is a live one, and animals survive in it! To find out how they could have adapted to that much radiation—isn't it important for us to find that out?"

  "Of course it is." Xena looked pained. "Don't patronize me, Albe. I know that as well as you do. And you know that's not what I'm talking about."

  "Yes, I know it isn't.…" He sighed in surrender. "This whole expedition will be clearing out soon; they've got most of the data they want already. And then the six of us can get down to work and forget we ever saw any of them; we'll have a whole new world all to ourselves."

  "Until they start shipping in the damned tourists—"

  "Hey, come on," Corouda said, too loudly. "Come on. What're we sitting here for? Roll them bones."

  Albe laughed, and shook the cup. He scattered the carved s
hapes and let them group in the dirt. "Hah, Two-square."

  Corouda grunted. "I know you cheat; if I could just figure out how. Xena—"

  She turned back from gazing at Piper Alvarian Jary, her face tight.

  "Xena, if it makes you feel any better, Jary doesn't feel anything. Only in his hands, maybe his face a little."

  She looked at him blankly. "What?"

  "Jary told me himself; Orr killed his sense of feeling when he first got him, so that he wouldn't have to suffer needlessly from the experiments."

  Her mouth came open.

  "Is that right?" Albe pushed the sweatband back on his tanned, balding forehead. "Remember last week, he backed into the campfire.… I didn't know you'd talked to him, Juah-u. What's he like?"

  "I don't know. Who knows what somebody like that is really like? A while back he came and offered to check a collection of potentially edible flora for me.…" And Jary had returned the next day with the samples, looking tired and a little shaky, to tell him exactly what was and wasn't edible, and to what degree. It was only later, after he'd had time to run tests of his own, that he had understood how Jary had managed to get the answers so fast, and so accurately. "He ate them, to see if they poisoned him. Don't ask me why he did it; maybe he enjoys being punished."

  Xena withered him with a look.

  "I didn't know he was going to eat them." Corouda slapped at a bug, annoyed. "Besides, he'd have to drink strychnine by the liter to kill himself. They made Jary into a walking biological lab—his body manufactures an immunity to anything, almost on the spot; they use him to make vaccines. You can cut off anything but his head and it'll grow back—"

  "Oh, for God's sake." Xena stood up, her brown face flushed. She dropped the cup between them like something unclean, and strode away into the trees.

  Corouda watched her go; the wine-red crown of the forest gave her shelter from his insensitivity. In the distance through the trees he could see the stunted vegetation at the mouth of the reactor cave. Radiation had eaten out an entire hillside, and the cave's heart was still a festering radioactive sink hot enough to boil water. Yet some tiny alien creatures had chosen to live in it … which meant that this expedition would have to go on stewing in the sun until Orr made a breakthrough, or made up his mind to quit. Corouda sighed and looked back at Hyacin-Soong. "Sorry, Albe. I even disgusted myself this time."