The Ninth Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur C. Clarke

  It was when Yiddir finally lay on his death bed that his ultimate wish was expressed.

  “Your little beginning here,” he said to Nad and Lylwani, “will require a millennium to bear substantial fruit. I regret very much that neither part of our divided fleet may ever know of this paradise you have discovered. By now the rebel fleet should be more than half way to its goal, and there is no one who can turn their course to this place. I wish they might be turned back before they invade those other planets. Even if they are rebels, all the Passengers should certainly be considered. They should be given a chance. Dictatorial governments come and go, but humanity goes on forever.

  “Still, if there were a choice to be made, I’d prefer to notify the Fleet Government. The rebels have some sort of chance on those other worlds, if they survive the conflict, but the other arks are only plunging ever more deeply into the Unknown. I can understand why it is impossible for you, Nad, to go. It would take more than half a lifetime to catch up with them now, even with the converted drivers. Still, it is sad to think that Dirno and Yldra, your children, will find themselves alone in this great solar system after you are gone.”

  Yiddir’s dimming eyes did not fail to notice that Ron was standing in the background, listening intently. “If you ever could contact the Government Fleet,” he said, “it would be worth more than life, itself. I’d try to locate Nor E-I-M, because he is the only person I can think of who might possibly be able to defend this place against the rebels, should they ever come back here exploring. There are some among their number who suspected the existence of this place more than they cared to admit to their companions.”

  Nad thought silently for a long while, and Yiddir smiled inwardly when he observed that Ron had disappeared.

  “I could leave Ron with Lylwani,” Nad said, finally.

  Yiddir laid his withered hand on his arm. “It would take years, Nad. Years. Your children would be grown to adulthood before you reached the arks.”

  A ripple of muscles appeared along Nad’s jaws. “But it must be done!” he exclaimed.

  Just then, he heard a roar of rockets outside, accompanied by an unmistakable “swoosh!” He tried to jump to his feet, but Yiddir held him.

  “Relax, Nad!” exclaimed Yiddir. “I knew it was going to happen. This is what he has been waiting for. It took great courage, but he has found that in full measure at last.”

  Nad glared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Ron,” said Yiddir, with his last breath, “has gone to find Nor—to bring back the Government Fleet. A poor, misguided coward with a club foot, who fought his cowardice and failed, only to lose Yldra, whom he loved perhaps in a way and with a depth of feeling which we could never understand. And finally the shock of that loss has made of him such a hero that his name may shine through all the pages of Man’s future history—if he succeeds…”

  CHAPTER XV

  When Dirno was seventeen years old, Nad and Lylwani had almost forgotten the strange and all but hopeless mission of Ron. There were three more children, two boys and a girl. All the elements of their natural environment had combined to assist their adaptation to normal life, and their parents found the afternoon of their existence to be the fulfillment of human desire—except for infrequently recurrent memories that sometimes haunted Nad in his deeper moments of reflection.

  Sometimes in the still hours of the night when Lylwani lay sleeping beside him, his mind would still wander out beyond the stupendous, black walls of the nebula and try to find his lost brother, Ron. He would quail at the thought of the other’s loneliness, riding the star-roads outward toward the edge of the galaxy, searching for an invisible fleet. Logic told him that Ron had failed, that in using the ultra-velocity available from the converted drivers he had made himself the victim of meteors—or that a lifetime of terrible loneliness had robbed him at last of his sanity. Sometimes he would dream that Ron was a white-haired maniac, whose star-blinded eyes stared at him from afar out of the Abyss, and he would awake with a start…

  * * * *

  Nor E-I-M was a man in his early seventies, still straight of limb and of an alert, military manner. His distinguishing mane of gray hair was vigorous and thick, and his blue eyes reflected a brightness of mind that had defied the years. For one week he and his medical staff had worked on the stranger from the Abyss. Under special second order type rays of his own devising, he had thrown the man’s conscious mind into a restful coma, and his nervous system was subjected to a complete reenergizing process. When they brought him back to consciousness, he was able to talk, haltingly, but effectively. He told them of a hidden paradise lying within the depths of the dark nebula, and of Yiddir and Nad and Sargon and Lylwani and the children and the rebel fleet.

  “Of course you may think me insane,” said Ron, wearily.

  “On the contrary,” Nor smiled. “I know this Yiddir of whom you speak, and I am quite sure the discovery you mention was actually made. In fact, we are going to return to the nebula. We may require another generation of time to reach it, but we will get there. If the rebel fleet has returned there and established a dictatorial government, we will overcome that government…”

  “But they have the M-Ray,” Ron reminded him.

  “And I have, at long last, finally perfected an effective screen against it—plus a lot more,” Nor told him, calmly.

  “You!” Ron’s eyes widened. “But only Yiddir’s son—”

  Nor smiled again. “This Yiddir you speak of,” he said, “was in reality Korlon E-3-N. I know, because he was my father…”

  THE SMALLEST GOD, by Lester del Rey

  I

  Dr. Arlington Brugh led his visitor around a jumble of machinery that made sense only to himself, and through a maze of tables and junk that occupied most of his laboratory.

  “It’s a little disordered just now,” he apologized, glad that his assistant had been able to clear up the worst of the mess. “Sort of gets that way after a long experiment.”

  Herr Dr. Ernst Meyer nodded heavy agreement. “Ja, so. Und mit all dis matchinery, no vunder. It gives yet no goot place v’ere I can mit comfort vork, also in mine own laboradory. Und v’at haff ve here?”

  “That’s Hermes—my mascot.” Brugh picked up the little, hollow rubber figure of the god Hermes; Mercury, the Romans called him. “The day I bought him for my daughter, the funds for my cyclotron were voted on favorably, so I’ve kept him here. Just a little superstition.”

  Meyer shook his head. “Nein. I mean here.” He tapped a heavy lead chest bearing a large Keep Out label. “Is maybe v’at you make?”

  “That’s right.” The physical chemist pulled up the heavy cover and displayed a few dirty crystals in a small compartment and a thick, tarry goo that filled a half-liter beaker. “Those are my latest success and my first failure. By the way, have you seen Dr. Hodges over in the biochemistry department?”

  “Ja. Vonderful vork he makes yet, nicht wahr ?”

  “Umm. Opinions differ. I’ll admit he did a good job in growing that synthetic amoeba, and the worm he made in his chemical bath wasn’t so bad, though I never did know whether it was really alive or not. Maybe you read about it? But he didn’t stick to simple things until he mastered his technique. He had to go rambling off trying to create a synthetic man.”

  Meyer’s rough face gleamed. “Ja, so. Dot is hübsch—nice. Mit veins und muschles. Only it is not mit life upfilled.”

  Brugh sifted a few of the crystals in the chest out onto a watch glass where they could be inspected more carefully. Then he put them into an opened drawer and closed it until the crystals were in a much dimmer light. In the semidarkness, a faint gleam was visible, hovering over the watch glass.

  “Radioactive,” he explained. “There is the reason Hodges’ man isn’t filled with life. If there had been some of this in his chemical bath when he was growing Anthropos—that’s what he calls the thing—it would be walking around today. But you can’t expect a biochemist to know that, o
f course. They don’t keep up with the latest developments the way the physical chemists do. Most of them aren’t aware of the fact that the atom can be cracked up into a different kind of atom by using Bertha.”

  “Bert’a? Maybe she is die daughter?”

  Brugh grinned. “Bertha’s the cyclotron over there. The boys started calling her Big Bertha, and then we just named her Bertha for short.” He swung around to indicate the great mass of metal that filled one end of the room. “That’s a lot of material to make so few crystals of radioactive potassium chloride, though.”

  “Ach, so. Den it is das radioagdivated salt dot vould give life to der synt’etic man, eh?”

  “Right. We’re beginning to believe that life is a combination of electricity and radioactivity, and the basis of the last seems to be this active potassium we’ve produced by bombarding the ordinary form with neutrons. Put that in Anthropos and he’d be bouncing around for his meals in a week.”

  Meyer succeeded in guessing the meaning of the last and cocked up a bushy eyebrow. “Den v’y not das salt to der man give?”

  “And have Hodges hog all the glory again? Not a chance.” He banged his hand on the chest for emphasis, and the six-inch figure of Hermes bounced from its precarious perch and took off for the watch glass. Brugh grabbed frantically and caught it just before it hit. “Someday I’ll stuff this thing with something heavy enough to hold it down.”

  The German looked at the statue with faint interest, then pointed to the gummy mess in the beaker. “Und dis?”

  “That’s a failure. Someday I might analyze a little of it, but it’s too hard to get the stuff out of that tar, and probably not worth a quarter of the energy. Seems to be a little of everything in it, including potassium, and it’s fairly radioactive, but all it’s good for is—well, to stuff Hermes so he can’t go bouncing around.”

  Brugh propped the little white figure against a ring stand and drew out the beaker, gouging out a chunk of the varicolored tar. He plopped it into a container and poured methyl alcohol over it, working with a glass rod until it was reasonably plastic. “Darned stuff gets soft, but it won’t dissolve,” he grumbled.

  Meyer stood back, looking on, shaking his head gently. Americans were naturally crazy, but he hadn’t expected such foolishness from so distinguished a research man as Dr. Brugh. In his own laboratory, he’d have spent the next two years, if necessary, in finding out what the tar was, instead of wasting it to stuff a cheap rubber cast of a statue.

  “Dis Herr Dr. Hodges, you don’t like him, I t’ink. Warum ?”

  Brugh was spooning the dough into his statue, forcing it into the tiny mouth and packing it in loosely. “Hodges wanted a new tank for his life-culture experiments when I was trying to get the cyclotron and the cloud chamber. I had to dig up the old antivivisection howl among the students’ parents to keep him from getting it, and he thought it was a dirty trick. Maybe it was; anyway, he’s been trying ever since to get me kicked out, and switch the appropriations over to this department. By the way, I’d hate to have word of this get around.”

  “Aber—andivifisegtion!” Meyer was faintly horrified at such an unscientific thing.

  Brugh nodded. “I know. But I wanted that cyclotron, and I got it; I’d do worse. There, Hermes won’t go flying around again. Anything else I can show you, Dr. Meyer?”

  “Tank you, no. Der clock is late now, und I must cadge my train by die hour. It has a bleasure been, Dr. Brugh.”

  “Not at all.” Brugh set the statue on a table and went out with the German, leaving Hermes in sole possession of the laboratory, except for the cat.

  II

  The clock in the laboratory said four o’clock in the morning. Its hum and the gentle breathing of the cat, that exercised its special privileges by sleeping on the cyclotron, were the only noises to be heard. Up on the table Hermes stood quietly, just as Dr. Brugh had left him, a little white rubber figure outlined in the light that shone through from the outside. A very ordinary little statue he looked.

  But inside, where the tar had been placed, something was stirring gently. Faintly and low at first, life began to quiver. Consciousness began to come slowly, and then a dim and hazy feeling of individuality. He was different in being a unit not directly connected in consciousness with the dim outlines of the laboratory.

  What, where, when, who, why, and how? Hermes knew none of the answers, and the questions were only vague and hazy in his mind, but the desire to know and to understand was growing. He took in the laboratory slowly through the hole that formed his partly open mouth and let the light stream in against the resinous matter inside. At first, only a blur was visible, but as his “eyes” grew more proficient from experience, he made out separate shapes. He had no names for them, but he recognized the difference between a round tube and a square tabletop.

  The motion of the second hand caught his attention, and he studied the clock carefully, but could make no sense to it. Apparently some things moved and others didn’t. What little he could see of himself didn’t, even when he made a clumsy attempt at forcing motion into his outthrust arm. It took longer to notice the faint breathing of the cat; then he noticed it not only moved, but did so in an irregular fashion. He strained toward it, and something clicked in his mind.

  Tabby was dreaming, but Hermes couldn’t know that, nor understand from whence came the pictures that seemed to flash across his gummy brain; Tabby didn’t understand dreams, either. But the little god could see some tiny creature that went scurrying rapidly across the floor, and a much-distorted picture of Tabby following it. Tabby had a definitely exaggerated idea of herself. Now the little running figure began to grow until it was twice the size of the cat, and its appearance altered. It made harsh explosive noises and beat a thick tail stiffly. Tabby’s picture made a noise and fled, but the other followed quickly and a wide mouth opened. Tabby woke up, and the pictures disappeared. Hermes could make no sense of them, though it was plain in Tabby’s mind that such things often happened when her head turned black inside.

  But the cat awake was even more interesting than she was sleeping. There were the largest groups of loosely classified odors, sights, and sensations to be absorbed, the nicest memories of moving about and exploring the laboratory. Through Tabby’s eyes he saw the part of the laboratory that was concealed from him, and much of the outside in the near neighborhood. He also drew a hazy picture of himself being filled, but it made no sense to him, though he gathered from the cat’s mind that the huge monster holding him was to be both despised and respected, and was, all in all, a very powerful person.

  By now his intelligence was great enough to recognize that the world seen through the cat’s eyes was in many ways wrong. For one thing, everything was in shades of white and black, with medial grays, while he had already seen that there were several colors. Hermes decided that he needed another point of view, though the cat had served admirably to start his mind on the way to some understanding of the world about him.

  A low howling sound came from outside the laboratory, and Hermes recoiled mentally, drawing a picture of a huge and ferocious beast from his secondhand cat’s memory. Then curiosity urged him to explore. If the cat’s color sense was faulty, perhaps her ideas on the subject of dogs were also wrong. He thrust his mind out toward the source of the sound, and again there was the little click that indicated a bridge between two minds.

  He liked the dog much better than the cat. There was more to be learned here, and the animal had some faint understanding of a great many mysteries which had never interested Tabby. Hermes also found that hard, selfish emotions were not the only kind. On the whole, the mind of Shep seemed warm and glowing after the frigid self-interest of Tabby.

  First in the dog’s mind, as in all others, was the thought of self, but close behind was mistress and master, the same person whom the cat’s mind had pictured filling the god. And there were the two little missies. Something about the dog’s mental image of one of them aroused an odd sensation i
n the little god, but it was too confused to be of any definite interest.

  But the dog retained hazy ideas of words as a means of thought, and Hermes seized on them gratefully. He gathered that men used them as a medium of thought conveyance, and filed the sixty partly understood words of Shep’s vocabulary carefully away. There were others with tantalizing possibilities, but they were vague.

  Shep’s world was much wider than that of Tabby, and his general impression of color—for dogs do see colors—was much better. The world became a fascinating place as he pictured it, and Hermes longed for the mysterious power of mobility that made wide explorations possible. He tried to glean the secret, but all that Shep knew on the subject was that movement followed desire, and sometimes came without any wish.

  The god came to the conclusion that in all the world the only animals that could satisfy his curiosity were men. His mind was still too young to be bothered with such trifles as modesty, and he was quite sure there could be no animal with a better intelligence than he had. The dog couldn’t even read thoughts, and Hermes had doubts about man’s ability to do the same; otherwise, why should the master have punished Shep for fighting, when the other dog had clearly started it?

  And if he hadn’t, Shep would have been home, instead of skulking around this place, where he sometimes came to meet the master after work.

  Hermes tried to locate a man’s mind, but there was none near. He caught a vague eddy of jumbled thought waves from someone who was evidently located there to guard the building, but there was a definite limit to the space that thought could span.

  The cat’s brain had gone black inside again, with only fitful images flickering on and off, and the dog was drifting into a similar state. Hermes studied the action with keen interest and decided that sleep might be a very fine way of passing the time until a man came back to the laboratory, as he gathered they did every time some big light shone from somewhere high up above.