Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  The Sumerian gave a deep-throated laugh. “Come, Ma-zhon! Let us start. I am anxious to see this world of yours.”

  “Okay,” Mason smiled. “And if you don’t like it—well, we still have the time-ship. Perhaps . . .”

  He didn’t finish. He touched the instrument panel, and the veil of blackness dropped down.

  And Alasa kissed him.

  THE END

  HANDS ACROSS THE VOID

  The World of Titan Was So Advanced in Scientific Achievement that Even Space Ships Were Obsolete!

  ON the summit of Titan’s highest mountain was the glittering metal observatory where Glathnor spent much of his time. Through the thick chlorine-impregnated atmosphere only the chill splendor of Saturn blazed gloriously, a cosmic jewel of wonder for the children of the satellite to gaze upon—as the children of the Earth gazed upon the moon.

  Astronomy was an old science to the Titans; even space navigation was obsolete—for good reasons. Nevertheless, Glathnor spent most of his time studying the planets of the Solar System. With the special lenses and electronic rays of Titan telescopes, developed because of the heavy, green atmosphere, Glathnor watched the Sun swinging on in the great galactic drift, studied each planet and charted its course through the years.

  Especially did he study the planet Earth through his great telescope. To him there was a curiously poignant fascination about that silvery green world floating so far away in the void. And that pull, Glathnor knew, was common origin of life ancestry. Titan science had proved that thousands of years ago. In fact, Glathnor knew all of the history of all the planets as the great libraries of Titan had recorded it.

  Glathnor was a man such as no dweller on Earth had seen for more than ten thousand years. In general outline there was little difference, but a man of Titan had lungs that breathed chlorine instead of oxygen, flesh with more of the pallor of marble than warm and blood-tinted. And the eyes were vastly different. A Titan’s eyes were many-faceted, and could perceive beyond the threshold of ultra-violet and infra-red. Even the life cycle was thrice that of Earthlings.

  Life evolution on Titan was old, measured by man’s clumsy invention of that intangible essence he called time. Tonight, as Glathnor stood quietly on the observatory balcony overlooking a gulf that fell away thousands of feet through the jagged crags to the floor of a Titanian valley, a great idea and urge came to him. Helas, a fellow astronomer, came to stand beside him, a question in his gray-white face.

  “You watch Earth again?” Helas asked. “But then you always do. What is there about that little planet which fascinates you so, Glathnor?”

  Glathnor did not immediately answer. Helas went on.

  “Is it because of the basic tie of kindred life—carbonaceous organisms that exist nowhere else in our System save on these two worlds?”

  Glathnor sighed. “Isn’t that thought enough to give you pause, Helas! Even the marshes and seas of Venus have not so much as microscopic spores of life like ours. The igneous plains of Mercury’s surface remain barren of animate life.”

  “True.” Helas nodded. “But Mars once had its inhabitants.”

  “Ten thousand years ago our ancestors went there,” Glathnor said. “They found ruins. Crumbling cities and inscriptions on rose-marble walls—”

  “Well, those inscriptions saved Titan, Glathnor. They gave us the clue to the plague that had wiped out the Martians. That was the only thing that saved us when space expeditions brought back the virus with them.”

  A WRY smile touched the Titan’s lips. In the Archives he had seen photographic records of the centuries in which the scanty remnants of a mighty civilization had battled desperately to remain alive. Only after three hundred years did the Titans succeed in destroying the virus, and then they were faced with the prospect of rebuilding a world.

  It took not years nor generations, but many centuries. In that time something had been lost; a change had taken place in the Titans’ minds. They were no longer touched by the transfiguring fires of wonder; no more did they watch the stars and question what lay beyond. Travel outside the Solar System was impossible, and the System itself had been explored. Any Titan who felt the tug of curiosity could easily satisfy himself at the Archives.

  Glancing sideward at his companion, Glathnor felt an amusement that was not wholly free from sorrow. What could he say that the other man might understand? Of what use to speak of the long days spent in the Archives watching three-dimensional, naturally-colored films of Earth, taken ten thousand years before when the Titans had explored the System.

  Earthmen had reached the summit of their evolution then, in 2100 A.D., terrestial calendar, and their cities dotted the continents. But Glathnor preferred to watch other things: the delicate flame of dawn brightening over a green and forested plain, or the hot, angry sunset upon the oceans of Earth. Cities were not new to him, for on Titan mighty metropolises have towered since earliest times, carved out of the bleak, rocky surface of the satellite by Herculean efforts.

  The saga of Titan is one of heroes, men mighty and harsh as their own grim world; it can be painted in strong oils or engraved in steel. But for the soft glow of pastels one looks in vain; on Earth, and Earth alone, can one find escape from the primordial savagery spawned in the interstellar abysses and let loose on the world.

  To an Earthman Glathnor would have seemed weirdly strange, though much more familiar than anything else on Titan. The Cyclopean architecture of that world has a beauty of its own, but one almost terrifying in its implication. In the colossal rise of the great towers, and in the sweep of the metallic ramps and levels one senses a relentless strength, the attitude of a race that has battled a hostile universe, and stands grimly awaiting new menace.

  Cities reflect the souls and minds of the builders, but living flesh is bound by more conventional shackles. And on both Earth and Titan life had sprung from identical spores that had drifted for ages, borne through the void by the pressure of light. So, through the millenniums, evolution has followed its course on both worlds, though adaptation to environment had played its part. A Titan can breathe his chlorinated atmosphere without discomfort, where an Earthman would die swiftly and in agony.

  Now, looking up at the stars, an overwhelming longing shook the Titan’s heavy, muscular body. It was, perhaps, strange to find a dreamer’s mind in the brute body of this being—a man who might have sprung from the loins of the ancient Earth-god Vulcan. But only an immensely resistant physique could have existed on Titan in the old days when the race had fought the passionless savagery of its environment, and the heritage had come down through the generations.

  FEW Titans were content to remain always in the artificially-heated cities. There was something deep within them that could only be satisfied by striding through the frigid blasts and drifted snow outside; great-thewed shadows towering against the night, filled with an inexplicable, primitive exultation as they matched their bodies against a cold hell.

  The idea came to Glathnor suddenly. His companion had mentioned the ancient interplanetary expeditions. Well—why could not he himself set out across space and see with his own eyes the world that had become dearer than his own? True, no space ship existed on Titan, but there was no reason why one could not be built.

  Without a word Glathnor turned and left the astronomer. Only one man on Titan could give him the aid he sought. And so, within a few hours, Glathnor faced the administrator in a vaulted, huge hall oddly reminiscent of the Gothic, and equally lacking in human warmth. The administrator listened, no hint of expression in his cold, faceted eyes, and at last he spoke, in a voice so soft as to be incongruous with his blacksmith’s body.

  “This is your right, Glathnor. As long as your wishes interfere with the happiness of no other man, you may do as you will. A space ship can be constructed, though for thousands of years we have felt no need of such a vessel. We shall take precautions against danger. There will be peril on Earth, naturally. You cannot breathe the oxygenated atmosphere. Yet you wi
ll not be at peace until you have made the journey. That I see.”

  “I am tired of Titan,” Glathnor said. “I am, perhaps, a mutant. An anachronism—”

  “You have stayed too long in the Archives. Earth is a weakling’s planet.”

  “Weaklings, perhaps. But their dangers are as deadly to them as ours were to us. I think I am a little tired of—strength.”

  “You seek beauty?” the administrator asked quietly. “You find no beauty on Titan?”

  “The beauty of power and strength. Yes. But I have seen something far different in the Archives. I have seen a room, softly tapestried and brightened by the flickering glow of firelight . . . we have no fires on Titan. There is only the beauty of a jewel, and of metal cities. Green plains and forests, mists hanging over swampy spaces—even the sky is different there.”

  “You may find Earth changed,” the administrator warned. “Nearly ten thousand terrestrial years have passed since we went there.”

  No human could have seen a change of expression on Glathnor’s face, but the administrator read there a somber apprehension.

  “True. But that only draws me more powerfully. We of Titan are older than Earthmen, and stronger. I have studied and analyzed the data in the Archives, and I read there a certain warning. Have you ever seen those tiny, chitin-covered insects that made their nests beneath Earth’s surface? Creatures with segmented bodies, strong mandibles, and antenna for telepathic communication?”

  “No. What of them?”

  GLATHNOR drew a deep breath.

  “I saw death in them. Death for the human race on Earth. In those insects lie the seeds of power, an emotionless and relentless capacity for intelligence that can easily develop. In ten thousand years that development may have taken place. If Earthmen kept pace, well and good. But we, too, had our eclipse after the Martian plague. I believe that a war between humans and these insects is inevitable—it may have already occurred.”

  “Earthmen had no suspicion of this?”

  “None. Several specimens were brought back to Titan. They died, however, and their brains were probed with the thought-readers. The results are in the Archives; I have studied them. When we visited Earth mankind had no conception of the menace of these insects.”

  The administrator closed his eyes. “Well?”

  Glathnor hesitated. How could he explain the strange, indefinable bonds that held him to Earth, that made him feel a kinship for an alien race across the void? What could the men of Titan understand of this attitude toward—weaklings?

  Yet he said, “If I find that the insects have become a threat to terrestrial beings, I believe we should destroy them.”

  The administrator stared up into the shadowed vaults of the hall’s roof.

  “All are satisfied on Titan. Why seek change? Yet—yet—there would be war again. We could test our strength against these insects. If indeed they have attained the intelligence you suggest. By the Suns!” the Titan whispered. “To wage war again! To feel the glory of fighting as we fought ages ago! I am of a mind to agree, Glathnor—”

  “You will, then?”

  “Glathnor,” the other said gently. “I must rule a world. And sometimes it is not easy for me to know the best course. My people must have happiness. I think we have attained that. You are the first Titan in thousands of years who has felt discontent.”

  “Then why do men leave the cities to war with the snows? They could not tell you, except that they feel a hunger inside that cannot be satisfied by the life they live. Something is lacking—and I do not think it is war. It is something that exists only on Earth.”

  “We have gone far into science, but the souls of men we cannot probe. I cannot understand your feelings, Glathnor, but when you speak of Earth and I feel the vibrations of your emotion, there is a question in my mind that I have never felt before. I do not think I would like Earth. I do not think any Titan would. But I shall do this for you, Glathnor: you may have a space ship built, and you may go to Earth.

  “Learn what conditions exist there. You must return, for no signals will penetrate beyond the barriers above the atmosphere. Bring back proofs, and if the human race on Earth is in danger, we of Titan shall remove that peril. But I will not risk the happiness of my people on an idea of yours, an idea I think is mad. Bring back proofs, or I shall do nothing. I am conceding much as it is, balancing the welfare of a planet against your theories.”

  “My theories—and my dreams,” Glathnor said.

  “Dreams?” the administrator questioned. “Dreams? What are they?”

  A few months later Glathnor’s automatically-controlled space ship fled Sunward through the inconceivable emptiness of space. Saturn and its moons grew small and pale, and the monstrous bulk of Jupiter loomed in its immensity, and then receded among the stars.

  Through the asteroid belt, past the orbit of Mars, and toward Earth flashed the vessel, Glathnor resting quietly in a pneumatic cradle within, cataleptic and scarcely breathing. Robot apparatus took hold as the presence of an atmosphere signaled the nearness of Earth. Thus, for the first time in ten thousand years, an interplanetary voyage was completed . . .

  ON Earth, Rondar of Hawk Valley sheathed his thermal pistol and grinned happily. A dozen yards away lay the convulsively twitching carcass of a tigron, striped body twitching, tusks gleaming in the sunlight. The baleful green eyes glared at Rondar; and then glazed as the powerful form stiffened and suddenly went limp.

  The speed, ferocity, and immense cunning of the tigron made it dangerous indeed, and generally it took a dozen men, armed with thermal guns, to subdue the creature. Only Rondar’s accuracy in probing a vital spot with the narrow focal beam of the weapon had saved him from death.

  Of course, it would have been easy to have escaped and summoned aid. The silver whistle that hung at Rondar’s throat would have served to bring one of the great ants racing at express-train speed across the great plain.

  But Rondar was young; the pulse of courage was strong within him, and now his triumph over the tigron was almost intoxicatingly pleasant. It was good to be alive, he thought. True, life was becoming almost too easy with the great ants as servants, but one could always go on a hunting expedition into the forests. Or spend a pleasant day in the libraries, though lately the records had become oddly depleted.

  The most significant books had disappeared without trace—particularly volumes of science, and those dealing with practical warfare. Rondar wasn’t sure whether anyone knew today how to make the thermal pistols. They were antiques, losing their efficacy.

  It didn’t matter. One could always turn to the ants in time of need. Passionless, sexless machines, they were coldly efficient, so much so that a less hardy race than Earthmen would have relapsed into decadence under their attentions. In fact, a subtle degeneration had begun, especially among the scientists. The ants were so much more efficient—and tireless—that biologists, physicists, chemists, and the others were more and more content to delegate their work to the giant insects.

  Sometimes Rondar wondered what went on in the minds of the ants. They lived in a secret, mysterious world of their own, a city far underground, emerging at need to aid the humans on Earth’s surface. And their actions were often inexplicable, so much so that if man had not been allied to the ants for thousands of years friction would have been inevitable.

  Rondar looked up at the sound of a hissing rush of displaced air. Something was descending, perhaps a mile away, a square block of black metal. It dropped into the forest out of sight.

  Under the circumstances, there was only one thing to do. Rondar thought briefly of summoning an ant, but dismissed the impulse. He plunged into the forest, his woodsmanship easily enabling him to keep his direction.

  So the Earthman came in view of the space ship as Glathnor emerged, a bulky, weirdly alien figure in his protective suit. A chill of superstitious fear shook Rondar.

  In face and form Glathnor was not totally unlike an Earthman, but there were subtle differenc
es. His flesh seemed made of pale marble, harsh and strong and powerful in its chiseled grimness. From the faceted eyes two beams of light crept out, rays scarcely visible in Titan’s atmosphere, but made startlingly brilliant by refraction with the dust-notes and invisible particles suspended in the air of Earth.

  A GUN, based on an electric principle, hung at Glathnor’s side, but he made no move to use it. In the Titan’s mind a little breath of laughter rose; his colleagues had taken so many precautions! He glanced at a metallic ring on his finger, a ring in which a tiny chip of radioactive substance was set. What had the administrator said?

  “When you leave your ship, a barrier of invisible force will automatically be created to guard the port. With this ring you can enter the ship, but no other creature can do so. And, since you may be wounded or weak, you will not need to guide the ship back to Titan. The moment you enter the ship, the robots will rechlorinate the atmosphere, close the port, and bring the space ship home.”

  The administrator had been cautious, and at his command a robot had been built, an efficient, metallic machine that resembled Glathnor in every way, even to the twin beams of light glaring from the faceted eyes, even to a duplicate of the Titan’s space-suit.

  “You will remain safely in the ship,” the administrator explained. “Send out the robot to explore this alien world. It has sufficient intelligence to obey simple orders you may give it; and, with the devices within the ship, you can control the robot with precision by beam energy. When you are certain there is no danger, recall the robot and take its place yourself, if you wish. Since it resembles you in every way, no Earthman will guess the trick or suspect that we feared danger.”

  Perhaps Glathnor had at first intended to obey, but by the time the space ship reached its destination, the Titan knew that he could not remain prisoned in the vessel and send a robot out in his place. So he emerged alone, and saw Rondar, man of Earth.

  A diaphragm in Glathnor’s helmet vibrated to the deep thunder of his voice. Startled, the Earthman drew back. He made unintelligible sounds.