Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  They went out together.

  Hale said, “How many mutineers have you rounded up?”

  “About seventy. Some of them will be useful in the right places. Others are too dangerous to let live—” Sam stopped abruptly. He had almost said too much.

  Crowell’s release came first, but afterward they went to the room where the trial was to be held. Batteries of visor screens were already set up. There were guards, plenty of them. And the seventy-odd prisoners, unmanacled, were herded together in a railed pen.

  Sam started talking abruptly. He was talking to the colony and the Keeps as well as to the prisoners.

  He began by describing the activities of the malcontents, his growing suspicion of such an underground organization in the colony—“a colony expanding every hour, succeeding conquering landside so in a day to come men will be able to live under the open sky—every man and woman on Venus!”

  He had arrested the plotters. But the plot had ramifications stretching deep underground. There had been a great deal of secret theft—theft of vital equipment, technological equipment, even materials for weapons. Why?

  The screens focused on the prisoners.

  “You men are cat’s-paws,” Sam told them. Originally you were the ones who started this potential rebellion, but someone else has taken it over. Someone who has kept his identity completely secret. Either you don’t know who he is or you won’t tell me. You’ve been questioned. Who is your secret leader?”

  Silence.

  “What are his plans? Is he a Colony man?”

  Silence.

  “We have proof. The equipment went somewhere. And there’s other evidence. We’ll find him, and the rest of his band; he’s a menace not only to the colony but to the Keeps. If such a man should seize power—”

  The menace hung unspoken over Venus.

  “We will find him eventually. We ask the Keep’s co-operation in this. But now—you men have been guilty of treason. You plotted to overthrow the colony government and take control. After that, you intended to rule the Keeps as well.”

  A man thrust himself forward from the other prisoners. His voice cried thinly across the visors.

  “I’m older! We’ve all older! Where’s the immortality you promised us?”

  Sam said contemptuously, “I’m not a fool, Commander French. I’ve known for a long time that this plot was going on, and I knew most of the men involved. Why should I give people like you immortality—to plot further? None of you have been given the immortality radiation treatment for many months. You had nominal treatments, to quiet your suspicions—but immortality isn’t for traitors!” His face hardened.

  “Governor Hale and I have been waiting, hoping to locate the top man in your organization. Certain events forced us to move now. We still intend to get the top man and render him harmless to civilization, but the present problem is what to do with traitors.

  “I condemn you to death.”

  The silence began and ticked on and on—longer on landside than in the Keeps. For the colonists knew time now.

  Sam made a little gesture.

  “You will be taken under escort back to whatever Keeps you may elect. None of you may return. The colony is closed to all of you. So is the immortality treatment. You had your chance to live for a thousand years, and you chose a traitor’s way instead.

  “You will not be harmed. You will be taken back to the Keeps—and be free. Until you die. And you will die not in a thousand years from now, but in thirty, forty, fifty, perhaps. I withdraw the boon of immortality from you, and therefore I condemn you to death by natural causes.”

  “Go back to the Keeps. We don’t want you here.”

  He brought his hands together in the conventional gesture.

  “The trial is over.”

  Trial: A testing of capacity—“Message to all Keeps: You will no longer pay korium ransom to Plymouth Colony. You will pay it to the Venusian Provisional Government. We are taking control of the planet. We have means to enforce our demands. Message to the Plymouth Colony: ground all your planes or be destroyed—” Triangulation couldn’t locate the source of the message. It kept moving. And it was always at sea. Apparently the call was being shifted rapidly from transmitter to transmitter—planes, perhaps, though no radar apparatus recorded unauthorized planes in the Venusian atmosphere.

  Sam’s answer to the challenge was brief—“Surrender!”

  “We have means to enforce our demands—”

  Sam’s face appeared on all vision screens, in the Keeps and in the colony.

  “An all-out offensive has been organized from Plymouth Colony. For the first time the mutineers have come out in the open. Now we can find and smash them. We mil find them. Television reports on our progress will be relayed as we proceed. Special ships and plane crews are being sent to guard the sea areas above every Keep. We are taking all possible precautions. Unauthorized plane approaching Plymouth Fort has been fired on; it is retreating southward. I must direct certain operations; one of our Operations Officers will take over and keep you informed.”

  Sam was in his tower. He was alone. For months he had superintended the installation of one-man apparatus. Some tasks he could relay, but the main job depended on him alone. It would be no easy task.

  The skip-source message came from the Venusian seas.

  “Ground your planes, Plymouth Colony! You can’t survive atomic attack!”

  Every listener thought suddenly of the memorial eidolon in every Keep; the black-plastic shrouded sphere of the lost Earth. Atomics on Venus—for warfare? Atomic power that could so easily become uncontrollable.

  Visors showed infra-red and radar jungle vistas as Sam’s planes quartered landside and the sea, delicate instruments probing into the black secret fury of native Venus, searching efficiently for the marauders who called themselves the Venusian Provisional Government.

  “This is an ultimatum. You have forty-eight hours. At the end of that period, one of the Keeps will be destroyed.”

  Atomics!

  That was die old, terrible fear. That was the terror that had come down in the race through seven hundred years. And in the Keeps the years had meant nothing—had been as meaningless as the hourless days.

  Forty-eight hours?

  Time had come to the Keeps at last.

  Two planes were shot down before they got too close to the fort. Tractor rays eased them to the ground, and there were no explosions. But the threat of the atomic warhead moved closer.

  Sam said: “In our all-out effort, we have recalled our men already assigned to the colony expansion effort—our newest venture.” His tired, strained face gave way to a view of a wide, cleared area on a seacoast, with its familiar jungle backdrop. Some huts had already been constructed, and others stood half-completed, the plastic layers only partly sprayed on the customshaped balloon foundations. Piles of equipment were neatly lined up. But orderly crowds of men were moving toward the motor-powered barges beached to receive them.

  “The mutineers have not yet been located. Our planes are proceeding with their search—”

  The patterns of radar gave place to depthless, infra-red jungle, seen from far above. It shifted back to the radar matrix as the plane swept on, probing with all the marvelously keen sensory equipment technology had given it.

  “Forty-seven hours. You have forty-seven hours. Plymouth Colony, ground your planes. We have atomic power and we will not hesitate to use it—”

  Time . . .

  “You have forty-six hours—”

  And fear swept the Keeps. Crowds seethed the Ways, gathering at the cloverleaves where the big visor screens were set up. Zachariah Harker said to Kedre:

  “The body politic is more than a figure of speech. The Ways, you know, are like the circulatory system. When too many people gather, forming—well, blood clots—then them’s danger of an aneurysm.”

  “Zachariah—” Kedre said.

  He took her hand.

  “I don’t know. I don�
��t know, my dear. I’m trying to think. We still have forty-five hours.”

  “You have forty-four hours!”

  “Another attacking plane has been shot down and eased with tractor beams thirty miles from Plymouth Fort. No atomic explosion resulted. This plane was radio-controlled. The robot-guide signals were relayed from constantly shifting areas at sea.”

  Hale looked at the Logician.

  “Things level off,” Ben Crowell said, packing his pipe.

  “It’s all right for .you to .talk. You know the answers. I don’t.”

  “Time to look for real trouble is when you don’t see any.” Crowell pointed out. “You might see some harmless-looking plants, little ones, and you wouldn’t think there’s a Man Underground root twenty feet long hiding ’way down, waiting for the right time. Right now—” He glanced at the Keep announcer on the nearest screen. “Well, you don’t see me interfering, do you?”

  “No. And you ought to be more excited, with atomic war threatened. Even the Free Companies outlawed atomics for offense.”

  “You have forty-three hours,” the screen said.

  “You have twenty-four hours.”

  “You have twenty hours.”

  “You have sixteen hours.”

  “Sam Reed speaking. We’ve found the skunks!”

  The screens showed jungle, seen from high above—green, luxuriant, writhing with life. No more than that. Then the bombardment began, acid, flame, rays, and the fury of man’s own weapons crashed against the fury of Venus.

  The jungle green blackened. It writhed in torment. It flung up huge ropes of screaming vines. Clouds of flying things poured away from the center of that circle of awful holocaust. The towering, pillarlike neck of the thunder-lizard curved up; the red maw opened. The hissing shriek of the saurian rose high and keening through the dull, incessant roar of the blasting rain from above.

  “Surrender! We’ll destroy the Keeps—we won’t hesitate—stop your attack—”

  There was only raw, blackened, steaming earth now where there had been jungle.

  The soil welted and crumbled. It flowed like lava. A white-hot lake began to grow. Pressure-jets blasted down, forcing the molten rock out from its lake in a flashing, incandescent spray. And something seemed to rise from the turgid steaming depths. As the molten level sank, a gray, rounded surface emerged.

  Sam’s face flashed on to the screens.

  “You are seeing the secret headquarters of the mutineers,” he said.

  “You will see it destroyed now.”

  A voice shouted: “We’ll destroy the Keeps! Stop your attack—” The gray dome stood sullenly in the white-hot lake.

  The black torpedo shape of a bomb dropped. The gray dome was tough. But then another bomb dropped.

  And another.

  The first explosion had not mushroomed before the next missile hit. Then the next. And there was no cessation, no pause in the terrible regularity of the pin-point bombing. Hammer-blow after hammer-blow struck. Four—five—six—

  Sam dropped forty-eight bombs, one for each hour of the deadline the Venusian Provisional Government had given him.

  The screens showed smoke.

  When at last the smoke cleared—they showed such ruin as not even the fury-of Venus’s jungles, could achieve. The Man Underground was rooted out at last.

  And twenty submarines discharged extremely specialized torpedoes at the impervium domes shielding the Keeps.

  Six hours later Zachariah Harker was speaking to the Keeps.

  “The mutineers were destroyed by Sam Reed. But they had a suicide fleet. As they died, they had their revenge. The impervium dome above Delaware Keep has been radioactivated. The same holds true for all the Keeps. One moment—” He turned away, and presently returned.

  “I am told that new messages have recently been received—the mutineers were not all destroyed. Apparently there were some survivors. They are harmless at the moment, but they comprise a permanent threat until they, as well as their organization, is eradicated. Completely. Meantime, their revenge is effective. Within a week the danger level will be reached, and the Keeps will be uninhabitable.

  “Do not be immediately alarmed. There is no chance that the activated impervium will reach critical mass. But there is no way of halting the atomic reaction, and after a week has passed, the Keeps will be slow death traps. Only one solution seems practical. There is no time to build new impervium domes undersea—yet. But it may be done on landside. Here is Sam Reed; let him tell you his plan.”

  Sam’s face appeared.

  He said almost casually, “We did our best, but the skunks had the last word. Well, you’ve got to leave the Keeps—all of you—or die. I told you, I think, that we had been planning colony expansion. We’ve cleared a great deal of ground in preparation for that, and have already set up some equipment. It’s yours. We’ll stay in Plymouth or start new colonies. The land we cleared, and the equipment, is at your service. In this hour of disaster, we’ll have to work together; we’re one race.

  “In a week you can transport the ‘aterlél you’ll need. It won’t be an easy life, but it’ll be life. We of Plymouth Colony stand ready to help you to the fullest extent. Good luck.”

  Someone else appeared on the screen; Sam and Zachariah began talking on a private beam.

  “Can you evacuate the Keeps in a week?”

  “Easily. Since we have to.”

  “All right. We’ll have to work together—for a while at least. Kedre proposed that once, and I said no. But now I’m proposing it. We’ll send special officers to advise you on what equipment will be required. In the cleared areas, the first problem will be medical. We’ll supply medical administrative officers. You’ve got to stay alive and healthy, and you’re not acclimated to landside life. Don’t count too much on impervium domes. We haven’t wiped out the mutineers, and what they can do once, they can do again. When you’re under impervium. you’re vulnerable. If the survivors get organized again—”

  “Landside life will be hard on the old and infirm.”

  “The strong men will have enough to do. There will be plenty of maintenance jobs that won’t require physical fitness. Jobs that have to be done. Give those tasks to the old and infirm; that way, you’ll release the strong ones for work that takes strength. You’ll have a lot of clearing and building to do.”

  “Our technicians estimate the half-life of activated thorium at twelve years. We can return to the Keeps after twelve years.”

  “But you’ll have to live until then. And don’t forget the survivors—the ones we didn’t blast. They could reactivate the Keep domes, unless we catch them first. Twelve years is a long time.”

  “Yes,” Zachariah said thoughtfully, looking into his grandson’s oblivious face. “Yes, I expect it will be a long, long time.”

  And the Lord said . . . Depart and go up hence . . . unto the land which I swore unto Abraham . . . a land flowing with milk and honey . . . And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground, and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and on their left.

  —Exodus

  Seven hundred years ago the last exodus of the race of man took place. Today it began again. The vast mass migration was too complex for any single mind to encompass, and the people who looked back on it later remembered only intolerable confusion of the mind—hysteria, near panic, blind rebellion against destiny, but concerted, obedient motion as an over-all pattern. The people of the Keeps had learned docility the easiest way of all. Now they did as they were told, grumbling, frightened, unwilling, but obeying the orders of anyone who spoke with enough authority.

  No one would have believed, beforehand, that so tremendous an exodus could take place in the time allotted. No one, looking back, quite understood how it had been accomplished. But accomplished it was. That incalculable weight of inertia in a people contentedly settled for seven hundred years in one place required an even more incalculable weight in the scales to tip
them over into action—

  And they had that weight. The nucleon. Weightless by any comparable scale of physical values, still it tipped the balance as no other thing could. There was one old, old terror in the mind of every man who had ever looked up from the moving Ways and seen the globe of lost Earth hanging in the center of every Keep, shrouded in its symbolic pall.

  They moved.

  Kedre looked around her beautiful quiet room for the last time. It was a long look, quiet, like the room.

  “We won’t come back,” she said. Zachariah, waiting at the door for her, said patiently, “Why?”

  “You know we won’t. And it’s a good thing. I hate Sam Reed. He’s always forcing me to face unpleasant truths for perfectly irrelevant reasons of his own. He isn’t doing this because it’s time and past time for the sake of the race. He’s doing it because he told a monumental lie and couldn’t think of any other out.”

  “I wonder if we’ll ever be able to prove it?”

  Kedre shrugged, “If we could, it wouldn’t matter, now. We know Sam’s methods. Once before when he was in a desperate spot he took desperate measures. We’ve expected it again ever since. I didn’t give, him credit for such misdirection, but Sam’s learning fast. No, I don’t suppose it ever can be proved.”

  “Are you ready, my dear? The lift’s waiting.”

  “All right.” She sighed, turning to the door. “I shouldn’t feel as if I’m going out to die. I’m just now going to vindicate my own existence by starting to live! It’ll be uncomfortable and I suppose dangerous, though I mind danger less. But it’s something that’s needed doing for longer than I like to think. Only—Zachariah, it’s so horribly ignoble to be forced to do it!”

  He laughed. “I feel the same way. I suppose the first invertebrates who crawled up out of the prehistoric seas felt just as we do—hating every minute of it. It’s time mankind crawled out of the water and stood on dry land again, but even Sam can’t make us like it!”