World Without Chance

by John Russell Fearn

  Then, early in February 1938, news reached Fearn via his agent that Teck Publications had sold the ailing Amazing Stories to the established Ziff-Davis chain. Payment was to be doubled, and paid on acceptance. The new editor in charge was Ray Palmer—who also happened to be a good friend of Julius Schwartz!

  Palmer was horrified at the parlous state of the Amazing inventory he had inherited. He quickly decided that nearly all of it was unusable: “…half-baked ideas, screwy science, and pedantic, unprofessional writing…(a) dung heap of gadgets, theories, and interplanetary travelogues. There wasn’t a living breathing character, emotion (or) adventure in the whole lot,” he later recalled. In desperation, he appealed to his friend Schwartz for help, in his capacity as a literary agent specializing in SF. Amongst the mss. he offered Palmer were the stories that Fearn had written especially for Campbell, including “Debt of Honor” as Fearn, and “Locked City” as Ayre. Campbell never got to see them: they were instead diverted straight to Palmer. He eagerly snapped them up, with a request for more.

  On learning of this, Fearn told Gillings on 14th March 1938:

  “It came as a surprise to know my ‘Debt of Honor’ has landed at Amazing. I figured it was for Astounding, but evidently Julie thinks differently.”

  Any misgivings Fearn may have had about his agent’s action in bypassing Campbell were soon swept aside. On 25th March 1938 he wrote again to Gillings:

  “Learned this morning that as well as ‘Debt of Honor’ (to be re-titled ‘A Summons from Mars’) Amazing have bought Polton Cross’ ‘Eternal Sleepers’ (to be re-titled ‘Master of the Golden City’) for publication in the same issue. Nice going, particularly as it’s 17,000 words long. Two long novelettes in No. 1! Oh, boy, oh-boy! Got the check this morning, a comforting little total of well over fifty quid.”

  THE DEGENERATES

  Adventure in the forgotten city of a lost race—steaming in the other-world jungle—

  Lost in a forgotten jungle—a remnant of a greater civilization than Man’s—in the hands of the Degenerates.

  I.

  Have you ever met a man whom you felt like hitting in the jaw? Such a desire rose in me when I first met Ludwig Reid, He was so smooth, so polite about everything he said and did that—to me anyhow—he was instantly stamped as a man to be wary of.

  I met him first when Captain Brook—the middle-aged millionaire owner of the Brook Spacesuit Co.—called me over to his palatial place on Long Island. I was just resting from my job as astrogator to Trans-Plutonian Explorers, and therefore open for any commission. Knowing Brook so well, I scented something good and presented myself at his home on the evening of November 10, 2119.

  As usual, he was full of enthusiasm. Tall and gray-haired, he had the keen eyes and hard-lipped mouth of a commercial giant and fighter. But Ludwig Reid, our sole companion in the library, was of totally different make-up—short in stature, with a remarkably square face, untidy black hair, and steady, pale-gray eyes that never left your face while he talked. All this—combined with a moon-whiteness of skin, long thin nose, and cruel, inflexible mouth—gave him all the attributes of a man of iron ambition, centered only on one thing—himself.

  He was cordial enough to me at first, even though I felt like hitting him in the eye there and then. Brook introduced us in his swift, clipped fashion.

  “Meet Dick Cambridge, Reid. The best freelance astrogator in the business. With him as expedition pilot there’ll not be a thing to fear.”

  Reid looked me over calmly. Evidently my six feet of space-hardened frame suited him, for he nodded slowly. When I shook hands with him I gave an extra powerful squeeze to express my dislike—but he didn’t even wince. His sweetly odorous Titan-flower cigarette continued to smolder seductively.

  “Delighted,” he murmured coolly, releasing his hand. “I have invariably found that black-headed, dark-skinned pilots like yourself are better able to stand the free ultraviolet radiations of space. I think you’ll do, Cambridge.”

  I nodded stiffly, but it was for old Brook that I did it. I’d do anything for him—and his daughter Ada. I glanced across at Brook.

  “What’s all this about, sir?”

  “An expedition, Dick—to Io; Reid here has discovered a natural form of ilution—which as you know is at present used in an artificial form for spacesuits. But Reid believes there are plants in the Ionian jungles containing the stuff as natural sap, and—well!” He laughed in his affluent fashion. “Reid and I will pick up multi-millions—and you won’t exactly be left with a couple of cents if you see the thing through.”

  I looked at Reid quickly. “This on the level?” I asked him sharply. “I know most of Io, but it’s the first time I ever heard of natural ilution trees in its jungles.”

  From his pocket he took two rolled pieces of substance like rubber and laid them on the library table. Both looked identical.

  “Apparently no difference, is there?” he asked slowly. “And yet watch!” Fishing in his pocket once more he pulled out a nasty-looking knife that snapped open into a small dagger. With a swift stroke he drove the blade through the left-hand piece of rubber, and of course it instantly ripped.

  “Ordinary ilution—the stuff we use now,” he explained; “Now watch this—” He brought the knife down quickly on the second piece. The blade simply bounced off it and failed to make the least impression.

  Wonderingly, I picked the stuff up and pulled and tugged at it. It was absolutely untearable. Although identical to its torn twin on the table, it was clearly a hundred times as tough. The possibilities of such a substance—something the hard rock or the vicious surfaces of other worlds couldn’t tear—dawned on me immediately. I didn’t like admitting Reid was right, but I had to.

  “I’ve had the stuff tested at my laboratories and it is absolutely unbreakable,” Brook exclaimed eagerly. “You see the possibilities, surely?”

  “Actually I got to know all about it by accident,” Reid remarked, putting the knife back in his pocket. “An Ionian native named Kiol stowed away on the Wanderlust last trip up and brought some of this stuff with him. I’ve been to Io before and he remembered me. In fact, he gave my name when he was apprehended by the spaceport authorities and I had to bail him out. I’m glad I did! The moment I saw the stuff, I saw the opportunity it meant for Brook and so got in touch with him right away. The site of these ilution trees is known only to Kiol as yet—but I do know the situation of the jungle clearing leading to them. It will take a skilled pilot to lower into it, and that’s why we sent for you. Understand?”

  “When do you plan to start, sir?” I asked Brook.

  “In two days. I’ve had a special spaceship equipped for the purpose, complete with maps, detectors, and all the usual stuff. Reid has had carte blanche to order what he needed— You’ll take it, won’t you, Dick?” he finished anxiously. “It means everything to me!”

  I nodded a rather slow assent. I had an odd idea at the back of my mind that Reid was up to something. Everything seemed logical enough and yet— Well, I didn’t trust the man. Good scientist and explorer he might be, but otherwise—

  I was just leaving the great residence when light, tripping footsteps came swiftly toward me along the broad gravel drive. Ada Brook came quickly into the stream of light from the doorway, a slim, dainty figure in her speed-auto togs. The scarlet muffler round her throat offset the healthy pink of her cheeks and merry blue of her eyes. She tugged off her neat little wool beret and shook free a mass of golden brown hair,

  “If it isn’t Dick Cambridge!” she cried impulsively, wringing my hand. “Remember me? I’m Ada! You piloted the F-18 that time when Dad and went over to Mars to study their lost civilizations.”

  “Of course I remember,” I smiled.

  In truth I had never forgotten this impish bit of femininity. She has that art of doing something to a guy.

  “I suppose you’re taking this Io expedition along?” she went on eagerly. “Dad told me he was going to commission you. It’
ll be such fun! Did—did you accept?”

  I nodded. “But I didn’t know you were coming,” I said quietly. “I’m mighty glad to hear it!” It would make all the difference to me—probably save me building up what were no doubt foolish suspicions about Ludwig Reid.

  “Course I’m coming!” she pouted. “How do you think Dad would remember to take his vita pills without me around him?” She glanced quickly toward the house, then shook my hand again. “I’ll see you again, Dick. I’m late already and Lud’s expecting me—”

  “You mean Reid?” I asked grimly, and she nodded a trifle glumly.

  “’Fraid so. You see—we’re engaged. It’s a sort of business deal, really. Since he and Dad are to be partners, I— Well, you know!”

  I nodded bitterly and watched her go up the steps. Her, with her twenty-two years of freshness, engaged to that space-cold creature— Now I was certain I didn’t like him!

  II.

  We took off right on time two days later, and it was certainly a joy to be the chief astrogator of the Stardust. She was a pip—the sort of vessel only a multimillionaire can build, and a space hog can dream about.

  Apart from Ada, her father, and Reid, we had my close friend Nick Charteris as second astrogator; a Chinese cook by the name of Hu Ling, and Kiol, the Ionian. Like any other native of the hot little Jovian moon he was very tall—seven-feet-four—with a very nearly naked, blue-skinned body, hairless head, large eyes to cope with mainly varying lights, and a rather absurd little mouth.

  He kept mostly to himself, timid as all Ionian natives are—afraid of harsh words, yet on occasions mercilessly vindictive in avenging a fancied wrong. Poor old Kiol! He took to the vessel’s rocket belly and stayed there in the gloom, only emerging for his special meals. Besides, the terrible strain of Earth gravitation had pretty well exhausted him.

  Until at last Io emerged from the nine-moon tangle around Jove. Here the real work began. Jupiter reaches out a terrific field of attraction for nearly 5,000,000 miles, and since Io is only 300,000 miles from his center, it demands a good deal of juggling with the jets to land square on any of his moons. Mainly for this reason Io, Ganymede, and Europa are trading satellites used for their production of minerals and special plants. Callisto—being much farther away from the primary—is a frozen waste. Except for refueling purposes on the main Pluto run, all the moons are out of the main tracks.

  We accomplished our purpose by firing our right forward blasts against Jove to break his influence, then we gradually moved inward until at last the gages showed the faint pull of Io was holding us. Faint indeed—for Io is only 2,320 miles in diameter. Once we got below his occasional clouds, things were easier.

  The landscape was a fairly familiar green tangle, bathed through the cloud rifts in the multiple lights of Jupiter, Europa, Ganymede, and the distant, disclike sun. Since Io also revolves in forty-two hours, the light effect is even more complicated on his surface.

  We crossed the main Sawback Range, near the imaginary equator of Io and separating the unexplored jungle side from the Ithtick rock quarries. Deep in the quarries were the small huts of the guardsmen—only controllers and law-givers of this god-forsaken penal settlement where criminals rot out their bones in a temperature rarely dropping below 120° F.

  Beyond the quarries again, seeming small and squat, reposed the Io fueling center from which most Earth-Pluto vessels get their supplies before starting on their long journeys. Obviously Kiol, in stowing aboard the Wanderlust, had done so from that very place.

  Reid had me fly in a great circle over the jungle while he studied it intently through binoculars. He stood at the main spacescape window with his powerful legs spread wide to brace himself against the ship’s circular motion. Beside him stood Ada and her father, gazing eagerly down.

  “There!” Reid cried suddenly. “According to Kiol that’s the spot. That T-shaped clearing—”

  I looked down, too, and frowned. A T-shaped clearing was distinctly visible, with the dim silvery gleam of a river passing across one end of it. The rest was dense, mysterious jungle.

  “Can you lower into that clearing?” Reid asked curtly, half turning.

  “I think so,” I said, and set to work with the underjets, signaling instructions to Nick as he kept a counter-check in the rocket-control room below.

  Because Io’s attraction is only a third of Earth’s, the landing wasn’t half so difficult as I’d expected, but most of it was done blind. The lower we sank, the less we saw, because of the blast shooting down below. Its terrific heat incinerated everything beneath us and made that clearing twice as big in about forty seconds.

  Little by little we sank, wobbling ever so slightly from side to side, but never once falling into a fatal drop-spin—that is, when the jets strike obliquely instead of direct. The float-level stopped on even keel, and at last the gentle thud quivering through the vessel announced our arrival.

  I cut the jets and looked round. Brook smiled his silent congratulations. Reid said nothing. He stood gazing out on the vision of lacing jungle bordering every part of the clearing, the river now crossing its center, so widely had we enlarged the area.

  In silence I turned to the compressors and switched them on, their function being to adapt the ship’s atmosphere to the exact density of that outside. The gravity plates, too, were slowly weakened. In all, the process took two hours and produced plenty of sick bouts—but at the end of the time we were all outside, gazing round.

  It was saturatingly hot—steamy, fever-ridden, lit by a variety of shifting lights. The sky was now dark-blue to purple, visible in the clear patches where the fantastic shaving-brush trees thinned out a little. These ridiculous growths shoot up to four hundred feet and more, thriving in a third less gravity than Earth and a dank, hot air. Our clearing was nearly circular now—thanks to the blasting of the under-jets—and the swift river coursing into the jungle’s depths went right across the middle.

  Reid stood regarding it for a while, then turned. “We’ll have to pitch camp on the other side of the river. Somewhere in the jungles over there are the trees we’re looking for. That right, Kiol?”

  The Ionian nodded his shiny head. When he spoke it was in the broken English he’d learned from the traders and penal warders.

  “Remains twelve miles south, maybe,” he jerked out flutily. “Soon make it.”

  “You’d better get the tents and equipment out,” Reid ordered in a clipped voice. “You too, Ling. We’ll be too cramped in the ship.”

  The Chinaman and Ionian entered the ship’s airlock, keeping well away from one another. It needed no imagination to see they were anything but friends.

  I turned to Reid sharply. “What was that remark Kiol made about ‘remains’?” I demanded.

  “Poor English, I imagine.” He shrugged indifferently. “Why?”

  Since I didn’t answer he turned and looked at Ada, “Well, my dear, how do you like Io?”

  “I don’t,” she answered, fanning herself languidly. “It’s about the most ghastly place I’ve ever encountered.”

  He smiled rather coldly. “You’ll get used to it in a week or two—that is, if you don’t get moon fever.”

  I trembled to hit him. He said it as though he really wished she would get fever. The remark left her untroubled, but it sent her father inside the ship to find quinine and galpha tablets.

  In two hours the ship was unloaded.

  * * * *

  Our camp, when pegged out, comprised six tents, including an extra large one to serve as a dining and general room. All—with the exception of Hu Ling and Kiol, and Nick and me—had tents to themselves. I doubted the wisdom of putting the Chinaman and Ionian together—if anything, it would only serve to increase their dislike for each other.

  Once our first meal was over, Reid strolled some little distance from the camp with old man Brook, and they stood talking and looking down the swift river as it coursed into the fantastic jungle. I made it the opportunity to take a walk with
Ada and show her the wonders of the Ionian sky and landscape.

  To me, the sight from a nearby kopje was not new, but it brought a cry of amazed awe from Ada’s lips as we came to the top of the rise. On every side of us stretched that wild jungle with its dominating shaving-brush trees. Here and there the queer rocket-birds were in view, hurtling up like bullets against the light gravitation. Then when they reached the shallow air 800 feet above ground they opened a membranous umbrella and dropped softly down again. Their prey, in the main, consists of hurtling insects.

  In various other directions were the treacherous calcium areas—some of them inert, but others bathed in lambent, flickering fires as the calcium united with ammonia gas from rifts in the ground and produced the swift light of calcium ammonium. Io is particularly rich in calcium.

  The sky, though, was the main thing that held our attention. Jupiter hung directly above us—huge, yellow, overpowering, with the oval of his Red Spot moving slowly as his enormous bulk turned. Close to him gleamed brilliant little Ganymede and Europa. Farther away still—disc-like and absurd—moved the Sun. Added to this were the hosts upon hosts of stars spewed in a myriad glittering dusts across the dark-purple heaven. It was superb—engrossing.

  Ada talked of nothing else on the way back, when the trees hid most of the sky from sight—and, as she was talking, something happened. Something puffed in front of our faces with dangerous closeness, so close indeed that Ada jerked her head back and then stared in alarmed wonder at the pineapple-like bole of the shaving-brush tree close beside us. Immediately I went up to it.

  To my utter amazement I saw that the missile had been a dart! I tugged it out and stared at it in bewilderment, trying to figure how the devil such a primitive thing had even gotten into this wilderness—even more so who had fired it. Twisting round, I stared into the moon-and-primary-light, but nothing was visible. The lower tickle-brush grasses waved silently in the hot, sickly wind.

  Ada gazed at the dart with alarmed eyes, then as she reached out her hand toward it, I slapped her fingers sharply.