“Wait!” Eboni interrupted him sharply, halting. “I hear something!”
They both peered into the ghostly expanses. Selton, too, heard it now—a soft hissing noise like water on the verge of boiling. Abruptly he jerked his head up and stared at a rapidly swelling bubble in the ground not two hundred feet away.
Eboni frowned. “Never saw anything like that before. Looks like a bubble of sorts.” He stopped short as the bubble suddenly reached maximum size and burst with a sharp pop. The air instantly became filled with warm, showering mud—mud that fell to the ground and wriggled. Eboni took a step back, staring down in disgust on scores of four-inch objects writhing in the ooze.
“What the deuce are they?” he growled aloud.
“Organisms, of sorts,” Selton said as he looked at them closely. “Too big for animalcules, I’d say—unless everything’s big on this world. Low-form organisms, evidently spawned in the boiling water below surface. Looks as though life here likes things hot.”
“That bubble erupted them, then?”
“Apparently so—maybe a natural way of starting them off in life on the surface.” Selton stopped and looked at Eboni sharply: “Say, what’s the idea of asking me all these questions? You ought to know Uranus even better than I do!”
“Why? You don’t think I spend my vacation here, do you? I only know the outstanding geographical facts; the local fauna’s as big a mystery to me as to you.”
Eboni broke off and glanced at the fast-growing disk-like things in the mud. “Better move before they get really big,” he finished anxiously. “Come on.”
Another mile’s progress brought little change in the landscape—if a sloppy black magma with normal and treacherous surfaces lying entirely undistinguished could be called landscape. Time and again weird bubbles rose, swelled and popped, hurled their disgusting life through the dank air.
“Dud, I don’t like this!” Eboni’s voice was serious for a change. “I never struck things like this before on Uranus. Look at that one! Nearest thing to an umbrella I ever saw!”
He was right in that. An almost full-grown specimen resembled an open umbrella without the stick, the rib ends corresponding to viciously clawed hooks.
The whole thing was principally a gigantic flying object, membranous, and already quivering for flight. Even as the two stood watching, it suddenly took off from the wet ground and went sailing into the mists.
“Towards the Equator Peaks,” murmured Selton, glancing up at the cloud rifts. “I wonder why?”
Eboni reflected. “Is it possible, I wonder, that Uranus life is migratory? Surely it will be with a forty-two-year day and night. We’ve about arrived at the change-over. Night is coming down here and day is on the other side. Suppose these creatures are the spawn left in the ground from the last migration, and that now—by some natural process—they are born and vomited out of the mud to make their way to the daylight side?”
“It’s an idea,” Selton said, pondering. “In any case, I don’t see it matters much. Our main concern—or yours, is to reach this hideout. Then I’m going to run you in.”
“You think so?” Eboni smiled twistedly. “You’ll never do that. Later on you’ll find out just why.”
As they moved on again, the evidences of the great planet’s ponderous changings from light to dark became more evident. The drenching vapor-drifts from the distant Equator Peaks began to thicken; the upper-level clouds no longer moved definitely from the nightward side.
Instead they were crisscrossing each other in dirty, smudgy bands, blurred with fantastic green lights as the far distant sun cast not direct, but oblique rays, gradually deepening to twilight as the clouds piled thicker.
“If we don’t find this precious place of yours before night, we’re going to be in a lovely mess,” Selton remarked presently.
“Real night won’t drop for eighteen months yet.”
“At this rate it will take that long,” Selton growled. “Then in a sour voice he demanded, “Why didn’t you fly there in the first place and save all this trouble?”
“Because I had a reason. Besides—”
Eboni broke off and stopped walking, swung around as a sudden tremendous whirring sound came from the mists to the rear. With demoniac speed an umbrella organism came hurtling into view, flying close to the ground.
It was sheer luck that the outlaw happened to be in its way. Immediately its frightful claws spread defensively, hooked themselves more by chance than design in his tough leather jacket. He was jerked into the air, struggling desperately. Then he dropped again to the accompaniment of a sudden tearing. He reeled to his feet with his jacket in shreds.
“Hurt?” Selton demanded, stumbling forward through the reek.
“No, not much.” Eboni seemed unconcerned for his own well being; his eyes were staring at his wrist. In dead silence Selton stared, too. The wrist compass had been smashed by Eboni’s fall to the ground.
“Lost!” Eboni breathed at last, dragging his tattered jacket together. “Lost in this wilderness—we can never find the ship again. The only hope now is that we can get to the hideout. I’ve a radio there; we can call scout vessels on the main service ways. It’ll mean giving myself up—but I guess I know when I’m licked,” he finished.
He turned slowly, started moving a little ahead. Then without the least warning he was suddenly thrown violently into the mud by a terrific vibration of the ground.
Selton stared after him uncomprehendingly. Then he noticed that the entire area around the outlaw was shifting and sliding madly, convulsed within itself.
“Quick! Jump for it!” he yelled. “It’s a mud eruption!”
He dashed forward, dragged Eboni to his feet, but by that time it was too late. The square on which they were standing was separated from the mainland by several yards, was floating like hard scum on the swift-moving surface of a ground displacement.
Uranus, with its warm interior, particularly on the day side, together with an insubstantial crust, was continually breaking up in much the same way as Earthly ice floes at the spring thaw, the hardened mud floating on the surface of a sudden new-born liquid mud current below.
So the two, outlaw and spatial policeman, now found themselves clinging to each other for dear life, swept along on their muddy raft through the dull, lowering haze.
“Why the blazes didn’t you jump?” Selton demanded, glaring. “Heaven knows where we’ll go now! If we get thrown into one of the boiling water areas, you know what that means!”
“I couldn’t jump because I was stuck,” Eboni growled. “See!” He pulled his right foot with an effort out of the cloying mud to demonstrate. “We’d better keep our feet moving if we don’t want to sink through this overgrown mud pie.”
Selton kneaded his feet up and down. It felt like tramping on a giant sponge. Still holding unsteadily on to each other they stared anxiously ahead into the curving wreaths. The upper-level mists now almost touched the ground.
“It’s the seasonal change, all right,” Selton muttered. “The mists show it. For one thing the upper-levels are slowly veering round in the opposite direction. That means they’re starting on their right-to-left forty-two-year movement through Hemisphere Chasm. The lower mists are, of course, caused by the cooler air sweeping in and condensing with the warm ground—”
“You’re telling me!” Eboni interrupted him bitterly. “I’ve lost my sense of direction being carried around like this. Since the upper drifts are changing, too, we don’t know where we are.”
“If we stick on this raft we may drift to better regions. Maybe towards the Equator Peaks.”
“How do you make that out?”
Selton answered calmly.
“Observation,” he said. “I’ve noticed that everything is drifting one way—upper-level mists, mud drifts, the fog, and this mud raft. It means that the blocked-up areas on the night side are thawing out. Formerly impassable barriers have opened up, and the whole surface is moving in that direction. Pro
bably Hemisphere Chasm will be a torrent of disgorging mud, animalcules, giant organisms, umbrellas, and so forth.”
“Maybe you’re right.” Eboni pondered a moment and gave a shrug. “Not that it helps much in any case. We’ll perhaps escape this thing only to die of starvation. This planet hasn’t got a single edible thing on its whole surface—unless there’s some food stored at the hideout.”
“Why, don’t you know?” Selton demanded in amazement.
“No.” The outlaw said nothing more, looked anxiously round him.
The mud raft seemed to drift for an interminable time. Now and again the two could feel it sag as some portion of its underside gave way, but in the main it held firm, bobbing along the surgings of the great mud river down which they were being carried.
Occasionally the clinging reek lifted slightly and enabled them to see barren stretches of the great drift, moving like a dark brown edition of an Arctíc thaw, traveling with ever-increasing speed towards the Equator Peaks which, so far as the stranded two could judge, could not now be very far distant.
Occasionally a huge umbrella organism would sweep down and fly on ahead in the direction of the drift. It could only mean that Selton’s guess was right. At the Uranian seasonal change everything changed places; in particular, the spawn of the previous season was ejected and grew swiftly to enable it to move to the summer region.
“Dud, do you hear anything?” Eboni asked at length, easing his strained body a little to turn. “Sort of bumping and roaring?”
They were both silent for a moment, listening to the slowly growing concussions and thunderings booming through the murk. As the raft floated onwards there were distinct signs of flashings through the fog at remote heights.
“It’s the Equator Peaks!” Eboni shouted hoarsely. “The lightning’s over Hemisphere Chasm!”
“You’re right,” Selton breathed. He turned suddenly. “In that case, this is where we’d better part company with this sponge. Point is, how?”
“Jump,” Eboni said laconically. “No other way—here goes.”
He drew himself together, eased his feet from the disk, then leaped outward with all his strength, landed in the midst of the filth. Selton only hesitated a moment, then followed his example. He sailed through the air, crashed heavily into soft, slimy ooze.
Dazed, his mouth full of mud, he got up. He sank to his knees in the stuff, but touched bottom. The main mudflow was some ten yards distant, a vast sweeping wall of brown pouring into Hemisphere Chasm. The mud raft was already out of sight in that mad cataract.
Staggering forward, Selton helped Eboni to get to his feet. He spluttered disgustedly.
“If mud improves beauty, I’ll take the world’s prize after this,” he gasped out. “Good job we fell in it, though—broke our fall.”
They moved forward out of the slopping ooze and came to the firmer ground at the immediate base of those vast ramparts. As the mist ahead of them thinned slightly they caught their first glimpse of something shining like dull silver—something long and graceful, delicately pointed at both ends.
“It’s—it’s a space ship!” Selton cried hoarsely. “Eboni, a space ship—here! How do you account for—”
He broke off. Eboni had pulled out his guns and was examining their muddy mechanisms. Finally he nodded to himself and Selton waited grimly. The Space Service man’s emotions changed to surprise as Eboni turned toward the opening of a cave outside of which the space machine was lying.
Slowly the outlaw moved into the cave, his feet echoing in the hugeness. Within, everything was black and dark. Selton fumbled in his saturated kit and finally pulled forth his electrode lamp.
To his satisfaction it worked the instant he pressed the button, casting forth a brilliant fan of light round the cave’s great area. Upon every side of it, stacked to the lofty ceiling, were all manner of materials, most of them recognizable as crates and goods stolen from the space freighters.
He lowered the beam to turn to Eboni, then he stopped in amazement as he beheld a figure sprawling on the floor—the figure of a man, his coal black hair covered in dirt, his arms grotesquely outflung.
“What the—” Selton stared at him in bewilderment, then dropped to one knee and made a quick examination.
“He’s dead,” he proclaimed briefly. “Venusian fever by the looks of it. Been dead several Earth days. But who in blazes is he?”
“Eboni,” said his companion quietly. “A pity he ended up so tamely. I knew he had Venusian fever, but I hardly thought it would kill him so soon.”
“Eboni? Then—who are you?” Selton gasped, leaping up.
“Me?” The powerful, mud-splashed face broke into a grin. “Well, you came up to me when we landed and accusing me of being Eboni on account of my black hair, so I let it go at that. I could see you were new to the job and very eager, so I let you have it.
“Thought it might be a good idea to teach you a lesson. I’m an old hand. Bruce Anderson’s the name—Space Way Service, W detachment. Next to yours.”
WORLD WITHOUT CHANCE
BY POLTON CROSS
From Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1939
In the June 1939 Thrilling Wonder Stories letter column, reader Frederik Pohl wrote of this story:
“In the February Issue, ‘World Without Chance’ was great, a better story than any other in any science fiction magazine for the past year. It was based on a theme which has been insufficiently exploited for fictional purposes: that of entropy, the most basic of functions. Author Cross deserves a permanent niche in the SF Hall of Fame, and I want to be the first to propose ‘World Without Chance’ for reprinting in 1949.”
William F. Temple’s letters to Fearn give an interesting evaluation of many of his stories of the period. In the early forties, it was extremely difficult to obtain copies of the U.S. SF magazines in this country, and Fearn used to loan his to Temple, inviting comment:
“‘World Without Chance’ had one big fault. No narrative interest. No real plot. But what ideas! Fascinating. Best chunk of pseudo-science I’ve read in ages. That wanted some thinking out. Honestly, Jack, you’ve got a remarkable ability for invention—imaginative invention. Think you might have been someone in scientific research and theory if you had been brought up in a lab or scientific atmosphere. ’Fraid you haven’t the patience for it now, even if it paid. But it’s a pity that such a fertile brain as yours is running to waste (if you look at it in the larger sense) in the American pulps.”
At least Fearn did not let the “fascinating ideas” in this story go to waste. He would later reuse them, suitably adapted, in his later Golden Amazon novels Parasite Planet and Standstill Planet (both forthcoming from Borgo Press)!
WORLD WITHOUT CHANCE
Wanderers of the void roam the uncharted galaxies and find the Zero Planet!
A great experiment shackles a race of Supermen for over twenty million years!
CHAPTER I
Mystery Planet
When Archer Lakington had set forth from Earth in August, 2136, to search for new worlds or planetoids worthy of future prospecting by the American Interplanetary Corporation, he had certainly not expected to roam through the deeps of space for six years.
Perhaps it was the uncanny fascination inseparable from the void that had driven him on. Perhaps it was the thought that he and his wife Joyce, bounded by the circumscribed limits of their space machine, were in a world all their own and unfettered by the idiocies and problems of a gigantic modern world.
Whatever the cause, neither he nor his young wife were yet weary of their trip. During the six years they had sped far beyond Pluto into the outermost edges of the Milky Way galaxy, were speeding now at the rate of 160,000 miles a second—the maximum rate that hovered on the very borders of dissolution by reason of the limiting power of the Fitzgerald Contraction.
Inside the ship neither of them was aware of movement. They could only perceive it by their relation to the slowly moving points of the blazing sta
rs. With floor gravitators to overcome the weightlessness of constant velocity, they were able to move about in comfort in this little sphere that seemed destined to travel onwards for evermore.
“Six years and not a world worth bothering about,” Lakingtpn murmured, as he lounged at the outlook port. “Little worlds, big worlds—some with atmosphere like smelling salts and others as void as a vacuum trap.”
He shrugged and smiled faintly. The rugged outlines of his face, seeming much older than his actual thirty years, were painted by the starshine. His broad, muscular shoulders loomed in silhouette against those dimensionless blazing points.
“So Archer Lakington will have to go back with a tale of failure!” he mused regretfully. “The guy who discovered the mulacite mines of Venus, the ravdon trees of Pluto, the—”
“Arch! Come here a minute!” The voice of his wife suddenly interrupted his soliloquy.
He straightened up from his lounging position and moved over to the girl’s stooping form. Her shock of honey-colored hair tumbled around her head as she peered fixedly into the spatial detector. From the very tenseness of her slender, lightly-clad body he could sense that something unusual was absorbing her.
“You rang, madam?” he questioned lightly, as she remained rigid save for the movements of her capable fingers as they twirled the milled edge of the focusing wheel.
“Take a look,” she ordered, standing erect. “Unless I’m going simple-minded through being locked up with you too long, I think there’s a planet right ahead of us. Quite a respectable-looking planet too!”
“Planet?” He laughed indulgently as he saw the eagerness in her blue eyes. “A miracle like that hasn’t happened in six years, so you decide to create one!”
He bent to the instrument to escape the wrath manifesting on her lovely face. Immediately the ultra powerful lenses of the detector revealed something that made him start in surprise—something that was beyond normal telescopic range and only impressed on the detector by the stepping up of faint light waves from immense distances.
Fixedly he studied a gray globe with belts of what were apparently clouds lying in ringed formation across it. It reminded him of a small-sized Uranus. He went on staring until his eyes ached, shifting the instrument gently until it was centrally fixed over the lined, transparent graph inside the lenses.
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