The Murray Leinster Megapack

by Murray Leinster

  Jamison came down to where Cochrane conducted business via communicator. He waited. Cochrane said:

  “Dammit, I won’t agree! I want twelve per cent or I take up another offer!—What?”

  The last was to Jamison. Jamison said uneasily:

  “We found another planet. About Earth-size. Ice-caps. Clouds. Oceans. Seas. Even rivers! But there’s no green on it! It’s all bare rocks!”

  Cochrane thought concentratedly. Then he said impatiently:

  “The whiskered people back home said that life couldn’t have gotten started on all the planets suited for it. They said there must be planets where life hasn’t reached, though they’re perfectly suited for it. Make a landing and try the air with algae like we did on the first planet.”

  He turned back to the communicator.

  “You reason,” he snapped to a man on far-away Earth, “that all this is only on paper. But that’s the only reason you’re getting a chance at it! I’ll guarantee that Jones will install drives on ships that meet our requirements of space-worthiness—or government standards, whichever are strictest—for ten per cent of your company stock plus twelve per cent cash of the cost of each ship. Nothing less!”

  He heard the rockets make the louder sound that was the symptom of descent against gravity.

  The world was lifeless. The ship had landed on bare stone, when Cochrane looked out the control-room ports. There had been trouble finding a flat space on which the three landing-fins would find a suitable foundation. It had taken half an hour of maneuvering to locate such a place and to settle solidly on it. Then the look of things was appalling.

  The landing-spot was a naked mass of what seemed to be basalt polygons, similar to the Giants’ Causeway of Ireland back on Earth. There was no softness anywhere. The stone which on other planets underlay soil, here showed harshly. There was no soil. There was no microscopic life to nibble at rocks and make soil in which less minute life could live. The nudity of the stones led to glaring colors everywhere. The colors were brilliant as nowhere else but on Earth’s moon. There was no vegetation at all.

  That was somehow shocking. The ship’s company stared and stared, but there could be no comment. There was a vast, dark sea to the left of the landing-place. Inland there were mountains and valleys. But the mountains were not sloped. There were heaps of detritus at the bases of their cliffs, but it was simply detritus. No tiniest patch of lichen grew anywhere. No blade of grass. No moss. No leaf. Nothing.

  The air was empty. Nothing flew. There were clouds, to be sure. The sky was even blue, though a darker blue than Earth’s, because there was no vegetation to break stone down to dust, or to form dust by its own decay.

  The sea was violently active. Great waves flung themselves toward the harsh coastline and beat upon it with insensate violence. They shattered into masses of foam. But the foam broke—too quickly—and left the surging water dark again. Far down the line of foam there were dark clouds, and rain fell in masses, and lightning flashed. But it was a scene of desolation which was somehow more horrible even than the scarred and battered moon of Earth.

  Cochrane looked out very carefully. Alicia came to him, a trifle hesitant.

  “Johnny’s asleep now. He didn’t sleep at first, and while we were out of gravity he was unhappy. But he went off to sleep the instant we landed. He needs rest. Could we—just stay landed here until he catches up on sleep?”

  Cochrane nodded. Alicia smiled at him and went away. There was still the mark of a bruise on her cheek. She went down to where her husband needed her. Holden said dourly:

  “This world’s useless. So is her husband.”

  “Wait till we check the air,” said Cochrane absently.

  “I’ve checked it,” Holden told him indifferently. “I went in the port and sniffed at the cracked outer door. I didn’t die, so I opened the door. There is a smell of stone. That’s all. The air’s perfectly breathable. The ocean’s probably absorbed all soluble gases, and poisonous gases are soluble. If they weren’t, they couldn’t be poisonous.”

  “Mmmmmm,” said Cochrane thoughtfully.

  Jamison came over to him.

  “We’re not going to stay here, are we?” he asked. “I don’t like to look at it. The moon’s bad enough, but at least nothing could live there! Anything could live here. But it doesn’t! I don’t like it!”

  “We’ll stay here at least while Johnny has a nap. I do want Bell to take all the pictures he can, though. Probably not for broadcast, but for business reasons. I’ll need pictures to back up a deal.”

  Jamison went away. Holden said without interest:

  “You’ll make no deals with this planet! This is one you can do what you like with! I don’t want any part of it!”

  Cochrane shrugged.

  “Speaking of things you don’t want any part of—what about Johnny Simms? Speaking as a psychiatrist, what effect will that business of being in the dark all night and nearly being pecked to death—what will it do to him? Are psychopaths the way they are because they can’t face reality, or because they’ve never had to?”

  Holden stared away down the incredible, lifeless coastline at the distant storm. There was darkness under many layers of cloud. The sea foamed and lashed and instantly was free of foam again. Because there were no plankton, no animalcules, no tiny, gluey, organic beings in it to give the water the property of making foam which endured. There was thunder, yonder in the storm, and no ear heard it. Over a vast world there was sunshine which no eyes saw. There was night in which nothing rested, and somewhere dawn was breaking now, and nothing sang.

  “Look at that, Jed,” said Holden heavily. “There’s a reality none of us wants to face! We’re all more or less fugitives from what we are afraid is reality. That is real, and it makes me feel small and futile. So I don’t like to look at it. Johnny Simms didn’t want to face what one does grow up to face. It made him feel futile. So he picked a pleasanter role than realist.”

  Cochrane nodded.

  “But his unrealism of last night put him into a very realistic mess that he couldn’t dodge! Will it change him?”

  “Probably,” said Holden without any expression at all in his voice. “They used to put lunatics in snake-pits. When they were people who’d taken to lunacy for escape from reality, it made them go back to reality to escape from the snakes. Shock-treatments used to be used, later, for the same effect. We’re too soft to use either treatment now. But Johnny gave himself the works. The odds are that from now on he will never want to be alone even for an instant, and he will never again quite dare to be angry with anybody or make anybody angry. You choked him and he ran away, and it was bad! So from now on I’d guess that Johnny will be a very well-behaved little boy in a grown man’s body.” He said very wryly indeed, “Alicia will be very happy, taking care of him.”

  A moment later he added:

  “I look at that set-up the way I look at the landscape yonder.”

  Cochrane said nothing. Holden liked Alicia. Too much. It would not make any difference at all. After a moment, though, he changed the subject.

  “I think this is a pretty good bet, this planet. You think it’s no good. I’m going to talk to the chlorella companies. They grow edible yeast in tanks, and chlorella in vats, and they produce an important amount of food. But they have to grow the stuff indoors and they have a ghastly job keeping everything sterile. Here’s a place where they can sow chlorella in the oceans! They can grow yeast in lakes, out-of-doors! Suppose they use this world to grow monstrous quantities of unattractive but useful foodstuff—in a way—wild? It will be good return-cargo material for ships taking colonists out to our other planets.—I suppose,” he added meditatively, “they’ll ship it back in bulk, dried.”

  Holden blinked. He was jolted out of even his depression.

  “Jed!” he said warmly. “Tell that to the world—prove that—and—people will stop being afraid! They won’t be afraid of starving before they can get to the stars! Jed—Jed! This i
s the thing the world needs most of all!”

  But Cochrane grimaced.

  “Maybe,” he admitted it. “But I’ve tasted the stuff. I think it’s foul! Still, if people want it…”

  He went back down to the communicator to contact the chlorella companies of Earth, to find out if there was any special data they would need to pass on the proposal.

  * * * *

  And so presently the ship took off for home. It landed on the moon first, and Johnny Simms was loaded into a space-suit and transferred to Lunar City, where he could live without being extradited back to Earth. He wouldn’t stay there. Alicia guaranteed that. They’d move to the glacier planet as soon as hotels were built. Maybe some day they’d travel to the planet of the shaggy beasts. Johnny would never be troublesome again. He was pathetically anxious, now, to have people like him, and stay with him, and not under any circumstances be angry with him or shut him away from them. Alicia would now have a full-time occupation keeping people from taking advantage of him.

  But the ship went back to Earth. And on Earth Jamison became the leading television personality of all time, describing and extrapolating the delicious dangers and the splendid industrial opportunities of star-travel. Bell was his companion and co-star. Presently Jamison conceded privately to Cochrane that he and Bell would need shortly to take off on another journey of exploration with some other expedition. Neither of them thought to retire, though they were well-off enough. They were stock-holders in the Spaceways company, which guaranteed them a living.

  Cochrane put Spaceways, Inc., into full operation. He fought savagely against personal publicity, but he worked himself half to death. He spent hours every day in frenzied haggling, and in the cynical examination of deftly booby-trapped business proposals. His lawyers insisted that he needed an office—he did—and presently he had four secretaries and there developed an entire hierarchy of persons under him. One day his chief secretary told him commiseratingly that somebody had waited two hours past appointment-time to see him.

  It was Hopkins, who had not been willing to interrupt his dinner to listen to a protest from Cochrane. Hopkins was still exactly as important as ever. It was only that Cochrane was more so.

  It woke Cochrane up. He stormed, to Babs, and ruthlessly cancelled appointments and abandoned or transferred enterprises, and made preparations for a more satisfactory way of life.

  They went, in time, to the Spaceways terminal, to take ship for the stars. The terminal was improvised, but it was busy. Already eighteen ships a day went away from there in Dabney fields. Eighteen others arrived. Jones was already off somewhere in a ship built according to his own notions. Officially he was doing research for Spaceways, Inc., but actually nobody told him what to do. He puttered happily with improbable contrivances and sometimes got even more improbable results. Holden was already off of Earth. He was on the planet of the shaggy beasts, acting as consultant on the cases of persons who arrived there and became emotionally disturbed because they could do as they pleased, instead of being forced by economic necessity to do otherwise.

  But this day Babs and Cochrane went together into the grand concourse of the Spaceways terminal. There were people everywhere. The hiring-booths of enterprises on the three planets now under development took applications for jobs on those remote worlds, and explained how long one had to contract to work in order to have one’s fare paid. Chambers of Commerce representatives were prepared to give technical information to prospective entrepreneurs. There were reservation-desks, and freight-routing desks, and tourist-agency desks…

  “Hmmm,” said Cochrane suddenly. “D’you know, I haven’t heard of Dabney in months! What happened to him?”

  “Dabney?” said Babs. She beamed. Women in the terminal saw the clothes she was wearing. They did not recognize her—Cochrane had kept her off the air—but they envied her. She felt very nice indeed. “Dabney?—Oh, I had to use my own judgment there, Jed. You were so busy! After all, he was scientific consultant to Spaceways. He did pay Jones cold cash for fame-rights. When everything else got so much more important than just the scientific theory, he got in a terrible state. His family consulted Doctor Holden, and we arranged it. He’s right down this way!”

  She pointed. And there was a splendid plate-glass office built out from the wall of the grand concourse. It was elevated, so that it was charmingly conspicuous. There was a chastely designed but highly visible sign under the stairway leading to it. The sign said; “H. G. Dabney, Scientific Consultant.”

  Dabney sat at an imposing desk in plain view of all the thousands who had shipped out and the millions who would ship out in time to come. He thought, visibly. Presently he stood up and paced meditatively up and down the office which was as eye-catching as a gold-fish bowl of equal size in the same place. He seemed to see someone down in the concourse. He could have recognized Cochrane, of course. But he did not.

  He bowed. He was a great man. Undoubtedly he returned to his wife each evening happily convinced that he had done the world a great favor by permitting it to glimpse him.

  Cochrane and Babs went on. Their baggage was taken care of. The departure of a ship for the stars, these days, was much less complicated and vastly more comfortable than it used to be when a mere moon-rocket took off.

  When they were in the ship, Babs heaved a sigh of absolute relief.

  “Now,” she said zestfully, “now you’re retired, Jed! You don’t have to worry about anything! And so now I’m going to try to make you worry about me—not worry about me, but think about me!”

  “Of course,” said Cochrane. He regarded her with honest affection. “We’ll take a good long vacation. First on the glacier planet. Then we’ll build a house somewhere in the hills back of Diamondville…”

  “Jed!” said Babs accusingly.

  “There’s a fair population there already,” said Cochrane, apologetically. “It won’t be long before a local television station will be logical. I was just thinking, Babs, that after we get bored with loafing, I could start a program there. Really sound stuff. Not commercial. And of course with the Dabney field it could be piped back to Earth if any sponsor wanted it. I think they would…”

  Presently the ship with Babs and Cochrane among its passengers took off to the stars. It was a perfectly routine flight. After all, star-travel was almost six months old. It wasn’t a novelty any longer.

  Operation Outer Space was old stuff.

  SECOND LANDING (1954)

  CHAPTER ONE

  “The exploring ship Franklin made its first landing on a remarkable wide beach on the western coast of Chios, the largest land mass on Thalassia. Using the longest axis of the continent as a base, and the pointed end as seen from space as 0°, this beach bears 246° from the median point of the base line … The Franklin later berthed inland some four miles 360° from Firing Plaza One on the chart. There is a pleasant savannah here, with a stream of water apparently safe for drinking …

  Astrographic Bureau Publication 11297,

  Appendix to Space Pilot Vol. 460, Pp. 58-59.

  * * * *

  IT WAS NOT plausible that Brett Carstairs should find a picture of a girl, to all appearances human, in millenia-old ruins on a planet some hundreds of light years from Earth. But the whole affair was unlikely, beginning with the report of the exploring ship which caused the Thalassia-Aspasia Expedition in the first place. If it hadn’t been for photographs and the ceramic artifacts, nobody would have believed that report. It simply was not credible that another intelligent race should ever have existed in the galaxy. In two centuries of exploration, no hint of extraterrestrial reasoning beings had been found before. But the exploration ship’s narrative didn’t stop at one impossibility about the twin worlds Thalassia and Aspasia, revolving perpetually about each other as they trailed the satellite sun Rubra on its course. The report wasn’t content to claim one intelligent race to have existed. It claimed two. And it offered evidence that some thousands of years before they had fought each other b
itterly and mercilessly, and that they had exterminated each other in an interplanetary war which lasted only days or even hours—which was hard to believe.

  But the picture of the girl was more impossible than anything else. Brett didn’t believe it, even when he held it in his hand. He didn’t dare mention it until the thing was all over.

  He didn’t find it at the actual beginning, of course. There were preliminaries. The Thalassia-Aspasia Expedition worked under handicaps. It was based on the exploring ship’s report and had to be organized by the Records Division of the Astrographic Survey—which never has any money to spare—and there had to be much skimping in every way and only volunteers could be afforded for the job. Even a ship couldn’t be hired for it. The general public was much more excited about the colonization of nearby planetary systems than in research on a planet that wouldn’t be needed for colonization in a thousand years. So the Expedition was very small—no more than a dozen members altogether—and it would be landed on Thalassia from an Ecology Bureau ship and left there. It would probably be called for in six months or so. Probably. Even then, what it found out might not matter to anybody else.

  Brett joined up because it was his only chance for adventure and because his hobby warranted his inclusion in the staff. He could drive a flier of course—everybody could—but he’d specialized in paleotechnology, the study of ancient industrial processes. If there really had been an intelligent race or races out in space, he could make better guesses than most at how the alien machinery worked and how its factories produced. But his personal reason for going was an odd, anticipatory feeling of excitement at the idea of being left with a small group of human beings on a planet where not even the skies were familiar, from which Sol itself was invisible, and where they would be more terribly alone in a waste of emptiness than any similar group had ever been before.

  That excitement lasted during the long journey in overdrive and during the almost-as-long approach to planetary landing distance after the Ecology Bureau ship was back in normal space in the Elektra system. When it went into atmosphere on Thalassia and its repulsors droned above the illimitable waters of Thalassia’s ocean, Brett watched with fascinated eyes. Waves of this ocean had a twenty thousand mile reach in which to build up to mountainous heights. At this season of the twin planets’ year, they had the equivalent of trade winds to urge them on. When they reached the shores of Chios, the planet’s only continent, the waves were three hundred feet high, and they seemed to fling spray and spume almost out to space itself. Brett watched the swirling maelstroms and dramatic tumult of the struggle between sea and land. He remembered that at the very edge of the wave-washed area there were to be found the only moving living things on the continent. They were marine forms like crabs, which scuttled out of the water to forage and darted back to the monstrously tumultuous coastal foam.