The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 04

by Anthology

  "I hate to think of a magter deprived of his symbiote," she said. "If his system can stand the shock, I imagine there will be nothing left except a brainless hulk. This is one series of experiments I don't care to witness. I rest secure in the knowledge that the Nyjorders will find the most humane solution."

  "I'm sure they will," Brion said.

  "Now what about us?" she said disconcertingly, leaning back in his arms. "I must say you have the highest body temperature of any one I have ever touched. It's positively exciting."

  This jarred Brion even more. He didn't have her ability to put past horrors out of the mind by substituting present pleasures. "Well, just what about us?" he said with masterful inappropriateness.

  She smiled as she leaned against him. "You weren't as vague as that, the night in the hospital room. I seem to remember a few other things you said. And did. You can't claim you're completely indifferent to me, Brion Brandd. So I'm only asking you what any outspoken Anvharian girl would. Where do we go from here? Get married?"

  There was a definite pleasure in holding her slight body in his arms and feeling her hair against his cheek. They both sensed it, and this awareness made his words sound that much more ugly.

  "Lea—darling! You know how important you are to me—but you certainly realize that we could never get married."

  Her body stiffened and she tore herself away from him.

  "Why, you great, fat, egotistical slab of meat! What do you mean by that? I like you, Lea, we have plenty of fun and games together, but surely you realize that you aren't the kind of girl one takes home to mother!"

  "Lea, hold on," he said. "You know better than to say a thing like that. What I said has nothing to do with how I feel towards you. But marriage means children, and you are biologist enough to know about Earth's genes—"

  "Intolerant yokel!" she cried, slapping his face. He didn't move or attempt to stop her. "I expected better from you, with all your pretensions of understanding. But all you can think of are the horror stories about the worn-out genes of Earth. You're the same as every other big, strapping bigot from the frontier planets. I know how you look down on our small size, our allergies and haemophilia and all the other weaknesses that have been bred back and preserved by the race. You hate—"

  "But that's not what I meant at all," he interrupted, shocked, his voice drowning hers out. "Yours are the strong genes, the viable strains—_mine_ are the deadly ones. A child of mine would kill itself and you in a natural birth, if it managed to live to term. You're forgetting that you are the original homo sapiens. I'm a recent mutation."

  Lea was frozen by his words. They revealed a truth she had known, but would never permit herself to consider.

  "Earth is home, the planet where mankind developed," he said. "The last few thousand years you may have been breeding weaknesses back into the genetic pool. But that's nothing compared to the hundred millions of years that it took to develop man. How many newborn babies live to be a year of age on Earth?"

  "Why … almost all of them. A fraction of one per cent die each year—I can't recall exactly how many."

  "Earth is home," he said again gently. "When men leave home they can adapt to different planets, but a price must be paid. A terrible price is in dead infants. The successful mutations live, the failures die. Natural selection is a brutally simple affair. When you look at me, you see a success. I have a sister—a success too. Yet my mother had six other children who died when they were still babies. And several others that never came to term. You know about these things, don't you, Lea?"

  "I know, I know …" she said sobbing into her hands. He held her now and she didn't pull away. "I know it all as a biologist—but I am so awfully tired of being a biologist, and top of my class and a mental match for any man. When I think about you, I do it as a woman, and can't admit any of this. I need someone, Brion, and I needed you so much because I loved you." She paused and wiped her eyes. "You're going home, aren't you? Back to Anvhar. When?"

  "I can't wait too long," he said, unhappily. "Aside from my personal wants, I find myself remembering that I'm a part of Anvhar. When you think of the number of people who suffered and died—or adapted—so that I could be sitting here now … well, it's a little frightening. I suppose it doesn't make sense logically that I should feel indebted to them. But I do. Anything I do now, or in the next few years, won't be as important as getting back to Anvhar."

  "And I won't be going back with you." It was a flat statement the way she said it, not a question.

  "No, you won't be," he said. "There is nothing on Anvhar for you."

  Lea was looking out of the port at Dis and her eyes were dry now. "Way back in my deeply buried unconscious I think I knew it would end this way," she said. "If you think your little lecture on the Origins of Man was a novelty, it wasn't. It just reminded me of a number of things my glands had convinced me to forget. In a way, I envy you your weightlifter wife-to-be, and your happy kiddies. But not very much. Very early in life I resigned myself to the fact that there was no one on Earth I would care to marry. I always had these teen-age dreams of a hero from space who would carry me off, and I guess I slipped you into the pattern without realizing it. I'm old enough now to face the fact that I like my work more than a banal marriage, and I'll probably end up a frigid and virtuous old maid, with more degrees and titles than you have shot-putting records."

  As they looked through the port Dis began slowly to contract. Their ship drew away from it, heading towards Nyjord. They sat apart, without touching now. Leaving Dis meant leaving behind something they had shared. They had been strangers together there, on a strange world. For a brief time their lifelines had touched. That time was over now.

  "Don't we look happy!" Hys said, shambling towards them.

  "Fall dead and make me even happier then," Lea snapped bitterly.

  Hys ignored the acid tone of her words and sat down on the couch next to them. Since leaving command of his rebel Nyjord army he seemed much mellower. "Going to keep on working for the Cultural Relationships Foundation, Brion?" he asked. "You're the kind of man we need."

  Brion's eyes widened as the meaning of the last words penetrated. "Are you in the C.R.F.?"

  "Field agent for Nyjord," he said. "I hope you don't think those helpless office types like Faussel or Mervv really represented us there? They just took notes and acted as a front and cover for the organization. Nyjord is a fine planet, but a gentle guiding hand behind the scenes is needed, to help them find their place in the galaxy before they are pulverized."

  "What's your dirty game, Hys?" Lea asked, scowling. "I've had enough hints to suspect for a long time that there was more to the C.R.F. than the sweetness-and-light part I have seen. Are you people egomaniacs, power hungry or what?"

  "That's the first charge that would be leveled at us if our activities were publicly known," Hys told her. "That's why we do most of our work under cover. The best fact I can give you to counter the charge is _money_. Just where do you think we get the funds for an operation this size?" He smiled at their blank looks. "You'll see the records later so there won't be any doubt. The truth is that all our funds are donated by planets we have helped. Even a tiny percentage of a planetary income is large—add enough of them together and you have enough money to help other planets. And voluntary gratitude is a perfect test, if you stop to think about it. You can't talk people into liking what you have done. They have to be convinced. There have always been people on C.R.F. worlds who knew about our work, and agreed with it enough to see that we are kept in funds."

  "Why are you telling me all this super-secret stuff," Lea asked.

  "Isn't that obvious? We want you to keep on working for us. You can name whatever salary you like—as I've said, there is no shortage of ready cash."

  Hys glanced quickly at them both and delivered the clinching argument. "I hope Brion will go on working with us too. He is the kind of field agent we desperately need, and it is almost impossible to find."

&
nbsp; "Just show me where to sign," Lea said, and there was life in her voice once again.

  "I wouldn't exactly call it blackmail," Brion smiled, "but I suppose if you people can juggle planetary psychologies, you must find that individuals can be pushed around like chessmen. Though you should realize that very little pushing is required this time."

  "Will you sign on?" Hys asked.

  "I must go back to Anvhar," Brion said, "but there really is no pressing hurry."

  "Earth," said Lea, "is overpopulated enough as it is."

  * * *

  Contents

  WEST OF THE SUN

  By Edgar Pangborn

  On earth it was 2056 A.D. but on the red-green planet it was

  THE YEAR ONE

  There were only six human beings—

  DR. CHRISTOPHER WRIGHT, anthropologist—he believed in man's basic goodness … but could he put his trust in an alien race?

  PAUL MASON—he dutifully shared his wife with his best friend.

  DOROTHY LEEDS—Paul was her husband, but she knew there were some things more important than love.

  SEARS OLIPHANT—the gentle scientist who inspired love in an alien.

  ANN BRYAN—the youngest of them all, she had to be taught violence and passion.

  EDMUND SPEARMAN—the rebel who had to have his own tribe to rule … even though it meant war with his Earth companions.

  Six humans alone against the deadly forces of a strange and distant planet.

  Part One

  A.D. 2056

  1

  Morning was flowing over the red-green planet. "What do we know?" The delicate brown face of Dorothy Leeds kindled with questions. "Summarize it."

  Edmund Spearman achieved casualness. "Diameter and mass a trifle more than Earth's, larger orbit around a larger sun. A year of 458 days, twenty-six hours each. Moderate seasonal changes, axial tilt less than Earth's, orbit less elliptical. See the smallness of the north polar ice cap? The equatorial region—much too hot; the rest is subtropical to temperate. We should go down (if we do) near the 50th parallel—north, I'd say. Too much desert in the southern hemisphere. Might be hot winds, sandstorms."

  "The red-green is vegetation?" Dr. Christopher Wright teetered on long legs before the screen, a classroom mannerism unchanged by eleven years in the wilderness of space. He pinched and pulled the skin on his Adam's apple, his hawk's-beak, small-chinned head jutting forward with an awkwardness not aggressive but intent. Paul Mason thought: You love him or hate him. In either case he's never quite grotesque. Wright's too-soft voice insisted: "It is, of course?"

  "It has to be, Doc," Spearman said, and rubbed his bluish cheeks, looking older than his thirty-two years. Already he showed frontal baldness, deeply bracketed mouth corners. On Spearman's big shoulders was the burden of the ship. Watching him now, Paul Mason was troubled by a familiar thought: Captain Jensen should not have died…. "It has to be. The instruments show oxygen in Earth proportion, or somewhat richer, plus nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The camera gives us tree shadows in these latest photographs with the stronger lens. The air may make us oxygen-happy—if we go down…. Well, Dorothy—two continents, two oceans, both smaller than the Atlantic, connected narrowly at north and south polar regions. Dozens of lakes bigger than the Caspian. The proportion of land to water surface works out nearly the same as on Earth. No mountains to match the Himalayas, but some pretty high ranges. Unlimited forest, prairie, desert." He closed bloodshot eyes, pressing the lids. Paul Mason thought: I should never try to paint Ed. The portrait would always come out as Hercules Frustrated, and he wouldn't care for it…. Spearman said, "Even most of the tallest mountains look smooth—old. If there were glaciers it was a long time ago."

  "Geologically a quiet phase," Sears Oliphant remarked. "As Earth looked in the Jurassic and may look again." Born fifty years ago in Tel Aviv, brought up in London, Rio, and New York because his parents were medical trouble shooters for the Federation, and possessed of a doctorate in biology (more exactly, taxonomy) from Johns Hopkins, Sears Oliphant claimed that his original Polish name could not have been spelled with the aid of two dictionaries and a crowbar. His fat face blinked at Dorothy with little kind eyes. "I forget, sugar—you weren't around in the Jurassic, were you?"

  "Maybe." Her slow smile was for Paul. "As a very early mammal."

  Wright said, "No artifacts…. At first it looked like Venus." His crinkled asymmetrical face probed at them with a wistful half smile like a child's. "May we call this planet Lucifer, son of the morning? And if we land and found a city (or am I being ridiculous?)—let it be Jensen City, in honor of a more-than-solar myth."

  Shading closed lids, Spearman said with harshness, "Myth?"

  "Why, Ed, yes—like all remembered heroes who continue in the love of others, a love that magnifies. How else would you have it?"

  "But"—Ann Bryan was high-voiced, troubled—"Lucifer——"

  "My dear, Lucifer was an angel. Devils and angels have a way of turning out to be the same organism. I noticed that first when I was a damned interne. I noticed it again when I switched to anthropology. I even noticed it on a space ship with the five persons I love best…. No artifacts, huh?"

  Dorothy said, "You haven't seen these latest pictures, Doc."

  "Something?" Wright hurried over, gray eyes wide and sparkling. "I'd quit hoping." Ann joined him, quick-motioned in her slimness, too taut. Wright slipped an elderly arm around her. "Parallel lines, in jungle? Ah…. Now, why none in the open ground?"

  Spearman suggested: "We could take more shots. But…."

  Paul Mason broke the darkening silence. "But what, Ed?"

  "We're falling, some. I could move us out into a self-sustaining orbit by using more of the reaction mass. We have none to waste. Jensen's death eleven years ago——" Spearman shook his gaunt but heavy head. "Thirty pre-calculated accelerations—and the rest periods they allowed us were insufficient, I think. You remember what wrecks we were when it was finished; that's why I tried to allow more time in deceleration." His brassy voice slowed, fetching out words with care: "The last acceleration, as you know, was not pre-calculated. Jensen was already dead (must have been heart) when his hand took us out of automatic, made another acceleration that damn near flattened us——"

  "Still here though." Sears Oliphant chuckled and patted his middle. "We made it, didn't we, boy?" It sounded a little forced.

  "In deceleration I had to allow for the big step Jensen never meant; more of the mass was used to correct a deflection. Same allowance must be made in returning, not to mention the biggest drain of all—getting out of gravity here, a problem not present at the spaceport. Oh, it's planned for—she's built to do it, even from a heavier planet than this. But after she's done it the margin for return will be—narrower than I care to think."

  Dorothy, small and soft, leaned back in Paul's arms. Her even voice was for everyone in the control room: "Nevertheless we'll go down."

  Spearman gazed across at her without apparent comprehension. He went on, deliberate, harassed: "Here's a thing I never told you. In that accidental acceleration the ship did not respond normally: the deflection happened then, and it may have been due to a defect in the building of Argo, a fault in the tail jets. At the time, it was all I could do to reach Jensen before I blacked out—I still don't know how I ever managed it. Later I tried to think there could be no defect. The forward jets took care of us nicely in deceleration. Until we start braking, we can't know. Indicators say everything's all right down there. Instruments can lie. Lord, they've sweated out atomic motors since before 1960, almost a century now—and we're still kids playing with grown-up toys."

  Sears smiled into plump hands. "So I must be sure to pack my microscope in one of the lifeboats—hey?"

  "You're for landing, then."

  Sears nodded. Ann Bryan thrust thin ivory fingers into her loose black hair. "I couldn't take another eleven years." She attempted a smile. "Tell me, somebody—tell me there'll be music on Lucifer—a
way to make new strings for my violin before I forget everything…."

  Dorothy said, "Land." Gently, as one might say time for lunch. And she added: "We'll find strings, Nan."

  "Land, of course," said Christopher Wright, preoccupied; his long finger tapped on the photograph; his lips went on moving silently, carrying through some private meditation. "Land. Give protoplasm a chance."

  "Land," Paul Mason said. Did anyone suppose the First Interstellar would just turn around and go home? We're here, aren't we…?

  Through hours when spoken words were few, inner words riotous, Lucifer turned an evening face. A morning descent might have been pleasanter in human terms, but the calculator, churning its mathematical brew, said the time was now.

  Paul Mason squirmed into his pilot's seat. It was good, he thought, that they could at least meet the challenge of the unexplored with adequate bodies. Wright was dryly indestructible; Ed Spearman a gaunt monolith; the plumpness of Sears Oliphant had nothing flabby. The women were in the warm vigor of a youth that had never known illness. As for his own body, Paul felt for it now a twinge of amused admiration, as if he were seeing an animated statue by an artist better than himself: slender, tough, nothing too much, built for endurance and speed—it would serve. Spearman was already talking in the earphones: "Close lock. Retract shield." Paul responded from ingrained training. Beyond the window that would give him forward vision in the (impossible) event he had to fly the lifeboat, the heavens opened. Withdrawal of the shield into the belly of the mother ship Argo was a dream motion within a wider dream. Dorothy and Wright were strapped in the two seats behind him: half of Argo's human treasure was here. "Go over what you do if you have to drive off. Over."

  "Lever for release. No action till wing-lock indicator is green. No jet unless to correct position. In atmosphere handle as glider, jet only in emergency. Over." After all, Paul considered, he had had a thousand hours of atmospheric flying, and two years' drill on these boats. Ed could worry less and save wind. Beautiful mechanisms in their own right, Model L-46, lying eleven years secret but alert in the streamlined blisters, powered by charlesite to avoid the ponderous shielding still necessary for atomic motors—and charlesite, perfected only thirty years ago in 2026, was obedient stuff. In space, the boats were small rocket ships; in atmosphere, gliders or low-speed jet planes. While Argo had been in the long ordeal of building, Paul had been shot from gleaming tubes like this into the atmosphere of Earth, the blind depth at the spaceport, the desolate thin air of Mars. Spearman said, "Turning in five minutes."