The 31st Golden Age of Science Fiction

by Sam Merwin Jr

  “I assure you,” said Pryor, wondering just how stupid the patriarch was, “that you will receive ample compensation.”

  “Can you then arrange ample compensation for human hearts?” the old man asked.

  Pryor braced himself and drained his mug. To his surprise, the whiskey, or whatever it was, went down smoothly. He said, “I’m afraid you don’t understand the situation, sir. This planet, Rigel Four, is the subject for testing of the deadliest new bomb ever made. The experiment is already under way. You and your people must evacuate. Of course, if our plotters had known of your existence—”

  “They’d have selected another world to blow up,” the Dominie finished for him. “I fear they’ll have to make the change anyway. Our title to this planet is quite clear and above-board. Allow me to show you.”

  He rose, crossed to a lovingly carved and polished cabinet, and withdrew not a vidiroll but some actual ancient documents, handed them to Pryor.

  Pryor looked at them with growing excitement. It was a planet charter, beyond question, granted some two centuries before by Interplanetary Control, the predecessor of Interstellar Control. It stated that Arnold MacRae, Ian Stephenson, and Alexandra Hamilton had purchased, in goods, cash, and services, the full rights to Rigel IV, hereafter to be known as Nevis. It added that the rights were to run in perpetuity, save only in the case of interstellar war, and then only during the existence of a state of war.

  Somebody had slipped when Marshal Wellington Smith selected Rigel IV for his planet-busting test. Pryor suspected the listing of this world under Nevis, among the titled planets, rather than as Rigel IV among the untitled, plus the antiquity of the deal and the small size and isolation of the settlement, had caused the error.

  He stood up, noting that the floor seemed to slant where it had been level when he entered. He said, “There’s been a serious error, I fear. Can you have me driven to my ship at once? I must report it while there is still time.”

  “Certainly, young man,” said the Dominie, rising.

  * * * *

  Back in Lab Able, Pryor ran his hands over his face, which felt unreasonably hot. He punched in the outspeaker, called the Erebus and explained the situation. At its conclusion, he added innocently, “Shall I call in Interstellar for checking and aid? Over.”

  He had to wait almost half an hour, Earth-time, for the reply to come through. In the meantime, he could picture the consternation among the smug brass hats on the flagship. He hummed the Antarean ditty again, feeling strangely relaxed and comfortable.

  Finally it came through. When he got it unscrambled, it was orders to sit tight while higher authority dealt with the situation. He signed off, chuckling, and went back outside to the ancient surface-car, where the young man and a young woman were waiting for him. He had left the message recorder on, resolved to return in two hours for further orders. If there were none, he was going to call in IC. Come what might, he was back in the big picture with a vengeance.

  When they reached the Dominie’s house, the girl said, “When you’re through eating, perhaps you’ll come to the kirk vestry. We’ll be having a small dance.”

  He looked at her more closely and, in spite of the rosy and unnatural whiteness of her skin, noted that she was comely. He resolved to visit the kirk vestry as soon as politeness would permit, whatever a kirk vestry might be.

  He drank more of the Dominie’s uisquebaugh before dinner and found himself asking, “Pardon me, sir, but would you answer one question?” And, at the older man’s nod, “Why are you so few?”

  “We are few by choice,” was the reply. “Our forefathers long ago left Earth for Proxima Centauri Seven, in one of the earliest migrations, to escape overcrowding. My people and I like room to breathe in, room to roam and work without restriction. When PC Seven grew too crowded, we pooled our resources and purchased this world. In those days, planets such as this were cheap enough. The Control was glad to have them settled. Since then, we have limited our numbers to avoid a repetition of what went before.”

  Thinking of a life spent in the crowded cities of crowded planets or in the cramped quarters of starships, Pryor understood. It had been in search of space and freedom that he had joined the service—only to exchange urban jamming for the prisons of strict discipline and limited space.

  “You’ve created a dream,” Pryor said.

  The Dominie put down his empty mug and said gravely, “Don’t think it’s been easy. Adapting to the most hospitable alien world is a backbreaking job. But we’ve never been afraid of work.”

  “I can see that,” said Pryor, feeling oddly useless. He wondered how he would fare without buttons to push, circuits to serve him.

  The Dominie’s wife, a tall, handsome woman with the frame of a percheron, appeared and announced that dinner was ready. Thanks to the whiskey, or perhaps to his absorption in his exotic surroundings, Pryor found himself actually eating meat—and actually enjoying it. The mutton was crisp and black on the outside, tender and pink in the center, and the vegetables and fruits served with it constituted a rich new experience.

  During the meal, the Dominie’s wife said, “Tell me, Mr. Pryor, if the universe is not at war, why do they wish to blow up our planet?”

  Pryor explained as best he could—and, unexpectedly, he seemed to be thinking and expressing himself more clearly than ever before. He told them about the rise of the aggressive elements in Sirius Sector, about the plebescite that had put Wellington Smith in power.

  “They’re fretting under the restrictions of IC,” he said, “and they’re seeking to gather sufficient strength to obtain concessions. As long as they remain within IC limits, they can’t be touched.”

  The Dominie said quietly, “It’s the same dreadful story, Mary. Too many people, too many unhappy people, restlessness, conspiracy, war. This time the whole universe will suffer.” Then, to Pryor, “But if your Star Marshal obliterates an inhabited IC planet, he’ll be in trouble, will he not?”

  “If he should dare do such a thing—and I feel sure he won’t,” said Pryor, “he’ll be as good as ruined.” For some reason he added, as an afterthought, “That is, if IC hears of it.”

  “I see,” said the patriarch, nodding thoughtfully.

  His wife said, “There’s a dance in the kirk vestry this evening, Mr. Pryor. I hope you’ll be in attendance. Naturally, you’ll honor us by being our guest overnight.”

  * * * *

  Pryor found the kirk vestry without trouble. It was an extension of the big building with the white spire and less than fifty meters from the Dominie’s house. He intended merely to get someone to drive him to his ship and get his message out. But when he heard the shrill, rhythmic combination of bagpipes and fiddle, something stirred deep in his ancestral memory, and he forgot about all else.

  He danced with the girl of the surface-car, and she showed him the steps of the strange dances, and his feet had magic in them. He laughed with the men and drank more of the whiskey, and the night became a golden whirl of primitive excitement such as he had never known. He needed the help of two of the young men to get him back to the Dominie’s house, where he was undressed and put into a soft warm object they called a bed.

  He knew no more until the concussion of the explosion brought him sharply out of his drunken slumber. Although his tongue was thick with fur and his head rattled as if it were filled with dried pebbles, he woke up sober.

  Through the bedroom window, he saw the flickering brilliance of the exploded bomb mounting slowly toward the stars. He turned and, with a strange sickness in his stomach, scrambled into his clothing. Outside, he could hear the little community coming to life.

  He hadn’t believed they would do it. When he got out of the vehicle, he saw an odd little mound of molten metal where Lab Able had stood in silver serenity a few minutes earlier. Silently, he cursed the ruthless militarists who were going to blast Rigel IV to
dust, and cursed his own irresponsibility for not sending the message that would have put a halt to their plans.

  Somebody said in the odd accent that was already becoming familiar, “What happened, Mr. Pryor?”

  Pryor thought fast though his head ached badly. He said, “I fear the drive fuel reached critical mass. It happens once in a hundred thousand times.” It hadn’t, it couldn’t, but how could he tell them they were as good as dead.

  And himself with them, of course. But he didn’t waste time thinking about that.

  When he got back to the Dominie’s house, the wife greeted him gravely. She wore a soft wool robe, and her hair was in odd wisps of paper, and he could tell by the way she looked at him that she knew.

  “Where can I find the Dominie?” he asked.

  “He’s in the basement of the kirk,” she said in her soft untroubled voice. “He asked me to ask you to join him there.”

  “Thanks, ma’am,” Pryor replied. There was nothing more to say.

  * * * *

  The light was dim in the basement. The place smelled of age and dampness. But there was machinery there, a vast pile of it, and the Dominie was fussing around it, wearing a frown.

  “Ho, there, Pryor,” he said. “So they blew up your ship?”

  “They blew her up,” said Pryor grimly. “I never thought they’d dare. If only I hadn’t made an idiot of myself at the dance, I’d—”

  The Dominie cut him off with, “It’s a bit late for regrets, young man. Come see if we can get this blasted communicator working.”

  Pryor’s heart leapt. For a moment, he thought he was gaining a reprieve. Then he saw the age and condition of the old set—it was at least a century old—and realized they’d be lucky to get a message out at all before the big one blew them to nothingness.

  “Come on, Dominie,” he said, “let’s have that wrench.”

  * * * *

  They worked through the short night and into the morning that followed. The Dominie’s wife brought them a strange herb brew she called “tea” that reinvigorated them. She said, to Pryor, “Sheila and the other girls are very excited. They believe you’ll be staying a while now. You’ll be the first stranger in many years.”

  Pryor wiped his brow grimly and said, “Well, I’ll be here as long as any of them, I guess.”

  “Then there’s no hope?” the Dominie asked quietly over his tea.

  “Oh, we’ll get a message out to the IC,” said Pryor. “We’re almost ready to send. But it will be too late. The bomb is already on its way.”

  “Come on then,” said the Dominie, handing his tea back to his wife. “Let’s waste no time.”

  They got the message out, before the reddish sun reached the Meridian. And Pryor said grimly, “That makes their second mistake. They should have blasted the town last night, not just my ship. Their first mistake was in selecting this planet.” He looked about him at the placid, happy scene, and suppressed a heaving sob.

  The Dominie put a firm hand on his shoulder and said, “Perhaps it’s best this way. Perhaps this is why we are here, to prevent the most terrible war of all. After all, there aren’t many of us against those who would die if your marshal got his way.”

  Pryor said,, his eyes shining with admiration, “You’re a great man, Dominie—and a brave one.”

  “Let’s just say an old one,” said the patriarch. “And now, since we have so little time, let’s you and I walk to the edge of the loch and look at the hills on the other side. It’s a lovely view.”

  AMY STOPS THE CLOCK (Bonus Mystery Story)

  Originally published in Popular Detective, September, 1948.

  Amy Brewster eyed with distaste the half-dozen dishes from which she had breakfasted in solitary state in her suite at New York’s Hotel Ritz. Growling inwardly at the emptiness of the cavern of her stomach, she made a mental vow to wring the neck of the Boston specialist who had frightened her into going on a diet as soon as she returned to her native city.

  “Old fuddy-duddy!” she muttered, although the specialist in question was her junior by a decade at least. “Just because he worries himself into chronic ulcers, he wants the rest of the world to live on milk toast.”

  In truth, a large fruit cocktail, an order of liver and bacon, three eggs and ham, buttered toast and a single order of hash-browned potatoes were scarcely enough to remind Amy’s three hundred-odd pounds that they had partaken of any nourishment at all.

  Reaching for the gin bottle and pouring herself a full tumbler of her preferred beverage, she downed it like water, reflecting gloomily that even this never-failing cheer builder failed to have its usual bracing effect.

  “Not even I can drink on an empty stomach,” she reflected as she picked up the moming paper for the second time.

  Usually inspired to a half-dozen activities by this matutinal task, the wealthiest, most radical and sole perennial apple-cart-upsetter of ten generations of Boston Brewsters found herself unable to find interest in the news.

  Not that there wasn’t plenty of it. Had she not been devitalized by lack of nourishment, she might have acted on any of several financial openings to drive wedges into the harmony of Wall Street.

  The Society page revealed that one of her Cousin Matilda’s daughters had just eloped with a young man she knew to have been the family chauffeur. And a Page One story that achieved prominence even amid a welter of national and international squabbles, stated that inventor J. Bennett Eden had been found with a bullet through his heart on the costly carpet of his study just east of Central Park.

  While Amy had never met Eden, she had on one occasion taken advantage of a process of his to make long-lifed safety razor blades out of the cheapest of steel. Purchasing the process from his disheartened backer, she had forced the major companies to pool and buy the process from her for suppression purposes at a colossal profit. She had even awarded the inventor a large cut.

  Yet though murder was one of her hobbies, as the police of several cities learned to their combined horror and gratification, Amy could not get interested. This she blamed on her lack of nutriment, although in every previous case in which she had successfully meddled, someone personally involved had appealed to her for help.

  She was still unhappily wondering what to do about her indisposition when a knock sounded on the door of her suite. Thinking it to be the waiter, she growled a “come in” in the voice some wag had once likened to the late Sir W. S. Gilbert’s “typical African swell, whose sigh was a hullaballo, his whisper a horrible yell.”

  When no servitor appeared to remove the breakfast things, she looked up irritably, the full moon of her face bright with annoyance.

  Standing in the doorway of the drawing room in which she sat were two of the most beautiful young people Amy had ever seen. And Amy, incredibly ugly herself and utterly without envy, had developed a vicarious delight in having decorative young folk around her, that had resulted in a true connoisseur’s rating.

  The girl, tall, slim but not too slim, possessed a rare, almost white skin underlaid with pearly vitality. She wore a smart black suit which was matched by her shoulder length shimmering hair. The delicately cut features of her face revealed pride, grief, fear and determination.

  “Yes?” growled Army, looking at the man behind her.

  He towered a full head over the girl, was dressed with exquisite care in a gray suit which could have come only from three Manhattan tailors. His cordovan shoes were obviously bench made, and the heavy gold watch chain across his flat waistcoat, bespoke a quasihumorous wish to indulge his own taste in fashion and the means to gratify it.

  His face, below close-cut sandy-red hair, was ugly-handsome to the point of being distinguished and hinted at great charm when he smiled. He smiled now and stepped forward as his companion hesitated.

  “Please pardon us, Miss Brewster, for crashing in on you like this,”
he said in a deep, rather nasal voice that was somehow not unpleasant. “But I assure you the matter’s importance seemed to us to justify it.”

  “Go on,” growled Amy, increasingly less displeased with the intrusion. “You’re in. Say your piece.”

  “I’m Anne Waring,” the girl said, plucking up courage. “Bennett Eden’s niece. He was—he was murdered last night. Maybe you’ve heard about it.”

  “Maybe,” said Amy. She nodded toward the tall young man. “Who’s your boy friend?”

  “Oh—this is Jimmy Steams,” said the girl, turning slightly red and looking a trifle annoyed. “He—he came along with me.

  “Honored,” said Jimmy Steams, bowing slightly. Amy acknowledged his greeting with a nod that made six chins of her habitual three. She had heard of Jimmy Steams, a sort of latter-day dandy of the E. Berry Wall school.

  “Okay,” said Amy. “Why come to me?” Her words seemed to unlock a flood gate in the girl.

  “Oh, we heard how you solved those insurance murders and the others,” she said rapidly. “I know I have no right to call on you, but you see, it’s about Cam Barden. He’s going to be arrested because he won’t tell on Yvonne and—”

  “Hold everything,” said Amy. “Sit down and let’s get it straight. If there’s anything I can do, I’ve got to have the facts. Now, begin at the beginning.”

  * * * *

  The story was simple enough. Anne lived with her uncle and was, it seemed, sole heir to to very large fortune, save for the usual bequests to servants and others. Outside of four servants, the only other resident was Cameron Barden, young scientist who assisted Bennett Eden in the laboratory he maintained in the basement.

  At eleven o’clock on the previous evening, Barden, who had been working late, came upstairs, found his employer lying on the living room floor, shot dead. The gun had been lying perhaps a dozen feet away and there was no question of suicide. Or so he had said when he reported the crime to the police at eleven-three.