The Second Murray Leinster Megapack

by Murray Leinster

  “Ah!” said Mr. Binder enthusiastically. “That’s the philosophical notion that it could be possible for the same thing to be in several places at the same time! That has possibilities, George!”

  * * * *

  It can be reported that Mr. Thaddeus Binder is now at work on the problem of replication, which—he will explain—is a philosophico-scientific prospect of great interest. He is a very nice, pink-cheeked, little man, Mr. Binder, but maybe somebody ought to stop him. He does not realize his talents. Replication, now.…

  Mr. Steems could be applied to for an opinion. After all, he has had experience of Mr. Binder’s experiments. If the matter of the Taxi Monster and the middle of the week after next is mentioned in his vicinity, he will begin to speak, rapidly and with emotion. His speech will grow impassioned, his tone will grow hoarse and shrill at the same time, and presently he will foam at the mouth. But on the other hand, Susie Blepp and Patrolman Cassidy feel quite otherwise.

  It’s pretty hard to decide.

  *

  OVERDRIVE

  (Originally Published in 1953)

  CHAPTER I

  The space-tramp came out of overdrive again and began to let down to the surface of the planet below it. Its communicators sent a beamed request to land, the regular formality. There was no answer.

  It descended steadily, repeating its identification and request, and adding that it had Earth-seeds, art-objects, heavy metals and dairy animals on board for trading. There was still no reply.

  It was surely the right planet. The sun was surely Procus. This was the second planet out from the local sun, Procus II. There were cities on its surface, plainly visible through the electron telescope. But there was no reply to the beamed, formal message from the space-tramp.

  It went into atmosphere, and its communicators searched the wave-bands of atmospheric radio for messages. There were no radio messages in the atmosphere—nothing but static. But cultivated fields could be seen, and highways, and a city almost below.

  The space-tramp hovered over the city, hunting the spaceport. It descended to within two thousand feet.

  But it did not land. Viewscopes showed the city motionless. Ground vehicles stood still in its streets. Nothing moved anywhere. With greater magnification, there were bodies to be seen, sprawled out and still. There had been fighting. There were signs of explosions. And then it could be seen that the city had been looted…unmistakably, it had been looted…

  The space-tramp shot skyward in panic. Instantly it was out of atmosphere it winked into overdrive to get away from there.

  Procus II was the fourth planet to be discovered with all its cities looted and its entire population murdered…

  * * * *

  Jim Brent woke up when the Delilah’s overdrive field went off ahead of time. A space-liner’s overdrive goes on and stays on. A liner goes from one place to another place on schedule, and there is no nonsense about it. The Delilah was en route from Khem IV to Loren II, and it had been in overdrive for two weeks and it should have stayed in overdrive for two weeks more. But the drive went off, and Brent woke up. Anybody would. His stomach turned over twice, and he was swallowing hard as he struggled dizzily to a sitting position. He hung to the sides of his bunk as the universe went into that dizzy, diminishing spiral which ended in a fraction of a second but felt like hours. Then he opened his eyes. Instantly, he thought of the girl named Kit.

  A voice said soothingly from the speaker in the ceiling of his cabin:

  “There is no immediate cause for alarm. Stay calm. The overdrive field has been cut. That is all. There is no need to be alarmed. This is a well-found ship with a thoroughly trained crew, and we are in communication with our base. There is no occasion for uneasiness.”

  Brent heard every word, and a cold chill began at the base of his spine and went up, vertebra by vertebra, to chill the back of his skull, and then went deliberately down the ladder of his backbone again. The words from the speaker were soothing, but the message was one to chill the blood. For one thing, the voice lied. It spoke of communication with the Delilah’s base. That was lie number one. It said there was no reason to be disturbed. That was lie number two—and on up to infinity. Liners did not cut their overdrives in mid-voyage. If and when an overdrive went off—and was lied about—everybody on board the ship was dead. Automatically. But unfortunately they didn’t act dead.

  Brent waited, feeling sick inside. Then he got up stiffly from his bunk. He put on his clothes. There was no port in his cabin, of course. In overdrive there is nothing to be seen anyhow except out the bow control-room ports. Overdrive is travel at the speed of light multiplied many times—the multiplier depending on the type of drive.

  For almost two centuries humanity had nothing faster than interplanetary drive, and was confined to its home solar system in consequence, because from Sol to its nearest neighbor was four and a half light-years, which would have taken centuries to travel. On overdrive nowadays a freighter makes it in a week and a crack liner in a fraction of that time. But they do it in overdrive. Overdrive! If the overdrive goes, the trip is finished. Period.

  Brent patted his hair carefully before he went out of his cabin. It was quite absurd. He was thinking. The overdrive’s blown. I’ve got look after that girl. It was a curious thing to think because he was of the Profession, and besides, she had never spoken to him.

  He knew that her name was Kit Harlow and that she was wonderfully pleasing to look at. But there had been a reason for not trying to make her acquaintance. Some very strange things had happened. A planet named Derik had been discovered, most unexpectedly, to have a its cities ruled with skeletons and all its treasures stolen. Another planet named Tren III was found to have all its citizens rotting in the streets of its looted cities.

  Four widely-separated planets, in all, had been discovered with their entire populations killed. Two had been painstakingly looted of every valuable which men with unlimited transportation could wish to carry away. And it had been Brent’s errand—being of the Profession—to try to find out how all this had come about. Naturally, he hadn’t thought of getting acquainted with girls, however pretty.

  Now, though, all bets were off. If the Delilah’s overdrive was blown, nobody had any profession or business or obligations of any sort that reached outside the ship. Nothing anybody did would have any effect, or any meaning, to anybody not on the ship at the same time with him. The Delilah was, at the moment, very stodgy and respectable. But presently it would be a first-class imitation of hell. Brent’s Professional status was gone and all his obligations with it. It occurred to him that the most useful thing he could do would be to explain the situation to Kit Harlow and offer, politely, to kill her before things got too bad.

  He didn’t have to think the situation out. In overdrive, an antique ship like this—modern ships did vastly better—would cover a light-year of distance in a week of time. Light travels a hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second. In eight minutes it travels ninety-two millions of miles. In a day it travels so far that the distance has no meaning. In a year it travels the distance the Delilah should cover in a week. If a ship’s Overdrive went off—any ship’s overdrive—and where it went off was known, still it would take ten thousand other spaceships ten thousand years to hunt for it with one chance in ten thousand of finding it.

  Nobody ever hunted for a ship that vanished in overdrive. It was useless. If the crew couldn’t fix whatever went wrong, it wouldn’t get fixed. So far, in two thousand years of interstellar navigation, just two ships had been found after their overdrives blew. Each had drifted into a planetary system by pure chance. One had been lost a century and a half when it was discovered. The other had been missing for eight hundred years. Both were blessedly empty of life when they were found—of course—but both showed plain signs of what had happened inside them before life went. Madness was only part of it—the smallest, least, and cleanest part of it.

  When human beings found themselves imprisone
d for always in a metal coffin lost among derisive stars, they ceased to be human. Their food and air would last only so long. They had no hope at all. So the humans in a ship with a blown overdrive went mad. They didn’t stop at being beasts. They seemed to find new depths to sink to before the last of them died in gibbering idiocy.

  I wonder if there are arms on board, thought Brent. The crew could wipe out the rest of us. Best thing, too.

  His mind went back to the girl. Such a pretty girl! She was traveling with her father, who was an Earth Commerce Commissioner and a Very Important Person indeed. They’d been on Khem IV while Brent was there. He’d seen them with a pattering escort of secret-service men. But Brent had been busy finding out nothing at all. Khem IV was a thinly-settled planet with a savagely totalitarian government, but he’d found no indications of Professional interest. He’d merely been trailed everywhere by unskilled detectives. It was pure coincidence that Kit and Brent traveled on the same ship to Loren II.

  I wish she’d missed this ship, thought Brent numbly. It didn’t occur to him to wish that he’d missed it, too.

  The speaker in the ceiling repeated:

  “There is no cause for alarm. Be calm. The overdrive field has been cut. That is all. We are in communication with our base. There is no need for uneasiness.”

  It occurred to Brent that it was very foolish to keep repeating that message. It would not reassure anybody. Anyone who knew anything would know it was a lie. The more it was insisted upon, the more frightened the passengers would become.

  CHAPTER II

  He opened the door of his cabin and went out. His door opened on the main lounge. It was full of the Delilah’s passengers. He’d never seen so many of them at once before. There were some children. They were playing. There was a woman with a painted, empty face. She smiled fixedly, but her eyes were filled with horror. There were a man and a girl—honeymooners, Brent had thought. The girl was chalky-white, and her young husband’s eyes were burning as he looked at the other passengers. He was already prepared to kill anybody to defend her. To get her food. To have air for her to breathe… There were many faces that had been ruddy in color and now were a curious grayish tint.

  Brent looked at the girl he’d thought of first. He moved toward her.

  A man clutched his arm and babbled: “Look here! They say—they say the ship’s in touch with home. Do you think that’s so?”

  Brent nodded. “Oh surely!” he said untruthfully. “They have a new faster-than-light communication system. All ships have it now. We’ll be all right.”

  The man gasped in relief. “You’re sure? Positive?” Then he began to laugh foolishly. “Then it’s all right! It’s all right!”

  Brent moved on. It would be wonderful if it were true, he thought sourly to himself. Now was no time to refuse a comforting lie to someone who needed it.

  Then he frowned to himself. There was something in the back of his mind that was trying to come out. But his head wasn’t working just right.

  Nobody’s mind is clear when filled with the numbing knowledge that he is helpless against absolutely certain doom. Of course, the Delilah wasn’t in communication with anybody or anything. Radiation is propagated at the speed of light only. If a message-beam could be held tight enough, and if enough power could be put into it, and if it were aimed straight enough—why—a liner like the Delilah could send a message back to Khem IV, from which it had departed two weeks before. But the message would take two years to get back. More, it wasn’t likely to hit. The sun Khem had a proper motion, which might be anything from fifteen to three hundred miles a second in any direction. The light from it showed it where it had been two years before. A beam would have to be aimed where it would be two years hence. And even then the beam would hardly hit Khem IV in its orbit. No. The Delilah could never get a message back to its base. That was out of the question.

  We’re dead, thought Brent morbidly, all of us. Only we haven’t started to act like it yet.

  Before they did act dead, things would happen it was not pleasant to anticipate.

  He stopped beside the girl, Kit Harlow. She and her father were standing by themselves, looking at the other passengers. Their expressions were peculiar. It wasn’t that they didn’t know what the blown overdrive meant, but that they were taking it in their own way.

  “Pardon,” said Brent. “I’m Jim Brent. I think you know what’s happened. I—saw you back in port and—I’m traveling by myself. Things will be bad presently. I thought I’d offer—”

  The girl looked at him detachedly.

  Her father said harshly, “You thought you’d offer what?”

  He saw a bitter anger in the older man’s eyes. And then Brent realized what the other man was thinking. He flushed angrily.

  “We are dead,” he said coldly. “You know it. You know what’s likely to happen as these people go mad. I intended to offer to help keep things decent for her for as long as it can be managed. I happen to be a fool, and I meant to offer to act like one.”

  With that, he turned away, frustrated, bitter. They’d thought he meant something very different. Reasonable enough, at that. Some men, knowing that nothing can make what is coming any worse…

  “Just a moment, said the girl.

  He turned back. Her voice was just what he’d thought it would be: clear, level, and good to listen to. She smiled faintly at him.

  “Thank you very much. If you can organize some other passengers, you may be able to prevent some horrors—for a while.”

  Her father said bitterly, “I doubt it. That might make things worse. After all, the loudspeakers may have spoken the truth. The overdrive may only be turned off. It may not be blown.”

  Brent shook his head as if to clear it. Her father wasn’t thinking very straight, and he knew it. Nobody does, immediately after discovering that he cannot have any possible hope.

  Kit said sharply, “You really think that?”

  “I’ve been thinking it out,” said her father. “You know what happened where we were! It would be most indiscreet to murder me in any ordinary way. Or you.” Then he said harshly, “This young man had better not talk to us.”

  The girl caught her breath. She went paler.

  “I hadn’t thought of that!” Then she turned to Brent and said quietly, “My father is right. We do not think this—accident—is just what it seems. There will be confusion and horror, of course. People will go mad, and people will be killed. We—will be among those killed. But we think that—ultimately—the overdrive will be repaired. Probably, when it is repaired, the ship will go back to Khem IV.”

  Brent still could not think very straight. His mind was possessed by the horrors which could be anticipated.

  “But—you can do us a very great favor,” said the girl. She moistened her lips and looked at her father. He nodded. “It is—very important. Much more important than my father’s life or mine. Will you try?”

  Brent had been carefully trained to think, clearly in emergencies, but this was not an emergency. It still seemed to him pure disaster. There was nothing for his mind to take hold of, to think about.

  “First,” said Kit, very pale, “you mustn’t talk to us again. Don’t avoid us conspicuously, but—especially don’t try to keep us from being killed. That’s necessary.”

  Brent tried to listen, with the back of his mind trying to tell him something that fitted in.

  “Then,” said Kit composedly, “when you get back to Earth, go to the Commerce Commission and find someone who knows my father. Tell him exactly what happened to my father and me, and say that we think it happened because the planet ruler of Khem IV had vistek served at a state banquet by mistake. It was served to us. Vistek. V-I-S-T-E-K. It was a mistake. He had his cooks executed for the mistake. And—we couldn’t be murdered in any ordinary fashion. That’s the message.”

  She looked again at her father. Again he nodded.

  “That’s all,” she said. “You can’t do any more for us. And you ca
n’t do that if you are known to be friendly to us. Now please don’t talk to either of us again.”

  She turned away, and her father turned with her. As they moved off, a voice panted in Brent’s ear:

  “He’s an important man! What’d he say? He’s Earth Commissioner of Commerce! He’d know all the inside! What’d he say?”

  It was a pimply-faced man named Rudl who, during the first two weeks of the voyage, had thrust himself into every gathering, talked to every individual passenger, and had succeeded in making a general nuisance of himself.

  Brent said briefly, “He said just what the loudspeaker said. That we’re in touch with base and if there’s any trouble a rescue-ship will come to take us off this ship.”

  Again it was untrue, but panic would come soon enough.

  Rudl whimpered. “They can’t! They couldn’t get word back, and they couldn’t find us if they knew we were lost! They couldn’t—”

  Brent was irritated, but the man was right. A ship’s communicators have an extreme overload dot-dash range of six light-minutes. A ship coming out of overdrive after a two-light-year run is rarely within a light-day of its intended position, either in distance or in direction. A rescue-ship trying to find the Delilah—but there could be no rescue-ship—could not know the Delilah’s error of position or its own. It would be extraordinary if it stopped within two hundred and fifty times the distance at which two ships can contact each other. To search a globe of such size would be utterly impossible…

  But Brent said savagely, “You fool! Do you want to start a panic by babbling like that? Go talk to a ship’s officer! Ask him!”

  Rudl stumbled away. Brent clenched his hands. Kit’s father was an important man. He was too important a man to be murdered in any ordinary way without great repercussions. But why should anybody want to murder him? Why should a ship pretend that its overdrive was blown, and then repaired, simply to arrange for the death of a man and a girl at the hands of fear-crazed passengers? And the message they wanted him to give—what was that about?