The Second Science Fiction Megapack

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Enough horses to go around yet?”

  “Almost. But bicycling’s the craze; the factories can’t turn out enough to meet the demand. There’s a cycling club in almost every block, and all the able-bodied cycle to and from work. Doing ’em good, too; a few more years and the doctors will go on short rations.”

  “You got a bike?”

  “Sure, a pre-’vader one. Average five miles a day on it, and I eat like a horse.”

  George Bailey chuckled. “I’ll have Maisie include some hay in the dinner. Well, here we are. Whoa, Bessie.”

  An upstairs window went up, and Maisie looked out and down. She called out, “Hi, Pete!”

  “Extra plate, Maisie,” George called. “We’ll be up soon as I put the horse away and show Pete around downstairs.”

  * * * *

  He led Pete from the barn into the back door of the newspaper shop. “Our Linotype!” he announced proudly, pointing.

  “How’s it work? Where’s your steam engine?”

  George grinned. “Doesn’t work yet; we still hand set the type. I could get only one steamer and had to use that on the press. But I’ve got one on order for the Lino, and it’s coming in a month or so. When we get it, Pop Jenkins, my printer, is going to put himself out of a job teaching me to run it. With the Linotype going, I can handle the whole thing myself.”

  “Kind of rough on Pop?”

  George shook his head. “Pop eagerly awaits the day. He’s sixty-nine and wants to retire. He’s just staying on until I can do without him. Here’s the press—a honey of a little Miehle; we do some job work on it, too. And this is the office, in front. Messy, but efficient.”

  Pete looked around him and grinned. “George, I believe you’ve found your niche. You were cut out for a small-town editor.”

  “Cut out for it? I’m crazy about it. I have more fun than everybody. Believe it or not, I work like a dog, and like it. Come on upstairs.”

  On the stairs, Pete asked, “And the novel you were going to write?”

  “Half done, and it isn’t bad. But it isn’t the novel I was going to write; I was a cynic then. Now—”

  “George, I think the waveries were your best friends.”

  “Waveries?”

  “Lord, how long does it take slang to get from New York out to the sticks? The ’vaders, of course. Some professor who specializes in studying them described one as a wavery place in the ether, and ‘wavery’ stuck—Hello there, Maisie, my girl. You look like a million.”

  * * * *

  They ate leisurely. Almost apologetically, George brought out beer in cold bottles.

  “Sorry, Pete, haven’t anything stronger to offer you. But I haven’t been drinking lately. Guess—”

  “You on the wagon, George?”

  “Not on the wagon, exactly. Didn’t swear off or anything, but haven’t had a drink of strong liquor in almost a year. I don’t know why, but—”

  “I do,” said Pete Mulvaney. “I know exactly why you don’t—because I don’t drink much either, for the same reason. We don’t drink because we don’t have to—say, isn’t that a radio over there?”

  George chuckled. “A souvenir. Wouldn’t sell it for a fortune. Once in a while I like to look at it and think of the awful guff I used to sweat out for it. And then I go over and click the switch and nothing happens. Just silence. Silence is the most wonderful thing in the world, sometimes, Pete. Of course I couldn’t do that if there was any juice, because I’d get ’vaders then. I suppose they’re still doing business at the same old stand?”

  “Yep, the Research Bureau checks daily. Try to get up current with a little generator run by a steam turbine. But no dice; the ’vaders suck it up as fast as it’s generated.”

  “Suppose they’ll ever go away?”

  Mulvaney shrugged. “Helmetz thinks not. He thinks they propagate in proportion to the available electricity. Even if the development of radio broadcasting somewhere else in the Universe would attract them there, some would stay here—and multiply like flies the minute we tried to use electricity again. And meanwhile, they’ll live on the static electricity in the air. What do you do evenings up here?”

  “Do? Read, write, visit with one another, go to the amateur groups—Maisie’s chairman of the Blakestown Players, and I play bit parts in it. With the movies out, everybody goes in for plays and we’ve found some real talent. And there’s the chess-and-checker club, and cycle trips and picnics—there isn’t time enough. Not to mention music. Everybody plays an instrument, or is trying to.”

  “You?”

  “Sure, cornet. First cornet in the Silver Concert Band, with solo parts. And—Good Heavens! Tonight’s rehearsal, and we’re giving a concert Sunday afternoon. I hate to desert you, but—”

  “Can’t I come around and sit in? I’ve got my flute in the brief case here, and—”

  “Flute? We’re short on flutes. Bring that around and Sig Perkins, our director, will practically shanghai you into staying over for the concert Sunday and it’s only three days, so why not? And get it out now; we’ll play a few old timers to warm up. Hey, Maisie, skip those dishes and come on in to the piano!”

  While Pete Mulvaney went to the guest room to get his flute from the brief case, George Bailey picked up his cornet from the top of the piano and blew a soft, plaintive little minor run on it. Clear as a bell; his lip was in good shape tonight.

  And with the shining silver thing in his hand, he wandered over to the window and stood looking out into the night. It was dusk out, and the rain had stopped. A high-stepping horse clop-clopped by, and the bell of a bicycle jangled. Somebody across the street was strumming a guitar and singing.

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The scent of spring was soft and wet in the moist air. Peace and dusk. Distant rolling thunder.

  God damn it, he thought, if only there was a bit of lightning. He missed the lightning.

  ADAM AND NO EVE, by Alfred Bester

  Crane knew this must be the sea-coast. Instinct told him; but more than instinct, the few shreds of knowledge that clung to his torn, feverish brain told him; the stars that had shown at night through the rare breaks in the clouds, and his compass that still pointed a trembling finger north. That was strangest of all, Crane thought. Though a welter of chaos, the Earth still retained its polarity.

  It was no longer a coast; there was no longer any sea. Only the faint line of what had been a cliff, stretching north and south for endless miles. A line of gray ash. The same gray ash and cinders that lay behind him; the same gray ash that stretched before him. Fine silt, knee-deep, that swirled up at every motion and choked him. Cinders that scudded in dense mighty clouds when the mad winds blew. Cinders that were churned to viscous mud when the frequent rains fell.

  The sky was jet overhead. The black clouds rode high and were pierced with shafts of sunlight that marched swiftly over the Earth. Where the light struck a cinder storm, it was filled with gusts of dancing, gleaming particles. Where it played through rain, it brought the arches of rainbows into being. Rain fell; cinder storms blew; light thrust down—together, alternately and continually in a jigsaw of black and white violence. So it had been for months. So it was over every mile of the broad Earth.

  Crane passed the edge of the ashen cliffs and began crawling down the even slope that had once been the ocean bed. He had been traveling so long that all sense of pain had left him. He braced elbows and dragged his body forward. Then he brought his right knee under him and reached forward with elbows again. Elbows, knee, elbows, knee—He had forgotten what it was to walk.

  Life, he thought dazedly, is wonderful. It adapts itself to anything. If it must crawl, it crawls. Callus forms on the elbows and knees. The neck and shoulders toughen. The nostrils learn to snort away the ashes before they inhale. The bad leg swells and festers. It numbs, and presently it will rot and fall off.

  “I beg pardon,” Crane said, “I didn’t quite get that—”

  He peered up at the tal
l figure before him and tried to understand the words. It was Hallmyer. He wore his stained lab jacket and his gray hair was awry. Hallmyer stood delicately on top of the ashes and Crane wondered why he could see the scudding cinder clouds through his body.

  “How do you like your world, Stephen?” Hallmyer asked.

  Crane shook his head miserably.

  “Not very pretty, eh?” said Hallmyer. “Look around you. Dust, that’s all; dust and ashes. Crawl, Stephen, crawl. You’ll find nothing but dust and ashes—”

  Hallmyer produced a goblet of water from nowhere. It was clear and cold. Crane could see the fine mist of dew on its surface and his mouth was suddenly coated with dry grit.

  “Hallmyer!” he cried. He tried to get to his feet and reach for the water, but the jolt of pain in his right leg warned him. He crouched back.

  Hallmyer sipped and then spat in his face. The water felt warm.

  “Keep crawling,” said Hallmyer bitterly. “Crawl round and round the face of the Earth. You’ll find nothing but dust and ashes—” He emptied the goblet on the ground before Crane. “Keep crawling. How many miles? Figure it out for yourself. Pi-R-Square. The radius is eight thousand or so—”

  He was gone, jacket and goblet. Crane realized that rain was falling again. He pressed his face into the warm sodden cinder mud, opened his mouth, and tried to suck the moisture. He groaned and presently began crawling.

  There was an instinct that drove him on. He had to get somewhere. It was associated, he knew, with the sea—with the edge of the sea. At the shore of the sea something waited for him. Something that would help him understand all this. He had to get to the sea—that is, if there was a sea any more.

  * * * *

  The thundering rain beat his back like heavy planks. Crane paused and yanked the knapsack around to his side where he probed in it with one hand. It contained exactly three things. A pistol, a bar of chocolate, and a can of peaches. All that was left of two months’ supplies. The chocolate was pulpy and spoiled. Crane knew he had best eat it before all value rotted away. But in another day he would lack the strength to open the can. He pulled it out and attacked it with the opener. By the time he had pierced and pried away a flap of tin, the rain had passed.

  As he munched the fruit and sipped the juice, he watched the wall of rain marching before him down the slope of the ocean bed. Torrents of water were gushing through the mud. Small channels had already been cut—channels that would be new rivers some day. A day he would never see. A day that no living thing would ever see. As he flipped the empty can aside, Crane thought: The last living thing on Earth eats its last meal. Metabolism plays its last act.

  Wind would follow the rain. In the endless weeks that he had been crawling, he had learned that. Wind would come in a few minutes and flog him with its clouds of cinders and ashes. He crawled forward, bleary eyes searching the flat gray miles for cover.

  Evelyn tapped his shoulder. Crane knew it was she before he turned his head. She stood alongside, fresh and gay in her bright dress, but her lovely face was puckered with alarm.

  “Stephen,” she cried, “you’ve got to hurry!”

  He could only admire the way her smooth honey hair waved to her shoulders.

  “Oh, darling!” she said, “you’ve been hurt!” Her quick gentle hands touched his legs and back.

  Crane nodded.

  “Got it landing,” he said. “I wasn’t used to a parachute. I always thought you came down gently—like plumping onto a bed. But the gray earth came up at me like a fist—And Umber was fighting around in my arms. I couldn’t let him drop, could I?”

  “Of course not, dear—” Evelyn said.

  “So I just held on to him and tried to get my legs under me,” Crane said. “And then something smashed my legs and side—”

  He paused, wondering how much she knew of what really had happened. He didn’t want to frighten her.

  “Evelyn, darling—” he said, trying to reach up his arms.

  “No dear,” she said. She looked back in fright. “You’ve got to hurry. You’ve got to watch out behind!”

  “The cinder storms?” He grimaced. “I’ve been through them before.”

  “Not the storms!” Evelyn cried. “Something else. Oh, Stephen—”

  Then she was gone, but Crane knew she had spoken the truth. There was something behind—something that had been following him all those weeks. Far in the back of his mind he had sensed the menace. It was closing in on him like a shroud. He shook his head. Somehow that was impossible. He was the last living thing on Earth. How could there be a menace?

  The wind roared behind him, and an instant later came the heavy clouds of cinders and ashes. They lashed over him, biting his skin. With dimming eyes, he saw the way they coated the mud and covered it with a fine dry carpet. Crane drew his knees under him and covered his head with his arms. With the knapsack as a pillow, he prepared to wait out the storm. It would pass as quickly as the rain.

  The storm whipped up a great bewilderment in his sick head. Like a child, he pushed at the pieces of his memory, trying to fit them together. Why was Hallmyer so bitter toward him? It couldn’t have been that argument, could it?

  What argument?

  Why, that one before all this happened.

  Oh, that!

  Abruptly, the pieces fit themselves together.

  * * * *

  Crane stood alongside the sleek lines of his ship and admired it tremendously. The roof of the shed had been removed and the nose of the ship hoisted so that it rested on a cradle pointed toward the sky. A workman was carefully burnishing the inner surfaces of the rocket jets.

  The muffled sounds of an argument came from within the ship and then a heavy clanking. Crane ran up the short iron ladder to the port and thrust his head inside. A few feet beneath him, two men were buckling the long tanks of ferrous solution into place.

  “Easy there,” Crane called. “Want to knock the ship apart?”

  One looked up and grinned. Crane knew what he was thinking. That the ship would tear itself apart. Everyone said that. Everyone except Evelyn. She had faith in him. Hallmyer never said it either. But Hallmyer thought he was crazy in another way. As he descended the ladder, Crane saw Hallmyer come into the shed, lab jacket flying.

  “Speak of the devil!” Crane muttered.

  Hallmyer began shouting as soon as he saw Crane. “Now listen—”

  “Not all over again,” Crane said.

  Hallmyer dug a sheaf of papers out of his pocket and waved it under Crane’s nose.

  “I’ve been up half the night,” he said, “working it through again. I tell you I’m right. I’m absolutely right—”

  Crane looked at the tight-written equations and then at Hallmyer’s bloodshot eyes. The man was half mad with fear.

  “For the last time,” Hallmyer went on. “You’re using your new catalyst on iron solution. All right. I grant that it’s a miraculous discovery. I give you credit for that.”

  Miraculous was hardly the word for it. Crane knew that without conceit, for he realized he’d only stumbled on it. You had to stumble on a catalyst that would induce atomic disintegration of iron and give 10x1010 foot-pounds of energy for every gram of fuel. No man was smart enough to think all that up by himself.

  “You don’t think I’ll make it?” Crane asked.

  “To the moon? Around the moon? Maybe. You’ve got a fifty-fifty chance.” Hallmyer ran fingers through his lank hair. “But for God’s sake, Stephen, I’m not worried about you. If you want to kill yourself, that’s your own affair. It’s the Earth I’m worried about—”

  “Nonsense. Go home and sleep it off.”

  “Look”—Hallmyer pointed to the sheets of paper with a shaky hand—“no matter how you work the feed and mixing system, you can’t get one hundred percent efficiency in the mixing and discharge.”

  “That’s what makes it a fifty-fifty chance,” Crane said. “So what’s bothering you?”

  “The catalyst
that will escape through the rocket tubes. Do you realize what it’ll do if a drop hits the Earth? It’ll start a chain of iron disintegrations that’ll envelope the globe. It’ll reach out to every iron atom—and there’s iron everywhere. There won’t be any Earth left for you to return to—”

  “Listen,” Crane said wearily, “we’ve been through all this before.” He took Hallmyer to the base of the rocket cradle. Beneath the iron framework was a two-hundred-foot pit, fifty feet wide and lined with firebrick.

  “That’s for the initial discharge flames. If any of the catalyst goes through, it’ll be trapped in this pit and taken care of by the secondary reactions. Satisfied now?”

  “But while you’re in flight,” Hallmyer persisted, “you’ll be endangering the Earth until you’re beyond Roche’s limit. Every drop of non-activated catalyst will eventually sink back to the ground and—”

  “For the very last time,” Crane said grimly, “the flame of the rocket discharge takes care of that. It will envelop any escaped particles and destroy them. Now get out. I’ve got work to do.”

  As he pushed him to the door, Hallmyer screamed and waved his arms. “I won’t let you do it!” he repeated over and over. “I’ll find some way to stop you. I won’t let you do it—”

  * * * *

  Work? No, it was sheer intoxication to labor over the ship. It had the fine beauty of a well-made thing. The beauty of polished armor, of a balanced swept-hilt rapier, of a pair of matched guns. There was no thought of danger and death in Crane’s mind as he wiped his hands with waste after the last touches were finished.

  She lay in the cradle ready to pierce the skies. Fifty feet of slender steel, the rivet heads gleaming like jewels. Thirty feet were given over to fuel the catalyst. Most of the forward compartment contained the spring hammock Crane had devised to take up the initial acceleration shock. The ship’s nose was a solid mass of natural quartz that stared upward like a cyclopian eye.

  Crane thought: She’ll die after this trip. She’ll return to the Earth and smash in a blaze of fire and thunder, for there’s no way yet of devising a safe landing for a rocket ship. But it’s worth it. She’ll have had her one great flight, and that’s all any of us should want. One great beautiful flight into the unknown—