Adventures in the Far Future

by Donald A. Wollheim

  Kit said quietly:

  “It’s no use. This is arranged. My father and I are to be killed. If we … locked ourselves in our cabins and … used the blasters on ourselves it would save other lives.”

  Brent said, still panting:

  “I’ve killed the overdrive engineer. Now I’ve manhandled this man and planted his communicator on someone else. When the skipper finds his engineer missing, it won’t take him long to figure that somebody knows what’s up! When he finds that Rudi’s out of circulation and his communicator’s in another man’s pocket, hell know somebody understands the whole game! And will he dare leave any passenger alive, if one of them knows what he’s up to?”

  Kit had been pale enough. Now she went even paler.

  “I think,” she said with difficulty, “that you have doomed everyone.”

  “Maybe I have,” growled Brent. “Your murder has been effectively bungled, now. And I rather think that the government that ordered this won’t be too merciful to bunglers!”

  Kit’s father said unsteadily:

  “Your prisoner, here, just heard what you said. Was that wise?”

  Brent stared at the trussed-up Rudi. He seemed unconscious. But Brent leaned over him and lifted an eyelid. A pupil —an eye glared at him. But an unconscious man’s eyes roll back. A lifted lid shows only the white.

  Brent laughed.

  “It wasn’t wise for him. If I know rotten governments, when they send somebody out to do dirty work, they give them a psycho test afterward to make sure they didn’t learn anything they shouldn’t. So Rudi, now, is going to learn something he won’t like. If we passengers are killed—which begins to look possible—and if Rudi lives to get back, hell be sorry, because when his psycho test shows that he’s found out why you two needed to be killed …”

  Kit stared at him. Brent nodded at her.

  “There’ve been four planets found with all their cities looted and all their people dead. You, sir,” Brent looked at the Earth Commerce Commissioner, “you found out the first clue to what’s happening. You were served vistek at a banquet in the palace of the planet ruler of Khem IV. And vistek doesn’t grow on this side of the Galaxy, and can’t be brought here. It’s just as impossible to have vistek on Khem IV as it would be to build a space fleet capable of murdering and looting whole planets, without a word of the matter leaking out. It’s impossible. But it’s happened. And you’ve guessed the answer, I suppose, just as I have. And now our friend Rudi may guess it, too. But if he gets back home with the news, his government will kill him for knowing too much.” Then Brent said grimly, “He probably’ knows how, too. Just to make sure—”

  He bent over the bound man, whose eyes were now open and rolling wildly.

  “Rudi, your home planet’s the base from which ships take off to loot and murder. The ships weren’t built there and they aren’t manned there. They come from a long way off in a brand-new fashion which isn’t even overdrive. If you get back home, the psycho tests will show you know that much, and I suspect you know they’ll spend a lot of time and effort on you, trying to get you to tell them more.”

  The beady eyes of the prisoner were wild with terror. “I don’t like this man,” said Brent. “I’d intended to turn out the lights and let him wake up in the darkness. In blackness and silence, and unable to move a muscle, he’d probably have thought he was dead and in hell. But this is better. Come on—” He led the way out of the cabin. He locked the door behind him, with one of the keys no passenger was supposed to have.

  VI

  IN BRENT’S own cabin Prof. Harlow said quietly, “What are you?”

  Brent had an open traveling bag on the bunk. It did not contain clothing. It was a tool chest. But it contained a very curious assortment of tools and instruments. He chose with some care but more haste. He was stuffing his pockets.

  “I’m a man in a hurry,” he observed. “Why do you ask?”

  “I want to know,” said Kit’s father mildly. “Because either you are an extraordinary fool, or you are extraordinary in some other way.” He drew out a small medal, hanging on a chain about his neck. He twisted it oddly and showed it to Brent. “Does this mean anything to you?”

  Brent hesitated. Then he said:

  “Y-yes. But it doesn’t put me under your orders. I’m afraid I rank you.”

  Den Harlow, who was a Very Important Person indeed, turned to his daughter and said drily:

  “The Profession.” Then he looked at what Brent showed him, and added, to Kit, “I am ranked. I do take orders from him.”

  “I’d like it,” said Brent, “if you would get this suicide complex out of your daughter’s mind.”

  Brent, as a member of the Profession, had absolutely no legal status or authority save to ask for help from other members of the Profession. He had only the obligation—given him by his training—to move about the Galaxy and try to make sure that no one world anywhere acquired new weapons it did not share immediately with its sister worlds. Perhaps it was absurdly idealistic, but—as history has shown since, and all too clearly—it was the way by which civilization endured.

  As now …

  He closed his tool kit carefully and said:

  “I was working in the Cephis star-cluster. They were building a big fleet of new-type spaceships there. I got into the construction crew to make sure there were no new tricks being included that were kept secret. My papers are in order for that work. But I heard about Procus II being found murdered —the fourth planet killed and looted by somebody from somewhere. I headed back to Earth through this section, trying to pick up rumors here and there. On Khem IV, I’ll admit, I didn’t find a thing. It’s a beastly tyranny, of course, but if people stand for that sort of thing, they invite it. That wasn’t my business. But I didn’t find a whisper of evidence that a space fleet could be built and armed on that planet, able to do what has been done.”

  Den Harlow said briefly:

  “It wasn’t built there. It wasn’t armed there. It couldn’t be! I made my Commerce Commissionership an excuse for traveling about—just as you manufactured an excuse.”

  “Now,” Brent said, “you two will try to stay alive?”

  Kit nodded, her eyes bright.

  “I’m going to see if I can do something practical,” he added. “Yes. Be … careful, will you?”

  He opened the cabin door and went out. He was halfway across the passengers’ lounge before he realized that it was not quite necessary for one person in the Profession to ask another to be careful. It wasn’t Professional. It was—well-personal. And she’d looked at him with bright eyes …

  The bedlam in the bar was dying down, now, with Rudi no longer on hand to stimulate it. Badly beaten men wanted fresh drinks. Victors in battle wanted to celebrate.

  He went into the dining salon, into the kitchen. Both were empty. Presently they were empty even of him. He had returned to the empty spaces between the balls of metal plate inside the Delilah‘s skin. When he went out the airlock, he had a blaster ready in his hand.

  Not quite an hour later, a simultaneous and unanimous gasp sounded in the passengers’ lounge. It was almost a cry, choked and incredulous, from every throat among the passengers. Each of them had exactly the same experience. The cosmos had seemed to them to whirl dizzily in an expanding spiral. Then their stomachs turned over, twice.

  The ship’s overdrive had come on again. The passengers who’d seemed nearest to madness from terror and despair, now seemed closest to going out of their minds with joy. The Delilah was again moving through space in overdrive!

  They did not realize that there was a great difference between this overdrive and the one that had been cut off.

  VII

  THE MESSAGE went in on a very tight beam, and it was a double-transmission. It could be received only on a very special instrument.

  An answer went out. It would take time to reach its destination in emptiness. The answer was similarly complex in its transmission, but its meaning was qui
te simple. No, there were no ships due from anywhere. No. There was no reason for a space fleet not to come in. Yes. The apparatus on the ground was quite ready.

  Then, on the ice cap, a huge framework began to come up out of what seemed a crevasse in a glacier. It rose and rose and rose. There was a square metal frame. It heaved up smoothly until it reared two hundred feet high in a waste of frozen snow and ice. It was two hundred feet across. It was filled in, absolutely, by a shimmering silvery film which had the curious optical quality of an absolutely perfect reflector.

  It waited.

  Presently there were humming sounds in the sky. A wire-basket transmitter pointed skyward, sending a guiding beam. A dark shape appeared. It descended swiftly. It moved toward the square frame with the shimmering silvery film. It moved into that film. It vanished.

  It did not come out on the far side of the framework. It went into the film and ceased to be. Another dark shape descended, and another and another and another … In a somehow evil procession a space fleet descended to atmosphere, and projected itself into the appearance of a silver bubble-film—and it was not. There were sixty vessels.

  When the last had vanished, the square framework began to descend again. It sank down into what seemed to be a crevasse. Then there was nothing but a small and inconspicuous building on a snow cap, an ice field, which reached for hundreds and hundreds of miles in every direction. The space fleet was not anywhere around. Not anywhere within thousands of light-years of the planet Khem IV …

  Now there was a vastly different atmosphere in the passengers’ lounge of the Delilah. The ship was back in overdrive! With returned spirits, passengers tried to forget the two dead men in a silent cabin. The men and women were sure that everything would be all right now. The Delilah was headed on for port. Oh, undoubtedly she was on her way to Loren II, where she had been bound in the first place!

  Meanwhile there were injured to be cared for. There were too many of them. Those who had been only drunk were sleeping heavily. Some wept hysterically, remembering. Some —less self-conscious—turned from maniacal frenzy to a beaming, maudlin affection for all their supposed land. Iposap did not make men beasts. It merely helped the beast within them express itself. Now, relieved of terror and horror and dread and despair, they were like lambs. But still there were too many wounded men.

  Kit looked at Brent with warm, admiring eyes. He had not only accomplished great things, but he was of the Profession. And that was a very great thing.

  Brent said, “Now the crew will really be busy.”

  “Doing what?” asked Kit, watching his face.

  “Trying to find out what I did to their overdrive—though they don’t know I did it. Also they’re trying to turn it off.”

  “Can’t they?”

  “Not unless they smash it,” Brent told her in grim amusement. “And I don’t think they’re that desperate yet. But they’re on the dizzy side! The overdrive shouldn’t work, and it does. They didn’t turn it on, but it’s on. And they can’t turn it off. But that’s not the worst of it, from their standpoint.

  “The worst of it,” he said drily, “is that it’s a different overdrive altogether. This is an old ship. It had a maximum speed of a light-year of distance in a week of time. But some tricks have been found out since she was built. One is a better setup for the exciter-coils. It’s beautifully simple if you understand it, but it can’t be fooled with if you don’t. If you change the second-stage exciter just exactly right, the overdrive speed shoots away up! I made that change. The Delilah’s traveling a light-year every four hours, now. It ought to show up in the control room, and up there they should be starting to go crazy.”

  If he knew spacemen, they would be. Just such inexplicable factors were enough to put the crew into a panic. With the Delilah running wild, out of all control and going forty-odd times faster than possible, the crew should be close to gibbering.

  But the passengers were beautifully confident. Even Kit said relievedly:

  “You’ve made the ship go faster? Then we’ll soon be landing on Loren II!”

  “We’ve passed it,” said Brent. “Some time ago. I could handle the ship, but the skipper can’t, but he’d kill me if I tried to explain. Hell never be able to land this ship by himself now.”

  Den Harlow said, “Then where are we going, if not to Loren II?”

  “I’ve no idea,” admitted Brent. “But I’m a lot less worried than our skipper. He really has something to worry about!” “But we must be going somewhere!”

  “The trouble is that we may be headed anywhere,” said Brent. He explained awkwardly. “I thought I’d better install the new drive to jolt the crew a little. I was afraid they’d miss their engineer, and Rudi, and start investigating in the passengers’ quarters. I came to help in case they did. But they’re busy. Ill go back and finish my job.”

  Kit said hopefully, “May I come and help?”

  “There may be trouble,” said Brent. “They may be hunting for the engineer.”

  “I’ve a blaster now,” she reminded him. “You gave it to me when you disarmed Rudi. I could watch while you work.” Her father said matter-of-factly:

  “She’s a very good shot. And as for the danger, if anything happens to you we’re all dead anyhow.”

  “Well go through the kitchen,” he told her. “There’s a door to the rest of the ship from there.”

  There was a woman in the kitchen, though. She was unskilfully preparing food for a child who stayed close to her. The woman said fretfully, “After all the terrible things that have happened, I do think the officers would send the cooks back!”

  “They’re probably all working to keep the overdrive going,” said Kit gravely.

  The woman sat the child on a stool and began to feed it. They did not want her to see them disappear into the working section of the ship. Kit rummaged for food for the two of them. She brought Brent a half-warm lunch pack.

  “We should talk,” she suggested. “I’d like to know about you.”

  “You know everything that’s important,” he said briefly. “You know how I think things tie in?”

  She waited, watching him admiringly. He felt the admiration and liked it But he pretended not to notice.

  “There’s been theorizing,” he said in a low tone, “that even overdrive isn’t the limit in transportation. On the face of it, it’s happened. Vistek fruits can’t be shipped from the planet they grow on, because cosmic rays reduce them to an unpalatable pulp. Nobody’s ever been able to make a vistek seed grow away from the planet Maiden—and that’s on the other side of the Galaxy.”

  Kit urged him to continue.

  “There’s one way it could have gotten there,” Brent told her quietly. “A transmitter. A transmitter of matter. In theory that would be instantaneous. But so far as the Profession knows it’s never been done. But vistek on Khem IV proves it has been done.”

  “It follows,” said Kit sagely. “Of course!”

  “A transmitter on Maiden, and a receiver-transmitter on Khem IV. There’s a tyranny on Khem IV. There’s a barbarous empire out at Maiden. There’s an emperor with an aristocracy and torture chambers and an army and navy. Right?”

  “So my father said,” she agreed.

  “He’d have delusions of grandeur,” said Brent sourly. “It’s an occupational disease of emperors. He’d have ambitions to make an empire that would include all humanity. It’s been proved that it won’t work, but he’d think he could work it. And if he got hold of a matter-transmitter, he could shift his space fleet anywhere he pleased much faster than any fleet could follow it to fight it.”

  Kit said matter-of-factly, “My father doesn’t think they would try conquest at first. They’d poison the air of a planet and kill everybody, and then loot it afterward. That would be to reward the army and navy. Then they’d attack key planets. Earth, for one. They’d destroy the strong planets which could make fighting fleets in days, if they wanted to. They’d raid, first—striking, sneaki
ng back home by matter-transmitter, and then striking again. Bit by bit they’d whittle away the strength of civilization. When it was weak enough, they’d take over what was left.”

  “And they’ve knocked off four planets right here,” said Brent coldly, “through a matter-transmitter that must be on Khem IV. They can bribe with the loot of worlds—I wonder how many other places they raid from?”

  The whole concept was overwhelming in its destructive potentialities.

  Brent saw red. But then the woman in the kitchen lifted her child down from its stool. She wiped off its face saying bitterly:

  “At least they ought to let the cooks back!”

  She led the child out of the kitchen. Brent said curtly:

  “Let’s go!”

  His personal affairs, and even the situation on the Delilah faded into insignificance beside the situation only the three of them on the Delilah fully recognized. If this scheme succeeded, civilization—in terms of freedom for men—would be chipped away and chipped away until only an empire swollen with loot and armed past resistance would be left… .

  The two of them got into the tiny airlock that was the egress from the kitchen into the crew’s part of the ship. And suddenly Brent’s thoughts drew back from the immensities of galactic dangers, and he was acutely conscious of the fact that Kit was pressing close beside him. He knew that she looked up at his face in the tiny cubicle. And he realized with unfeigned astonishment that even with so much more important matters in hand he wanted very badly to kiss her then and there.

  But he didn’t. Instead, he opened the airlock’s outer door. Then they were in that unearthly area of metal balloons held in place by spidery girders, and dim lights, and danger.