Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

  They both nodded. As far as they were concerned, the command decision had been made. But I was sitting under two inches of sweat.

  "One question," Tom said. "Why did you pick Monroe for the scout?"

  "I was afraid you'd ask that," I told him. "We're three extremely unathletic Ph.D.s who have been in the Army since we finished our schooling. There isn't too much choice. But I remembered that Monroe is half Indian--Arapahoe, isn't it, Monroe?--and I'm hoping blood will tell."

  "Only trouble, Colonel," Monroe said slowly as he rose, "is that I'm one-fourth Indian and even that.... Didn't I ever tell you that my great-grandfather was the only Arapahoe scout who was with Custer at the Little Big Horn? He'd been positive Sitting Bull was miles away. However, I'll do my best. And if I heroically don't come back, would you please persuade the Security Officer of our section to clear my name for use in the history books? Under the circumstances, I think it's the least he could do."

  I promised to do my best, of course.

  * * * * *

  After he took off, I sat in the dome over the telephone connection to Tom and hated myself for picking Monroe to do the job. But I'd have hated myself just as much for picking Tom. And if anything happened and I had to tell Tom to blast off, I'd probably be sitting here in the dome all by myself after that, waiting....

  "Broz neggle!" came over the radio in Monroe's resonant voice. He had landed the single-seater.

  I didn't dare use the telephone to chat with Tom in the ship, for fear I might miss an important word or phrase from our scout. So I sat and sat and strained my ears. After a while, I heard "Mishgashu!" which told me that Monroe was in the neighborhood of the other dome and was creeping toward it under cover of whatever boulders were around.

  And then, abruptly, I heard Monroe yell my name and there was a terrific clattering in my headphones. Radio interference! He'd been caught, and whoever had caught him had simultaneously jammed his suit transmitter with a larger transmitter from the alien dome.

  Then there was silence.

  After a while, I told Tom what had happened. He just said, "Poor Monroe." I had a good idea of what his expression was like.

  "Look, Tom," I said, "if you take off now, you still won't have anything important to tell. After capturing Monroe, whatever's in that other dome will come looking for us, I think. I'll let them get close enough for us to learn something of their appearance--at least if they're human or non-human. Any bit of information about them is important. I'll shout it up to you and you'll still be able to take off in plenty of time. All right?"

  "You're the boss, Colonel," he said in a mournful voice. "Lots of luck."

  And then there was nothing to do but wait. There was no oxygen system in the dome yet, so I had to squeeze up a sandwich from the food compartment in my suit. I sat there, thinking about the expedition. Nine years, and all that careful secrecy, all that expenditure of money and mind-cracking research--and it had come to this. Waiting to be wiped out, in a blast from some unimaginable weapon. I understood Monroe's last request. We often felt we were so secret that our immediate superiors didn't even want us to know what we we were working on. Scientists are people--they wish for recognition, too. I was hoping the whole expedition would be written up in the history books, but it looked unpromising.

  * * * * *

  Two hours later, the scout ship landed near the dome. The lock opened and, from where I stood in the open door of our dome, I saw Monroe come out and walk toward me.

  I alerted Tom and told him to listen carefully. "It may be a trick--he might be drugged...."

  He didn't act drugged, though--not exactly. He pushed his way past me and sat down on a box to one side of the dome. He put his booted feet up on another, smaller box.

  "How are you, Ben?" he asked. "How's every little thing?"

  I grunted. "Well?" I know my voice skittered a bit.

  He pretended puzzlement. "Well what? Oh, I see what you mean. The other dome--you want to know who's in it. You have a right to be curious, Ben. Certainly. The leader of a top-secret expedition like this--Project Hush they call us, huh, Ben--finds another dome on the Moon. He thinks he's been the first to land on it, so naturally he wants to--"

  "Major Monroe Gridley!" I rapped out. "You will come to attention and deliver your report. Now!" Honestly, I felt my neck swelling up inside my helmet.

  Monroe just leaned back against the side of the dome. "That's the Army way of doing things," he commented admiringly. "Like the recruits say, there's a right way, a wrong way and an Army way. Only there are other ways, too." He chuckled. "Lots of other ways."

  "He's off," I heard Tom whisper over the telephone. "Ben, Monroe has gone and blown his stack."

  "They aren't extraterrestrials in the other dome, Ben," Monroe volunteered in a sudden burst of sanity. "No, they're human, all right, and from Earth. Guess where."

  "I'll kill you," I warned him. "I swear I'll kill you, Monroe. Where are they from--Russia, China, Argentina?"

  He grimaced. "What's so secret about those places? Go on!--guess again."

  I stared at him long and hard. "The only place else--"

  "Sure," he said. "You got it, Colonel. The other dome is owned and operated by the Navy. The goddam United States Navy!"

  * * *

  Contents

  SPECIAL DELIVERY

  By Damon Knight

  All Len had to hear was the old gag: "We've never lost a father yet." His child was not even born and it was thoroughly unbearable!

  Len and Moira Connington lived in a rented cottage with a small yard, a smaller garden, and too many fir trees. The lawn, which Len seldom had time to mow, was full of weeds, and the garden was overgrown with blackberry brambles. The house itself was clean and smelled better than most city apartments, and Moira kept geraniums in the windows.

  However, it was dark on account of the firs. Approaching the door one late spring afternoon, Len tripped on an unnoticed flagstone and scattered examination papers all the way to the porch.

  When he picked himself up, Moira was giggling in the doorway. "That was funny."

  "The hell it was," said Len. "I banged my nose." He picked up his Chemistry B papers in a stiff silence. A red drop fell on the last one. "Damn it!"

  Moira held the screen door for him, looking contrite and faintly surprised. She followed him into the bathroom. "Len, I didn't mean to laugh. Does it hurt much?"

  "No," said Len, staring fiercely at his scraped nose in the mirror. It was throbbing like a gong.

  "That's good. It was the funniest thing--I mean funny-peculiar," she clarified hastily.

  * * * * *

  Len stared at her; the whites of her eyes were showing: "Is there anything the matter with you?" he demanded.

  "I don't know," she said on a rising note. "Nothing like that ever happened to me before. I didn't think it was funny at all. I was worried about you, and I didn't know I was going to laugh--" She laughed again, a trifle nervously. "Maybe I'm cracking up."

  Moira was a dark-haired young woman with a placid, friendly disposition. Len had met her in his senior year at Columbia, with--looking at it impartially, which Len seldom did--regrettable results. At present, in her seventh month, she was shaped like a rather bosomy kewpie doll.

  Emotional upsets, he remembered, may occur frequently during this period. He leaned to get past her belly and kissed her forgivingly. "You're probably tired. Go sit down and I'll get you some coffee."

  Except that Moira had never had any hysterics till now, or morning sickness, either--she burped instead--and anyhow, was there anything in the literature about fits of giggling?

  After supper, he marked seventeen sets of papers desultorily in red pencil, then got up to look for the baby book. There were four dog-eared paperbound volumes with smiling infants' faces on the covers, but the one he wanted wasn't there. He looked behind the bookcase and on the wicker table beside it. "Moira!"

  "Hm?"

  "Where the devil is the other baby bo
ok?"

  "I've got it."

  Len went and looked over her shoulder. She was staring at a drawing of a fetus lying in a sort of upside-down Yoga position inside a cross-sectioned woman's body.

  "That's what he looks like," she said. "Mama."

  The diagram was of a fetus at term.

  "What was that about your mother?" Len asked, puzzled.

  "Don't be silly," she said abstractedly.

  He waited, but she didn't look up or turn the page. After a while, he went back to his work. He watched her.

  Eventually she leafed through to the back of the book, read a few pages, and put it down. She lighted a cigarette and immediately put it out again. She fetched up a belch.

  "That was a good one," said Len admiringly.

  Moira sighed.

  Feeling tense, Len picked up his coffee cup and started toward the kitchen. He halted beside Moira's chair. On the side table was her after-dinner cup, still full of coffee ... black, scummed with oil droplets, stone-cold.

  "Didn't you want your coffee?" he asked solicitously.

  She looked at the cup. "I did, but--" She paused and shook her head, looking perplexed.

  "Well, do you want another cup now?"

  "Yes, please. No."

  Len, who had begun a step, rocked back on his heels. "Which, damn it?"

  Her face got all swollen. "Oh, Len, I'm so mixed up," she said, and began to tremble.

  Len felt part of his irritation spilling over into protectiveness. "What you need," he said firmly, "is a drink."

  * * * * *

  He climbed a stepladder to get at the top cabinet shelf which cached their liquor when they had any. Small upstate towns and their school boards being what they were, this was one of many necessary financial precautions.

  Inspecting the doleful few fingers of whisky in the bottle, Len swore under his breath. They couldn't afford a decent supply of booze or new clothes for Moira. The original idea had been for Len to teach for a year while they saved enough money so that he could go back for his master's degree. More lately, this proving unlikely, they had merely been trying to put aside enough for summer school, and even that was beginning to look like the wildest optimism.

  High-school teachers without seniority weren't supposed to be married.

  Or graduate physics students, for that matter.

  He mixed two stiff highballs and carried them back into the living room. "Here you are. Skoal."

  "Ah," she said appreciatively. "That tastes--Ugh." She set the glass down and stared at it with her mouth half open.

  "What's the matter now?"

  She turned her head carefully, as if she were afraid it would come off. "Len, I don't know. Mama."

  "That's the second time you've said that. What is this all--"

  "Said what?"

  "Mama. Look, kid, if you're--"

  "I didn't." She appeared a little feverish.

  "Sure you did," said Len reasonably. "Once when you were looking at the baby book, and then again just now, after you said ugh to the highball. Speaking of which--"

  "Mama drink milk," said Moira, speaking with exaggerated clarity.

  Moira hated milk.

  Len swallowed half his highball, turned and went silently into the kitchen.

  When he came back with the milk, Moira looked at it as if it contained a snake. "Len, I didn't say that."

  "Okay."

  "I didn't. I didn't say mama and I didn't say that about the milk." Her voice quavered. "And I didn't laugh at you when you fell down."

  Len tried to be patient. "It was somebody else."

  "It was." She looked down at her gingham-covered bulge. "You won't believe me. Put your hand there. No, a little lower."

  Under the cloth, her flesh was warm and solid against his palm. "Kicks?" he inquired.

  "Not yet. Now," she said in a strained voice, "you in there--if you want your milk, kick three times."

  Len opened his mouth and shut it again. Under his hand there were three explicit kicks, one after the other.

  Moira closed her eyes, held her breath and drank the milk down in one long horrid gulp.

  * * * * *

  "Once in a great while," Moira read, "cell cleavage will not have followed the orderly pattern that produces a normal baby. In these rare cases some parts of the body will develop excessively, while others do not develop at all. This disorderly cell growth, which is strikingly similar to the wild cell growth that we know as cancer--" Her shoulders moved convulsively in a shudder. "Bluh!"

  "Why do you keep reading that stuff, if it makes you feel that way?"

  "I have to," she said absently. She picked up another book from the stack. "There's a page missing."

  Len attacked the last of his medium-boiled egg in a noncommittal manner. "It's a wonder it's held together this long," he said, which was perfectly just.

  The book had had something spilled on it, partially dissolving the glue, and was in an advanced state of anarchy. However, the fact was that Len had torn out the page in question four nights ago, after reading it carefully. The topic was "Psychoses in Pregnancy."

  Moira had now decided that the baby was male, that his name was Leonardo (not referring to Len, but to da Vinci), that he had informed her of these things along with a good many others, that he was keeping her from her favorite foods and making her eat things she detested, like liver and tripe, and that she had to read books of his choice all day long in order to keep him from kicking.

  It was miserably hot. With Commencement only two weeks away, Len's students were torpid and galvanic by turns. Then there was the matter of his contract for next year, and the possible opening at Oster High which would mean more money, and the Parent-Teachers thing tonight at which Superintendent Greer and his wife would be regally present.

  Moira was knee-deep in Volume I of Der Untergang des Abendlandes, moving her lips; an occasional guttural escaped her.

  Len cleared his throat. "Moy?"

  "--und also des tragischen--what in God's name does he mean by that--? What, Len?"

  He made an irritated noise. "Why not try the English edition?"

  "Leo wants to learn German. What were you going to say?"

  Len closed his eyes for a moment. "About this PTA business--you sure you want to go?"

  "Well, of course. It's pretty important, isn't it? Unless you think I look too sloppy--"

  "No. No, damn it! But are you feeling up to it?"

  There were faint violet crescents under Moira's eyes; she had been sleeping badly. "Sure," she said.

  "All right. And you'll go see the doctor tomorrow?"

  "I said I would."

  "And you won't say anything about Leo to Mrs. Greer or anybody?"

  * * * * *

  She looked slightly embarrassed. "Not till he's born, I think, don't you? It would be an awful hard thing to prove--even you wouldn't have believed me if you hadn't felt him kick."

  This experiment had not been repeated, though Len had asked often enough. All little Leo had wanted, Moira said, was to establish communication with his mother--he didn't seem to be interested in Len at all. "Too young," she explained.

  And still--Len recalled the frogs his biology class had dissected last semester. One of them had had two hearts. This disorderly cell growth ... like a cancer. Unpredictable: extra fingers or toes or a double dose of cortex?

  "And I'll burp like a lady, if at all," Moira assured him cheerfully as they got ready to leave.

  * * * * *

  The room was empty, except for the ladies of the Committee, two nervously smiling male teachers and the impressive bulk of Superintendent Greer when the Conningtons arrived. Card-table legs skreeked on the bare floor; the air was heavy with wood polish and musk.

  Greer advanced, beaming fixedly. "Well, isn't this nice? How are you young folks this warm evening?"

  "Oh, we thought we'd be earlier, Mr. Greer," said Moira with pretty vexation. She looked surprisingly schoolgirlish and chic; the lump
that was Leo was hardly noticeable unless you caught her in profile. "I'll go right now and help the ladies. There must be something I can still do."

  "No, now, we won't hear of it. But I'll tell you what you can do--you can go right over there and say hello to Mrs. Greer. I know she's dying to sit down and have a good chat with you. Go ahead now, don't worry about this husband of yours; I'll take care of him."

  Moira receded into a scattering of small shrieks of pleasure, at least half of them arcing across a gap of mutual dislike.

  Greer, exhibiting perfect dentures, exhaled Listerine. His pink skin looked not only scrubbed but disinfected; his gold-rimmed glasses belonged in an optometrist's window, and his tropical suit had obviously come straight from the cleaner's. It was impossible to think of Greer unshaven, Greer smoking a cigar, Greer with a smudge of axle grease on his forehead, or Greer making love to his wife.

  "Well, sir, this weather--"

  "When I think of what this valley was like twenty years ago--"

  "At today's prices--"

  Len listened with growing admiration, putting in comments where required. He had never realized before that there were so many absolutely neutral topics of conversation.

  A few more people straggled in, raising the room temperature about half a degree per capita. Greer did not perspire; he merely glowed.

  * * * * *

  Across the room, Moira was now seated chummily with Mrs. Greer, a large-bosomed woman in an outrageously unfashionable hat. Moira appeared to be telling a joke; Len knew perfectly well that it was a clean one, but he listened tensely, all the same, until he heard Mrs. Greer yelp with laughter. Her voice carried well: "Oh, that's priceless! Oh, dear, I only hope I can remember it!"

  Len had resolutely not been thinking of ways to turn the conversation toward the Oster vacancy. He stiffened again when he realized that Greer had abruptly begun to talk shop. His heart began pounding absurdly; Greer was asking highly pertinent questions in a good-humored but businesslike way--drawing Len out, and not even bothering to be the slightest bit Machiavellian about it.