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

by Various

  Humanity is inclined to invest all things with its own attributes, forgetting that outside the limitations of time and space and size, familiar laws of nature do not apply.

  So, even now I do not know all that lay behind the terror in that Peruvian valley. This much I learned: the Other, like Lhar and her robot, had been cast adrift by a time-slip, and thus marooned here. There was no way for it to return to its normal Time-sector. It had created the fog-wall to protect itself from the direct rays of the sun, which threatened its existence.

  Sitting there in the filigreed, silver twilight beside Lhar, I had a concept of teeming universes of space-time, of an immense spiral of lives and civilizations, races and cultures, covering an infinite cosmos. And yet--what had happened? Very little, in that inconceivable infinity. A rift in time, a dimensional slip--and a sector of land and three beings on it had been wrenched from their place in time and transported to our time-stratum.

  A robot, a flower that was alive and intelligent--and feminine--and the Other....

  "The native girls," I said. "What will happen to them?"

  "They are no longer alive," Lhar told me. "They still move and breathe, but they are dead, sustained only by the life-force of the Other. I do not think it will harm me. Apparently it prefers other food."

  "That's why you've stayed here?" I asked.

  The shining velvety calyx swayed. "I shall die soon. For a little while I thought that I might manage to survive in this alien world, this alien time. Your blood has helped." The cool tentacle withdrew from my arm. "But I lived in a younger time, where space was filled with--with certain energizing vibratory principles.

  "They have faded now almost to nothing, to what you call cosmic rays. And these are too weak to maintain my life. No, I must die. And then my poor robot will be alone." I sensed elfin amusement in that last thought. "It seems absurd to you that I should think affectionately of a machine. But in our world there is a rapport--a mental symbiosis--between robot and living beings."

  There was a silence. After a while I said, "I'd better get out of here. Get help--to end the menace of the other...." What sort of help I did not know. Was the Other vulnerable?

  Lhar caught my thought. "In its own shape it is vulnerable, but what that shape is I do not know. As for your escaping from this valley--you cannot. The fog will bring you back."

  "I've got my compass." I glanced at it, saw that the needle was spinning at random.

  Lhar said: "The Other has many powers. Whenever you go into the fog, you will always return here."

  "How do you know all this?" I asked.

  "My robot tells me. A machine can reason logically, better than a colloid brain."

  I closed my eyes, trying to think. Surely it should not be difficult for me to retrace my steps, to find a path out of this valley. Yet I hesitated, feeling a strange impotence.

  "Can't your robot guide me?" I persisted.

  "He will not leave my side. Perhaps--" Lhar turned to the sphere, and the cilia fluttered excitedly. "No," she said, turning back to me. "Built into his mind is one rule--never to leave me. He cannot disobey that."

  * * * * *

  I couldn't ask Lhar to go with me. Somehow I sensed that the frigid cold of the surrounding mountains would destroy her swiftly. I said, "It must be possible for me to get out of here. I'm going to try, anyway."

  "I will be waiting," she said, and did not move as I slipped out between two trunks of the banyan-like tree.

  It was daylight and the silvery grayness overhead was palely luminous. I headed for the nearest rampart of fog.

  Lhar was right. Each time I went into that cloudy fog barrier I was blinded. I crept forward step by step, glancing behind me at my footprints in the snow, trying to keep in a straight line. And presently I would find myself back in the valley....

  I must have tried a dozen times before giving up. There were no landmarks in that all-concealing grayness, and only by sheerest chance would anyone blunder into this valley--unless hypnotically summoned, like the Indio girls.

  I realized that I was trapped. Finally I went back to Lhar. She hadn't moved an inch since I had left, nor had the robot, apparently.

  "Lhar," I said. "Lhar, can't you help me?"

  The white flame of the flower was motionless, but the robot's cilia moved in quick signals. Lhar moved at last.

  "Perhaps," her thought came. "Unless both induction and deduction fail, my robot has discovered a chance for you. The Other can control your mind through emotions. But I, too, have some power over your mind. If I give you strength, wall you with a psychic shield against intrusion, you may be able to face the Other. But you cannot destroy it unless it is in its normal shape. The Indio girls must be killed first...."

  "Killed?" I felt a sense of horror at the thought of killing those poor simple native girls.

  "They are not actually alive now. They are now a part of the Other. They can never be restored to their former life."

  "How will--destroying them--help me?" I asked.

  Again Lhar consulted the robot. "The Other will be driven from their bodies. It will then have no hiding-place and must resume its own form. Then it can be slain."

  Lhar swayed and curtseyed away. "Come," she said. "It is in my mind that the Other must die. It is evil, ruthlessly selfish, which is the same thing. Until now I have not realized the solution to this evil being. But seeing into your thoughts has clarified my own. And my robot tells me that unless I aid you, the Other will continue ravening into your world. If that happens, the time-pattern will be broken.... I do not quite understand, but my robot makes no mistakes. The Other must die...."

  She was outside of the banyan now, the sphere gliding after her. I followed. The three of us moved swiftly across the blue moss, guided by the robot.

  In a little while we came to where the six Indio girls were squatting. They had apparently not moved since I had left them.

  "The Other is not here," Lhar said.

  The robot held me back as Lhar advanced toward the girls, the skirt-like frill at her base convoluting as she moved. She paused beside them and her petals trembled and began to unfold.

  From the tip of that great blossom a fountain of white dust spurted up. Spores or pollen, it seemed to be. The air was cloudy with the whiteness.

  The robot drew me back, back again. I sensed danger....

  The pollen seemed to be drawn toward the Indios, spun toward them in dancing mist-motes. It settled on their bronzed bodies, their limbs and faces. It covered them like a veil until they appeared to be six statues, white as cold marble, there on the blue moss.

  Lhar's petals lifted and closed again. She swayed toward me, her mind sending a message into mine.

  "The Other has no refuge now," she told me. "I have slain the--the girls."

  "They're dead?" My lips were dry.

  "What semblance of life they had left is now gone. The Other cannot use them again."

  Lhar swayed toward me. A cool tentacle swept out, pressing lightly on my forehead. Another touched my breast, above the heart.

  "I give you of my strength," Lhar said. "It will be as shield and buckler to you. The rest of the way you must go alone...."

  Into me tide of power flowed. I sank into cool depths, passionless and calm. Something was entering my body, my mind and soul, drowning my fears, stiffening my resolve.

  Strength of Lhar was now my strength!

  The tentacles dropped away, their work done. The robot's cilia signalled and Lhar said, "Your way lies there. That temple--do you see it?"

  I saw it. Far in the distance, half shrouded by the fog, a scarlet structure, not ruined like the others, was visible.

  "You will find the Other there. Slay the last Indio, then destroy the Other."

  I had no doubt now of my ability to do that. A new power seemed to lift me from my feet, send me running across the moss. Once I glanced back, to see Lhar and her robot standing motionless, watching me.

  The temple enlarged as I came
nearer. It was built of the same reddish stone as the other ruined blocks I had seen. But erosion had weathered its harsh angles till nothing now remained but a rounded, smoothly sculptured monolith, twenty feet tall, shaped like a rifle shell.

  A doorway gaped in the crimson wall. I paused for a moment on the threshold. In the dimness within a shadow stirred. I stepped forward, finding myself in a room that was tall and narrow, the ceiling hidden in gloom. Along the walls were carvings I could not clearly see. They gave a suggestion of inhuman beings that watched.

  It was dark but I could see the Indio girl who had been Miranda Valle. Her eyes were on me, and, even through the protecting armor of Lhar strength; I could feel their terrible power.

  The life in the girl was certainly not human!

  "Destroy her!" my mind warned. "Destroy her! Quickly!"

  But as I hesitated a veil of darkness seemed to fall upon me. Utter cold, a frigidity as of outer space, lanced into my brain. My senses reeled under the assault. Desperately, blind and sick and giddy, I called on the reserve strength Lhar had given me. Then I blacked out....

  When I awoke I saw smoke coiling up from the muzzle of the pistol in my hand. At my feet lay the Indio girl, dead. My bullet had crashed into her brain, driving out the terrible dweller there.

  My eyes were drawn to the farther wall. An archway gaped there. I walked across the room, passed under the archway. Instantly I was in complete, stygian darkness. But I was not alone!

  The power of the Other struck me like a tangible blow. I have no words to tell of an experience so completely disassociated from human memories. I remember only this: my mind and soul were sucked down into a black abyss where I had no volition or consciousness. It was another dimension of the mind where my senses were altered....

  Nothing existed there but the intense blackness beyond time and space. I could not see the Other nor conceive of it. It was pure intelligence, stripped of flesh. It was alive and it had power--power that was god-like.

  There in the great darkness I stood alone, unaided, sensing the approach of an entity from some horribly remote place where all values were altered.

  I sensed Lhar's nearness. "Hurry!" her thought came to me. "Before it wakens!"

  Warmth flowed into me. The blackness receded....

  Against the farther wall something lay, a thing bafflingly human.... a great-headed thing with a tiny pallid body coiled beneath it. It was squirming toward me....

  "Destroy it!" Lhar communicated.

  The pistol in my hand thundered, bucking against my palm. Echoes roared against the walls. I fired and fired again until the gun was empty....

  "It is dead," Lhar's thought entered my mind.

  I stumbled, dropped the pistol.

  "It was the child of an old super-race--a child not yet born."

  Can you conceive of such a race? Where even the unborn had power beyond human understanding? My mind wondered what the adult Alien must be.

  I shivered, suddenly cold. An icy wind gusted through the temple. Lhar's thought was clear in my mind.

  "Now the valley is no longer a barrier to the elements. The Other created fog and warmth to protect itself. Now it is dead and your world reclaims its own."

  From the outer door of the temple I could see the fog being driven away by a swift wind. Snow was falling slowly, great white flakes that blanketed the blue moss and lay like caps on the red shards that dotted the valley.

  "I shall die swiftly and easily now, instead of slowly, by starvation," Lhar said.

  A moment later a thought crossed my mind, faint and intangible as a snowflake and I knew Lhar was saying goodbye.

  I left the valley. Once I looked back, but there was only a veil of snow behind me.

  And out of the greatest adventure the cosmic gods ever conceived--only this: For a little while the eternal veil of time was ripped away and the door to the unknown was held ajar.

  But now the door is closed once more. Below Huascan a robot guards a tomb, that is all.

  The snow fell faster. Shivering, I ploughed through the deepening drifts. My compass needle pointed north. The spell that had enthralled the valley was gone.

  Half an hour later I found the trail, and the road to safety lay open before me. Fra Rafael would be waiting to hear my story.

  But I did not think that he would believe it....

  * * *

  Contents

  ALL DAY SEPTEMBER

  By Roger Kuykendall

  Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use trying--when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....

  The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first lungfish ventured from the sea.

  In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by Evans' tractor.

  It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine, and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state, that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.

  It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.

  It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney. The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be drifting across Australia.

  Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after Australia.

  Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets landed.

  When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a half, and he was lucky to break even.

  Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of the first landing on the Moon.

  Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to more than a month. His drinking water--kept separate from the water in the reactor--might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days reserve--plus one is five--plus sixteen days normal supply equals twenty-one days to live.

  In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.

  * * * * *

  "Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.

  "Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on" position.

  "Batteries must be dead," he told himself.

  "What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power comes from the generator."

  "Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.

  He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however, came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course--

  "The condenser!" he shouted.

  He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light of this, he reins
pected the steam system, and found about three gallons of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers, was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine, the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly freezing the water in the tank.

  Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.

  But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and the steam turned the generator briefly.

  Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the trouble was.

  "The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the condenser."

  He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to live.

  The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.

  "Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."

  * * * * *