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

by Various

  * * * * *

  Everything was pain-bright or dead black, and it wheeled around you, and you went nuts trying to figure which way was down. In fact, it took you months to teach your body that all ways were down and that the pit was bottomless.

  He became conscious of a plaintive sound in the wind, and froze to listen.

  It was a baby crying.

  It was nearly a minute before he got the significance of it. It hit him where he lived, and he began jerking frantically at his encased feet and sobbing low in his throat. They'd hear him if he kept that up. He stopped and covered his ears to close out the cry of his firstborn. A light went on in the house, and when it went off again, the infant's cry had ceased.

  Another rocket went up from the station, and he cursed it. Space was a disease, and he had it.

  "Help!" he cried out suddenly. "I'm stuck! Help me, help me!"

  He knew he was yelling hysterically at the sky and fighting the relentless concrete that clutched his feet, and after a moment he stopped.

  The light was on in the house again, and he heard faint sounds. The stirring-about woke the baby again, and once more the infant's wail came on the breeze.

  Make the kid shut up, make the kid shut up ...

  But that was no good. It wasn't the kid's fault. It wasn't Marie's fault. No fathers allowed in space, they said, but it wasn't their fault either. They were right, and he had only himself to blame. The kid was an accident, but that didn't change anything. Not a thing in the world. It remained a tragedy.

  A tumbler had no business with a family, but what was a man going to do? Take a skinning knife, boy, and make yourself a eunuch. But that was no good either. They needed bulls out there in the pit, not steers. And when a man came down from a year's hitch, what was he going to do? Live in a lonely shack and read books for kicks? Because you were a man, you sought out a woman. And because she was a woman, she got a kid, and that was the end of it. It was nobody's fault, nobody's at all.

  He stared at the red eye of Mars low in the southwest. They were running out there now, and next year he would have been on the long long run ...

  But there was no use thinking about it. Next year and the years after belonged to little Hogey.

  He sat there with his feet locked in the solid concrete of the footing, staring out into Big Bottomless while his son's cry came from the house and the Hauptman menfolk came wading through the tall grass in search of someone who had cried out. His feet were stuck tight, and he wouldn't ever get them out. He was sobbing softly when they found him.

  * * *

  Contents

  THE TIES THAT BIND

  By Walter Miller, Jr.

  The Earth was green and quiet. Nature had survived Man, and Man had survived himself. Then, one day, the great silvery ships broke the tranquillity of the skies, bringing Man's twenty-thousand-year-lost inheritance back to Earth...

  "Why does your brand sae drop wi' blude, Edward, Edward? Why does your brand sae drop wi' blude, And why sae sad gang ye, O?" "O I hae kill'd my hawk sae gude, Mither, mither; O I hae kill'd my hawk sae gude, And I had nae mair but he, O."

  --ANONYMOUS

  The Horde of sleek ships arose in the west at twilight--gleaming slivers that reflected the dying sun as they lanced across the darkling heavens. A majestic fleet of squadrons in double-vees, groups in staggered echelon, they crossed the sky like gleaming geese, and the children of Earth came out of their whispering gardens to gape at the splendor that marched above them.

  There was fear, for no vessel out of space had crossed the skies of Earth for countless generations, and the children of the planet had forgotten. The only memories that lingered were in the memnoscripts, and in the unconscious kulturverlaengerung, of the people. Because of the latter half-memory, the people knew, without knowing why, that the slivers of light in the sky were ships, but there was not even a word in the language to name them.

  The myriad voices of the planet, they cried, or whispered, or chattered in awed voices under the elms....

  The piping whine of a senile hag: "The ancient gods! The day of the judging! Repent, repent...."

  The panting gasp of a frightened fat man: "The alien! We're lost, we're lost! We've got to run for the hills!"

  The voice of the child: "See the pretty birdlights? See? See?"

  And a voice of wisdom in the councils of the clans: "The sons of men--they've come home from the Star Exodus. Our brothers."

  The slivers of light, wave upon wave, crept into the eclipse shadow as the twilight deepened and the stars stung through the blackening shell of sky. When the moon rose, the people watched again as the silhouette of a black double-vee of darts slipped across the lunar disk.

  Beneath the ground, in response to the return of the ships, ancient mechanisms whirred to life, and the tech guilds hurried to tend them. On Earth, there was a suspenseful night, pregnant with the dissimilar twins of hope and fear, laden with awe, hushed with the expectancy of twenty thousand years. The stargoers--they had come home.

  * * * * *

  "Kulturverlaengerung!" grunted the tense young man in the toga of an Analyst. He stood at one end of the desk, slightly flushed, staring down at the haughty wing leader who watched him icily from a seat at the other end. He said it again, too distinctly, as if the word were a club to hurl at the wingsman. "Kulturverlaengerung, that's why!"

  "I heard you the first time, Meikl," the officer snapped. "Watch your tongue and your tone!"

  A brief hush in the cabin as hostility flowed between them. There was only the hiss of air from the ventilators, and the low whine of the flagship's drive units somewhere below.

  The erect and elderly gentleman who sat behind the desk cleared his throat politely. "Have you any further clarifications to make, Meikl?" he asked.

  "It should be clear enough to all of you," the analyst retorted hotly. He jerked his head toward the misty crescent of Earth on the viewing screen that supplied most of the light in the small cabin. "You can see what they are, what they've become. And you know what we are."

  The two wingsmen bristled slightly at the edge of contempt in the analyst's voice. The elderly gentlemen behind the desk remained impassive, expressionless.

  The analyst leaned forward with a slow accusing glance that swept the faces of the three officers, then centered on his antagonist at the other end of the desk. "You want to infect them, Thaüle?" he demanded.

  The wingsman darkened. His fist exploded on the desktop. "Meikl, you're in contempt! Restrict yourself to answering questions!"

  "Yes, sir."

  "There will be no further breaches of military etiquette during the continuance of this conference," the elderly gentleman announced icily, thus seizing the situation.

  After a moment's silence, he turned to the analyst again. "We've got to refuel," he said flatly. "In order to refuel, we must land."

  "Yes, sir. But why not on Mars? We can develop our own facilities for producing fuel. Why must it be Earth?"

  "Because there will be some existing facilities on Earth, even though they're out of space. The job would take five years on Mars."

  The analyst lowered his eyes, shook his head wearily. "I'm thinking of a billion earthlings. Aren't they worth considering, sir?"

  "I've got to consider the men in my command, Meikl. They've been through hell. We all have."

  "The hell was our own making, baron."

  "Meikl!"

  "Sorry, sir."

  Baron ven Klaeden paused ominously, then: "Besides, Meikl, your predictions of disaster rest on certain assumptions not known to be true. You assume that the recessive determinants still linger in the present inhabitants. Twenty thousand years is a long time. Nearly a thousand generations. I don't know a great deal about culturetics, but I've read that kulturverlaengerung reaches a threshold of extinction after about a dozen generations, if there's no restimulation."

  "Only in laboratory cultures, sir," sighed the analyst. "Under rigid control to make certain there
's no restimulant. In practice, in a planet-wide society, there's constant accidental restimulation, unconsciously occuring. A determinant gets restimulated, pops back to original intensity, and gets passed on. In practice, a kult'laenger linkage never really dies out--although, it can stay recessive and unconscious."

  "That's too bad," a wingsman growled sourly. "We'll wake it up, won't we?"

  "Let's not be callous," the other wingsman grunted in sarcasm. "Analyst Meikl has sensitivities."

  The analyst stared from one to the other of them in growing consternation, then looked pleadingly at the baron. "Sir, I was summoned here to offer my opinions about landing on Earth. You asked about possible cultural dangers. I've told you."

  "You discussed the danger to earthlings."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I meant 'danger' to the personnel of this fleet--to their esprit, their indoctrination, their group-efficiency. I take it you see none."

  "On the contrary, I see several," said the analyst, coming slowly to his feet, eyes flashing and darting among them. "Where were you born, Wingman?" he asked the officer at the opposite end of the desk.

  "Lichter Six, Satellite," the officer grunted after a moment of irritable silence.

  "And you?"

  "Omega Thrush," said the other wingsman.

  All knew without asking that the baron was born in space, his birthplace one of the planetoid city-states of the Michea Dwarf. Meikl looked around at them, then ripped up his own sleeve, unsheathed his rank-dagger, and pricked his forearm with the needle point. A red droplet appeared, and he wiped at it with a forefinger.

  "It's common stuff, gentlemen. We've shed a lot of it. And each of us is a walking sackful of it." He paused, then turned to touch the point of his dagger to the viewer, where it left a tiny red trace on the glass, on the bright crescent of Earth, mist-shrouded, chastely wheeling her nights into days.

  "It came from there," he hissed. "She's your womb, gentlemen. Are you going back?"

  "Are you an analyst or a dramatist, Meikl?" the baron asked sharply, hoping to relieve the sudden chill in the room. "This becomes silly."

  "If you land on her," Meikl promised ominously, "you'll go away with a fleet full of hate."

  Meikl's arm dropped to his side. He sheathed his dagger. "Is my presence at this meeting still imperative, sir?" he asked the baron.

  "Have you anything else to say?"

  "Yes--don't land on Earth."

  "That's a repetition. No further reasons?--in terms of danger to ourselves?"

  The analyst paused. "I can think of nothing worse that could happen to us," he said slowly, "than just being what we already are."

  He snapped his heels formally, bowed to the baron, and stalked out of the cabin.

  "I suggest," said a wingsman, "that we speak to Frewek about tightening up the discipline in the Intelligence section. That man was in open contempt, Baron."

  "But he was also probably right," sighed the graying officer and nobleman.

  "Sir--!"

  "Don't worry, Wingsman, there's nothing else to do. We'll have to land. Make preparations, both of you--and try to make contact with surface. I'll dictate the message."

  When the wingsmen left, it was settled. The baron arose with a sigh and went to peer morosely at the view of Earth below. Very delicately, he wiped the tiny trace of blood from the glass. She was a beautiful world, this Earth. She had spawned them all, as Meikl said--but for this, the baron could feel only bitterness toward her.

  But what of her inhabitants? I'm past feeling anything for them, he thought, past feeling for any of the life-scum that creeps across the surface of a world, any world. We'll go down quickly, and take what we need quickly, and leave quickly. We'll try not to infect them, but they've already got it in them, the dormant disease, and any infection will be only a recurrence.

  Nevertheless, he summoned a priest to his quarters. And, before going to the command deck, he bathed sacramentally as if in preparation for battle.

  "Your hawk's blude was never sae red, Edward, Edward; Your hawk's blude was never sae red, My dear son, I tell thee, O." "O I hae kill'd my red-roan steed, Mither, mither; O I hae kill'd my red roan steed, That erst was sae fair and free, O."

  --ANONYMOUS

  False dawn was in the east when the slivers of light appeared once again out of the eclipse shadow to rake majestically across the heavens, and again the children of Earth crowded in teeming numbers from the quiet gardens to chatter their excitement at the wonder in the sky. But this time, a message came. The men of the tech clans who tended the newly activated mechanisms heard it, and the mechanisms memorized it, and played it again and again for the people, while the linguists puzzled over the unidentified language used in the transmission.

  PROPAUTH EARTH FROM COMMSTRAFEFLEET THREE, SPACE, KLAEDEN COMM, PRESENTS GREETINGS!

  IF YOU HAVE RECORDS, OUR USE OF ANCIENT ANGLO-GERMANIC SHOULD MAKE OUR IDENTITY CLEAR. HAVE YOU FUELING FACILITIES FOR 720 SHIPS OF THOR-NINE CLASS? IF NOT, WE SHALL DEVELOP FACILITIES FROM LOCAL RESOURCES, WITH, WE TRUST, YOUR PEACEFUL COOPERATION. THIS CADRE NOT REIMMIGRATING, BUT EN ROUTE TO URSAN STARS. REQUEST LANDING SUGGESTIONS, IN VIEW OF OUR FUELING NEEDS.

  REQUEST INTELLIGENCE CONCERNING PRESENT LEVEL OF TERRESTRIAL CULTURE. OUR ORIBITAL OBSERVATIONS INDICATE A STATIC AGRARIAN-TECHNICAL COMPLEX, BUT DETAILS NOT AVAILABLE. WE COME IN ARMS, BUT WITHOUT ENMITY. PLEASE REPLY, IF POSSIBLE.

  ERNSTLI BARON VEN KLAEDEN, COMMANDING STRAFEFLEET THREE, SPACESTRIKE COMMAND, IMPERIAL FORCES OF THE SECESSION

  * * * * *

  So it came, repeated continuously for an hour, followed by an hour of silence, and then by another hour of repetition. The linguists were unable to discern meanings. Thousands of memorizers were consulted, but none knew the words of the harsh voice from the ships. At last, the sages consulted the books and memnoscripts in the ancient vaults, pouring over tomes that had been buried for countless centuries. After hours of hurried study....

  "It is found, it is found, a tongue of the ancients!" a joyous cry in the glades and the garden pathways.

  Happily, the sages recorded the linguistic structure of the forgotten tongue on memnoscript, and gave it to a servo translator. Outmoded mechanisms were being brought out of wraps and prepared for use. The servos supplied a translation of the message, and the sages studied it.

  "It is badly understood," was the curious mutter along the garden pathways.

  "Many words have no words to match them, nor any thoughts that are similar," was the only explanation the sages could give.

  In translation the message seemed meaningless, or unfathomable. Only one thing was clear. The sons of Man meant to descend again upon the world of their ancestors. There was a restless unease in the gardens, and groups of elders gathered in the conference glades to mutter and glance at the sky. "Invite our brothers to land," was the impetuous cry of the young, but there were dissenters.

  In the Glade of Sopho, a few thoughtful clansmen of Pedaga had gathered to muse and speak quietly among themselves, although it was not ordinarily the business of tutors to consider problems that confronted society as a whole, particularly problems arising outside society itself. The Pedaga were teachers of the very young, and deliberately kept themselves childlike in outlook in order to make fuller contact with the children in their charge.

  "I think we should tell them to go away," said Letha, and looked around at the others for a response.

  She got nothing in reply but a flickering glance from Marrita, who sat morosely on a cool rock by the spring, her chin on her bare knees. Evon gave her a brief polite smile, to acknowledge the sound of her voice, but he returned almost at once to absently tearing twigs and glancing up at the bits of sky that showed through the foliage of the overhanging trees. Iak and Karrn were whispering together at the far end of the glade, and had not heard her.

  Letha shrugged and leaned back against the tree trunk again, sitting spraddle-legged this time in the hope of catching Evon's eye. She was a grac
eful girl, and while gracefulness is sometimes feline, Letha's was more nearly kittenish. She was full-bodied and soft, but well-shaped in spite of a trace of plumpness. Thick masses of black hair fell over baby-skin shoulders in a pleasing contrast, and while her face was a bit too round, it radiated a gentle, winning grin, and the sympathetic gaze of gray-blue eyes. Now she seemed ready to pout. Evon remained self-absorbed.

  "I think we should tell them to go away," she repeated a little sharply. "They'll all be big and swashbuckling and handsome, and the children will become unmanageable as soon as they see them. All the little girls will swoon, and all the little boys will want to go with them."

  Evon glanced at her briefly. "It's up to the elders of the Geoark," he muttered without interest, and prepared to return to his own meditations.

  "And all the big girls will run away with them," she purred with a tight smile, and stretched a languorous leg out in front of her to waggle her foot.

  Evon shot her a quick glance, held it for a moment, then looked skyward again. She pursed her lips in irritation and glared at him. Gradually, she forgave him. Evon was distraught. He must be--because she hadn't seen him sit still this long in years. He was always doing something, or looking for something to do. It wasn't like Evon just to sit still and think. He was a restless, outgoing fellow, nearly always reacting boisterously, or laughing his staccato laugh. Now he just sat there and looked puzzledly in the direction of the sky-fleet. Looking puzzled didn't fit his face, somehow. It was a bony brown face, slightly oily, with a long narrow jaw that jutted forward like a plowshare under an elastic smirk. It was a rubbery kind of a face, the kind that could twist into horrid masks for the amusement of the young. Now it just drooped.

  She stirred restlessly, driven to seek sympathetic understanding.

  "You wonder what it's like, Evon?" she asked.

  He grunted at her quizzically and shook his head.

  "To be one of the children of the Exodus, I mean," she added.

  "Me? What are you thinking of, Letha?"