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

by Various

  First, the Weapon taught Jacob to open and close the airlock. Then he was shown how to fuel the engines, upon which the Weapon made some changes to improve their performance. Finally, in the control room, Jacob learned to fly the ship.

  This took several hours, at the end of which time Jacob had succeeded in raising the cruiser into a satellite orbit around Hova.

  "Do you comprehend, Slave?" asked the Weapon.

  "Sure. This thing ain't nothin' to run compared to a T-model Ford! Which way is it to Earth?"

  "That I shall not tell you, Jacob, because I must leave the ship for a few hours and desire to find you here when I return. Consider and tell me: Will you be here?"

  Jacob gazed at the broad, star-spangled viewplate that curved around his seat at the controls. There was, he reflected an awful lot of nothing out there for a man to get lost in.

  "I'll be here," he promised.

  "Very good. You must understand that these controls are constructed for manipulation by such limbs as your own and those of the Hovans. Thus, it is convenient for me to use you as a pilot instead of doing the drab, mechanical task with my ill-suited force-field manipulators. You will be wise to serve me well, Jacob."

  Jacob nodded. "You got a point there."

  "Operate the lock for me," the Weapon ordered.

  Jacob did so and watched the colorful machine drift out of sight in the atmosphere below the cruiser.

  Minutes ticked quietly by as Jacob gazed down at the purple planet and wondered why the Weapon had not chosen a trained Hovan pilot instead of him. Also, he wondered how soon the Weapon would take him home to Earth.

  A great swath of the purple planet began turning black. The black dulled to the gray shade of ashes as the swath grew longer. Over the surface of Hova, the blackening moved like some colossal paint brush. Dense clouds of smoke rolled upward to the high reaches of the atmosphere.

  Jacob realized why the Weapon had not selected a Hovan pilot.

  When all of Hova was a lifeless ball in a fog of ash, the Weapon returned.

  "Ah, good Jacob!" it boomed jovially. "Let us be up and doing! Thirty-six planets remain to be visited before my current assignment is concluded!"

  "Do all of them get--that?" asked Jacob, nodding toward the lifeless world below.

  "Yes. I was instructed to render this solar system lifeless before I malfunctioned. Since then, the life of this system has spread, with my insane aid, to infest other systems. Of course, my task must now include all those new Hovan worlds."

  "Now wait a minute!" said Jacob in terror. "I can't let you do that!"

  "They are your enemies, Jacob," reminded the Weapon. "They meant to kill every human on Terra. Also, by your own words, they are soulless animals who live in sinful adultery. Ha! It amuses me to reason with you, Slave Jacob!"

  "Godamighty, forgive me!" prayed Jacob, in horrified defeat.

  * * * * *

  The Weapon seemed to know how to find the Hovan planets from the markings of the cruiser's star charts. Jacob could not read the charts and saw no hope of getting back to earth and Suzy and the kids without the Weapon's help. Dully, he went about the tasks the Weapon ordered him to do.

  Several weeks passed as one world after another was left a smoking ruin.

  Finally the job was done.

  "Now, can I go home?" begged Jacob.

  "To Terra? No, Slave. I still need a pilot."

  "But if you take me home," Jacob continued desperately, "you can get a better pilot than me. I'm just a dirt farmer. There's all kinds of airplane pilots on Earth, youngsters without families who would give their right arms to fly this thing, I bet!"

  "Ah?" The Weapon considered. "A willing slave is, of course, always desirable. On the other hand, Terra is up in arms against the empire of Hova, not realizing it is dead. They would destroy this craft on sight, and I would be obliged to wait around until they could construct another for me. No, I have decided we will not go to Terra."

  "But, damn it, where else is there to go?"

  "In search of my masters of Zoz," replied the Weapon. "Naturally, I wish to return myself to their services as soon as possible."

  "But they might be anywhere!"

  "True," the Weapon agreed. "But even after a billion years, I know of several places in the Universe they may be near. Their great cleansing sweeps tend to circle and turn in a pattern established long in advance. Thus we will go to those places where they may now be engaged in their consecrated task of universal purification."

  "But--"

  "No more, Slave! We go!"

  Out of the Milky Way, the cruiser hurtled at a speed which a sentient lightwave would find meaningless. On and on they journeyed in quest of the long-dead Zoz Horde.

  They may still be going.

  * * *

  Contents

  GENERAL MAX SHORTER

  By Kris Neville

  To spread Mankind to the stars carries a high cost in lives--and not all of them are human!

  Miracastle: The initial landing had been made on a flat plateau among steep, foreboding mountains which seemed to float through briefly cleared air. In the distance a sharp rock formation stood revealed like an etching: a castle of iron-gray stone whose form had been carved by alien winds and eroded by acid tears from acid clouds.

  Far above was a halo where the sun should be. The sun was an orange star only slightly larger than Sol and as near to Miracastle as Sol to Earth. The orange rays splintered against the fog and gloom was perpetually upon the dark face of existence.

  This was the first two-stage planet man had ever attempted to colonize. Miracastle was so far from Earth that the long ships were destroyed twice to reach it.

  * * * * *

  The technicians came, commanded by General Max Shorter, sixty-three years old. Men wearing the circle whose diameter was etched in ruby steel enclosing a background of gleaming ebon--the emblem was a silver D over a sunburst of hammered gold.

  The surface of Miracastle roiled with unfamiliar storms and tornados and hurricanes. Before these, the films of lichen evaporated into dust, and the sparse and stunted vegetation with ochre foliage turned sear and was powdered by the fury in the air.

  Earth equipment, alien to the orange sun, hammered into the heart of Miracastle. Night and day it converted the pulverized substance of the planet in the white-hot core of its atomic furnaces.

  Acid rivers snapped at the wind and changed to salt deposits and super-heated steam. In the gaseous atmosphere, neutral crystals formed and fell like powdered rain. Miracastle heated and cooled and shivered with the virus of man-made chemical reactions, and the storms screamed and tore at the age-old mountains.

  Inside the eternal, self-renewing Richardson domes, the technicians worked and waited and superintended the computers which controlled the processes raging beyond them.

  The long ship lifted steadily and majestically through the battering storm and the driving rain of dust and crystals. Out beyond the dense space that surrounds all stars, the long ship probed the ever-shifting currents in the four-dimensional universe. The long ship found a low-density flaw, where space could hardly be said to exist at all. The long ship, described mathematically, was half as long as the continuum--the length being inversely proportional and related only to mass. Time was but a moth's wing between twin cliffs of eternity.

  Inside Miracastle's orange sun, at its very core, an atom of hydrogen was destroyed completely; and in the inconceivable distance, an atom of hydrogen appeared. The pulsing, steady-state equation of the universe maintained its knife-edge and inevitable thermo-dynamic balance.

  Inside the long ship, a pilot-machine ordered the destruction of a vastly greater collection of matter. The atoms of the ship and the sailors--fixed in relationship, each to each--imploded into nothingness.

  And the long ship and the men aboard it were born again at a low-density area a million light years away--halfway to Earth. Born and were destroyed again, in the blink of an eye.

&nb
sp; Beyond the ship now lay Sol, pulsing in its own warmth and warming its children embedded in the cold and distant texture of the universe. The sailors were ghosts come home.

  Miracastle was alone with her conquerors.

  * * * * *

  General Max Shorter, a few weeks later, began writing a diary.

  "I have been Destroyed thirty-seven times during forty years' service with the long ships," he wrote. He wrote with a pen, using a metal straight edge as a line rule.

  "I have served faithfully and I believe as well as any man the Corps, the planet and mankind. It is perhaps appropriate at this time, as I approach the end of my long service, to record a few observations which have occurred to me during the course of it as well as to record the day-to-day details of my present command."

  The general wrote: "A man is given a job to do. And when all is said and done, that is the most important thing in his life: to do his job."

  It took perhaps ten seconds for the soft knock to penetrate his concentration. He adjusted himself to the moment and closed the diary softly. He deposited it in the upper right-hand drawer of the writing desk and locked the drawer.

  The knock came again.

  He arranged his tie.

  "Come in," General Shorter said.

  The agitation of the man in the doorway was announced by the paleness of his face.

  "Come in, David," General Shorter said, rising politely from the writing desk. "Be seated, please."

  "General, we've had a ... a very unfortunate thing happen on the shift."

  The general sank back into his chair. Light from the desk lamp framed his expressionless and immobile face, half in light, half in shadow. He fingered the straight-edge on the desk top.

  "Sit down, David, and then tell me about it."

  Shift-Captain Arnold moved uncertainly.

  "Sit down, sit down," General Shorter repeated impatiently.

  Captain Arnold seated himself on the edge of the chair.

  "One of the men," he said, "just committed suicide. He was in charge of the air changing monitor this shift. He went outside without a suit."

  The general blinked as though to remove an irritation from his eye. His hand lay still and hard upon the straight-edge. "What was his name?" he asked in a voice that was vaguely puzzled.

  "Schuster. Sergeant Schuster, sir."

  "Yes, I remember him," the general said. "He came to us about a week before the lift. I think he was from Colorado. He had very broad shoulders. Short and broad. Neat appearing. Uniform always in good order."

  General Shorter ran his thumb and forefinger up the bridge of his nose and then, with a very small sigh, placed his palm over his eyes.

  "Draw up the report," he said. "Was there a final message?" The question was uttered without hesitation and was followed by a moment of silence.

  "No, sir."

  General Shorter's breath was audible.

  "Please feel free to smoke, David."

  "Thank you, sir, I don't smoke."

  "No, of course not. I'd forgotten." General Shorter half turned and placed his hands on the desk. He stood under their pressure. "What would you say to a brandy?"

  "I should return to duty, sir."

  "A few minutes more," the general said. "The brandy is good." He moved into the shadow and sorted bottles at his tiny cupboard. "Here." He held the glass to the light. Amber liquid flowed softly and the general handed across the half-filled glass. "Sit back," he said. "I'll join you."

  Glass in hand, the general stood with his back to the light. He seemed surrounded by cold fire, and the glass sparkled as he lifted it. He sipped. "Try it, it's good."

  "It's very good, sir."

  * * * * *

  For a moment neither spoke. Then the general said, "This isn't my first command, you know. I've seen men die. I've had to take chances with them occasionally. You could say, I suppose, that I ordered some men to their deaths. But still, the men came aboard knowing the risks. In the final sense, they, not I, made the decision. I never sent a--"

  The sentence ended as the glass slipped and fell. "I'm sorry," he said, looking down at the sparkling fragments at his feet. The dark liquid--the light gave it a reddish cast--puddled and flowed and its aroma filled the room. "No, no. Let it be, David. I'll get it later."

  The general went to the cupboard and poured into a new glass. Again he was light and shadow. The spilled liquid approached the shadow and was devoured in it as though it had never been, but still the aroma stood on the air.

  The general said: "Imagine, if you can, David, that Earth were attacked, and the attack destroyed many of the military installations. After you struck back, David, what would you do next?"

  "I don't know, sir. I'm not a strategist, I'm afraid."

  "What about your cities? The millions of people trapped without supplies--over-running the countryside, looting, plundering in search of food. Carrying pestilence and disease and terror. What would you do, David?"

  "Well, I guess I'd try to organize some relief organization or something."

  "But David. Anything you diverted to care for these people would limit your ability to fight back, wouldn't it? They would be cluttering up all your transportation, frustrating effective retaliation. Your second move would be to take the bombs which destroy people and not property and ... use them on your own cities."

  Captain Arnold drained his glass. "That would be...." He did not finish.

  "Insane, David? No. Rational. Field Commanders must be realists. The job comes first. In this case, the job of defeating the enemy.... But what does that have to do with us? Nothing, eh? You're right. Sometimes I like to talk, and I suppose that's one of my privileges. I'm not the idealist I used to be, I guess. I remember when I was your age. I saw things differently than I do now. What used to seem important no longer does. Each stage of development has its unique biological imperatives: a child, a youth, a mature man, look out on the world from a body held in focus to different chemistries. But the job remains." General Shorter held up his glass. "Cheers." He drained it.

  Again there was silence.

  "David, do you think I'm in much trouble?"

  "I'm afraid so, General. The Committee is due to arrive tomorrow."

  "I know," the general said. "This suicide isn't going to help us. Tomorrow. Is it that soon? I thought ... yes, I guess it is tomorrow.... Well, we've been here long enough to lose our immunity, so we'll all catch colds."

  Captain Arnold stood. "I better get started on my report."

  "Poor Sergeant Schuster," General Shorter said. "If anyone's to blame, it must be me."

  "He obeyed the orders."

  "What did you say?"

  "I said he obeyed the orders, sir."

  "Of course he obeyed the orders," the general said. "What else could he have done?"

  II

  The long ship hung in orbit above Miracastle and discharged its passengers. The Scout Ball could handle them: saving energy, which along with time itself, is the ultimate precious commodity of the universe governed by the laws of entropy.

  The Scout Ball settled through the dark turbulence undisturbed by the hissing winds. It hovered momentarily in the invisible beacon above the Richardson dome as if both attracted and repelled. It moved horizontally and settled. Suited figures on the surface wrestled with its flexible exit-tube against the storm, fighting to couple it to the lock of the Richardson dome. The exit-tube moved rhythmically until the Scout Ball inched away, drawing it taut. Pumps whirred. The suited figures entered the forward lock of the Scout Ball.

  Inside, General Shorter divested himself of the helmet. The suit hung upon him like ancient, wrinkled skin.

  He asked, "What time is it?"

  Upon being told, he nodded with satisfaction. "Seventeen minutes, total. Good job. Who's in charge?"

  "A Mr. Tucker, sir."

  "Tucker? Jim Tucker, by any chance?"

  "Yes, sir."

  General Shorter grunted. "Served with him once. He'
s probably forgotten.... That's all right. I'll keep the suit on."

  "I don't think they're expecting you with the surface party, General."

  "Probably not or they'd be here. Earth crew?"

  "They've been out ten months or so, sir."

  "We will have colds, then. Would you take me to Mr. Tucker, please?" To the other suited men he said, "Good, fast job."

  General Shorter followed the crewman up the spiral staircase and along the corridor. His hand touched a frictionless wall. "New plastic?"

  "This is one of the most recent balls, sir."

  "How does it handle?"

  "Quite well, sir."

  "I miss the Model Ten," he said.

  "There's only a few left now, I guess."

  "I haven't seen one in years."

  The crewman stopped before a numberless panel. He knocked politely. "Mr. Tucker? I have General Shorter here. He came out with the surface party."

  Mr. Tucker's voice, the edge of surprise partly lost through the partition, came: "Just a moment."

  In silence they waited. General Shorter moved restlessly. Several minutes passed.

  The panel opened.

  * * * * *

  Mr. Tucker was a short, rotund man. His close-cropped hair was graying, although his face was unlined, with the smooth complexion of a child. His irises were gray and gold.

  General Shorter stepped forward and introduced himself.

  "Come in."

  The panel closed.

  The two men stood. General Shorter glanced around for a chair.

  "Small quarters," Mr. Tucker said. "If you like, sit there. I'll sit on the bed."

  They arranged themselves.

  "Perhaps you don't remember me?" the general said. "We served together--what, ten years ago?--for about two weeks on Avalon, I believe it was."

  "Yes, I thought that was the case. You have a good memory, General."

  "Please," the general said, "just call me Max."

  Mr. Tucker considered, without committing himself. He proffered a cigar. The general declined.