The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  The auditory frequencies were being tampered with, that was all. It wouldn’t do to get all excited about it.

  When the laughing children who were splashing in the old swimming hole began to scream, Gordon Collier shut the window.

  He sank down in a chair and buried his face in his hands. He wanted to shout, throw things, cry, anything. But he couldn’t. His mind was numb. He could only sit there in the chair by the window and wait for the unknown.

  It was almost evening when the rain came. It came in sheets and torrents and splattered on the windowpanes. It ran down the windows in gurgling rivulets and made puddles in the yard. It was real rain.

  Gordon Collier looked at the water falling from a place where water could not be and began to whimper with fright.

  —

  Precisely at nine o’clock, Gordon and Helen dug up two old raincoats out of the hall closet and walked next door through the storm. They rang the doorbell and stood shivering in the icy rain until Mary opened the door and spilled yellow light out into the blackness.

  They entered the cottage, which was an exact replica of their own except for the austerely frowning portrait of Grandfather Walters in the front hall. They stood dripping on the rug until Bart came charging in from the living room, grinning with pleasure at seeing them again.

  “What a storm!” he said loudly. “Reminds me of the time we played UCLA in a cloudburst—here, let me take your coats.”

  Gordon clenched his fists helplessly. Bart and Mary weren’t facing the situation either; they were simply adapting to it frantically and hoping it would go away. Well, his mind demanded, what else can they do?

  They went through the ritual of playing cards. This time it was bridge instead of poker, but otherwise it was the same. It always was, except for holidays.

  Outside, the incredible storm ripped furiously at the cottage. The roof began to leak, ever so slightly, and a tiny drip began to patter away ironically in the middle of the bridge table. No one said anything about it.

  Gordon played well enough to keep up appearances, but his mind wasn’t on the game. He loaded his pipe with his own ultra-fragrant bourbon-soaked tobacco, and retreated behind a cloud of smoke.

  He had himself fairly well under control now. The worst was probably over, for him. He could at least think about it—that was a triumph, and he was proud of it.

  Here they were, he thought—four human beings on a moon as big as a planet, three hundred and ninety million miles from the Earth that had sent them there. Four humans encased in two little white cottages under an air bubble on the rock and ice that was Ganymede. Here they were—waiting. Waiting in an empty universe, sustained by a faith in something that had almost been lost.

  They were skeleton crews, waiting for the firm flesh to come and clothe their bones. It would not happen today, and it would not happen tomorrow. It might never happen—now.

  It was unthinkable that any ship from Earth could be in the vicinity. It was unthinkable that their equipment could have broken down, changed, by itself.

  So they were waiting, he thought—but not for the ship from Earth. No, they were waiting for—what?

  At eleven o’clock, the storm stopped abruptly and there was total silence.

  At midnight, there was a knock on the door.

  It was one of those moments that stand alone, cut off and isolated from the conceptual flow of time. It stood quite still holding its breath.

  The knock was repeated—impatiently.

  “Someone is at the door,” Mary said dubiously.

  “That’s right,” Bart said. “We must have visitors.”

  No one moved. The four human beings sat paralyzed around the table, their cards still in their hands, precisely as though they were waiting for some imaginary servant to open the door and see who was outside. Gordon Collier found himself relatively calm, but he knew that it was not a natural calmness. He was conditioned too, like the rest of them. He studied them with intense interest. Could they even swallow this insane knock on the door, digest it, fit it somehow into their habitual thought patterns?

  Apparently, they could.

  “See to the door, dear,” Mary told her husband. “I wonder who it could be this time of night?”

  The knock was repeated a third time. Whoever—or whatever—was outside, Gordon thought, sounded irritated.

  Reluctantly, Bart started to get up. Gordon beat him to it, however, pushing back his chair and getting to his feet. “Let me go,” he said. “I’m closer.”

  He walked across the room to the door. It seemed a longer way than he had ever noticed before. The stout wood door seemed very thin. He put his hand on the doorknob, and was dimly conscious of the fact that Bart had gotten up and followed him across the room. He looked at the door, a scant foot before his eyes. The knock came again—sharply, impatiently, a no-nonsense knock. Gordon visualized the heavy brass door knocker on the other side of the door. To whom, or what, did the hand that worked that knocker belong? Or was it a hand?

  Almost wildly, Gordon remembered a string of jokes that had made the rounds when he was a boy. Jokes about the little man who turned off the light in the refrigerator when you closed the door. Jokes about a little man—what had they called him?

  The little man who wasn’t there.

  Gordon shook his head. That kind of reaction wouldn’t do, he told himself. He had to be calm. He asked himself a question: What are you waiting for?

  He gritted his teeth and opened the door, fast.

  The little man was there, and he was tapping his foot. But he was not exactly a little man, either. He was somewhat vague, amorphous—he was, you might say, almost a little man.

  “It’s about time,” the almost-man said in a blurred voice. “But first, a word from our sponsor. May I come in?”

  Stunned, Gordon Collier felt himself moving aside and the little man hustled past him into the cottage.

  The almost-man stood apart from the others, hesitating. He wasn’t really a little man, Gordon saw with some relief; that is, he wasn’t a gnome or an elf or anything like that. Gordon recognized with a start the state of his own mental processes that had even allowed him to imagine that it could be some supernatural creature out there on the green lawn, knocking at the door. He fought to clear his mind, and knew that he failed.

  Gordon caught one thought and held on, desperately: If this is an alien, all that I have worked for is finished. The dream is ended.

  The almost-man—changed. He solidified, became real. He was a man—elderly, a bit pompous, neatly dressed in an old-fashioned business suit with a conservative blue tie. He had white hair and a neat, precise moustache. His blue eyes twinkled.

  “I am overwhelmed,” he said clearly, waving a thin hand in the air. “My name is John. You are too kind to a poor old country boy.”

  Gordon stared. The man was a dead ringer for the portrait of Grandfather Walters on the wall.

  Bart and Mary and Helen just looked blankly at the man, trying to adjust to the enormity of what had happened. Bart had resumed his seat at the bridge table, and had even picked up his hand. Helen was watching Gordon, who still stood by the door. Mary sat uncertainly, dimly realizing that she was the hostess here, and waiting for the proper stimulus that would prod her into a patterned routine of welcome. The house waited—a stage set for a play, with the actors all in place and the curtain halfway up.

  Gordon Collier slammed the door, fighting to clear his mind from the gentle fog that lapped at it, that made everything all right. “What in the hell is the big idea?” he asked the man who looked like Grandfather Walters and whose name was John.

  “Gordey!” exclaimed Helen.

  “That’s no way to talk to company,” Mary said.

  John faced Gordon, ignoring the others. His moustache bristled. He spread his hands helplessly. “I am a simple wayfaring stranger,” he said. “I happened to pass by your door, and since you live in a house by the side of the road, I assumed that you would wish to
be a friend to man.”

  Gordon Collier started to laugh hysterically, but smothered it before the laughter exploded nakedly into the room. “Are you a man?” he asked.

  “Certainly not,” John said indignantly.

  Gordon Collier clenched his fists until his fingernails drew blood from the palms of his hands. He tried to use his mind, to free it, to fight. He could not, and he felt the tears of rage in his eyes. I must, he thought, I must, I must, I MUST.

  He closed his eyes. The ritual had been broken, the lulling pattern was no more. He told himself: Somewhere in this madness there is a pattern that will reduce it to sanity. It is up to me to find it; that is why I am here. I must fight this thing, whatever it is. I must clear my mind, and I must fight. I must get behind the greasepaint and the special effects and deal with whatever is underneath. This is the one test I must not fail.

  “Would you care for a drink?” he asked the man who looked like Grandfather Walters.

  “Not particularly,” John told him. “In fact, the thought appalls me.”

  Gordon Collier turned and walked out into the kitchen, took a bottle of Bart’s best Scotch out of the cupboard, and drank two shots straight. Then he methodically mixed a Scotch and soda, and stood quite still, trying to think.

  He had to think.

  This wasn’t insane, he had to remember that. It seemed to be, and that was important. Things didn’t just happen, he knew; there was always an explanation, if you could just find it. Certainly, these two little cottages out here on Ganymede were fantastic enough unless you knew the story behind them. You would never guess, looking at them, that they were the tail end of a dream, a dream that man was trying to stuff back into the box….

  Again, the thought came: If this is an alien, all that I have worked for is finished. The dream is ended. And a further thought: Unless they never find out, back on Earth.

  Those thoughts. They drummed so insistently through his mind. Were they his, really? Or were they, too, part of the conditioning? He shook his head. He could not think clearly; his mind was clogged. He would have to feel his way along.

  He was desperately aware that he was not reacting rationally to the situation in which he found himself. None of it made sense; there was too much trickery. But how could he cut through to the truth?

  He didn’t know.

  He did know that there was danger with him in the house, danger that was beyond comprehension.

  He tried to be calm. He walked back into the living room to face the three people who were less than human and the strange man who had walked in out of infinity.

  Gordon Collier entered the room and stopped. He forced his mind to accept the scene in matter-of-fact terms. He reached out for reality and held on tight.

  There was the bridge table, and there Helen and Bart, their cards in their hands, caught between action and non-action. There was the homey furniture, and the knickknacks on the mantelpiece over the non-functional fireplace. Out in the kitchen, the Frigidaire wheezed. There was the line of poetry: Let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man. There was the portrait of old Grandfather Walters.

  There sat the man named John, who was Grandfather Walters, down to the last precise hair in his white moustache, the last wrinkle in his dreary gray business suit.

  Outside, in a night alive with shadows, there was no sound at all.

  “You have returned, as time will allow,” John said. “No doubt you have your questions ready.” He lit a cigarette, and the brand he smoked had not existed for twenty years. He dropped ashes on the rug.

  “I can ask you questions, then,” Gordon Collier said hesitantly.

  “Certainly, my man. Please do. Valuable prizes.”

  Gordon frowned, not caring for the phrase “my man.” And the oddly misplaced tri-di jargon was disconcerting, vaguely horrible. He fought to clear his mind.

  “Are you our friend?”

  “No.”

  “Our enemy?”

  “No.”

  The three people at the bridge table watched, unmoving.

  “Are you trying to—ummm—conquer the Earth?”

  “My good man, what on Earth for?”

  Gordon Collier tried to ignore the pun. It didn’t fit. Nothing fitted. That was why he could not force his mind to see it all objectively, then. It was completely outside his experience, all of it.

  Somewhere there is a pattern—

  “What is this all about? What is going on?”

  John’s blue eyes twinkled. He lit another cigarette, dropping the other one on the rug and grinding it out with his neatly polished black shoe. He said: “I have already told you that I am not a man. It follows that I am, from your point of view, an alien. I have nothing to hide. My actions are irrational to you, just as yours are to me. You are, in a way, a preliminary to food. There, is that clear?”

  Gordon Collier stared at the man who looked like Grandfather Walters. If this is an alien—

  His mind rebelled at the thought. It was absurd, fantastic. He tried to find another explanation, ignoring the shrieking danger signals in his mind. Suppose, now, that this was all a trick, a monstrous trick. John was not an alien at all—of course he wasn’t—but a clever agent from Earth, out to wreck the dream.

  “You say that you are an alien,” he told John. “Prove it.”

  John shrugged, dropping ashes into the little pile on the rug. “The best proof would be highly unpleasant for you,” he said. “But I can—the words are difficult, we’re a little late, folks—take a story out of your mind and—the words are very hard—project it back to you again. Will that be good enough?”

  “Prove it,” Gordon Collier repeated, trying to be sure of himself. “Prove it.”

  John nodded agreeably. He looked around him, smiling.

  The clock in the hall struck two.

  Gordon Collier sat down. He leaned forward….

  He saw a ship. It was very cold and dark. He saw—shadows—in the ship. He followed the ship. It had no home. It was nomadic. It fed on energy that it—absorbed—from other cultures. He saw one of the—shadows—more clearly. There were many shadows. They were watching him. He strained forward, could almost see them—

  “I beg your pardon,” John said loudly. “How clumsy of me.”

  The room was taut with fear.

  “If at first you don’t succeed,” John said languidly, “try, try again. Let’s see, my man—where shall we start?”

  The question was rhetorical. Gordon Collier felt a jolt hit his mind. He felt himself slipping, tried to hold on. He failed. It began to come, out of the past.

  Disjointed, at first. Jerky headlines, and then more…

  MAN CONQUERS SPACE!

  YANK SHIP LANDS ON MOON!

  NEXT STOP MARS SCIENTIST SAYS!

  There had been more, under the headlines. Articles about how the space stations were going to end war by a very logical alchemy. Articles about rockets and jets and atomics. Articles about how to build a nice steel base on the moon.

  Gordon Collier laughed aloud and then stopped, suddenly. The three people at the bridge table stared at him mindlessly. John stabbed in his brain….

  They had chattered away quite glibly about weightlessness and gravity strains. They had built a perfect machine.

  But there had been an imperfect machine inside it.

  His name was man.

  There were imperfect machines outside it, too. Villages and towns and cities filled to overflowing with them. Once the initial steps had been taken, once man was really in space at last, the reaction came. The true enormity of the task became all too obvious.

  Space stations didn’t cure wars, of course, any more than spears or rifles or atomic bombs had cured wars. Wars were culturally determined patterns of response to conflict situations; to get rid of wars, you had to change the pattern, not further implement it.

  Space killed men. It sent them shrieking into the unknown in coffins of steel. It ripped them
out of their familiar, protective cultures and hurled them a million miles into Nothing.

  Space wasn’t profitable. It gobbled up millions and billions into its gaping craw and it was never satiated. It didn’t care about returning a profit. There was no profit to return.

  Space was for the few. It was expensive. It took technical skills and training as its only passport. It was well to speak of dreams, but this dream had to be paid for. It took controls and taxes. Who paid the taxes? Who wanted the controls?

  I work eight hours a day in a factory, the chorus chanted into the great emptiness. I got a wife and kids and when I come home at night I’m too tired to dream. I work hard. I earn my money. Why should I foot the bill for a four-eyed Glory Joe?

  Space was disturbing. Sermons were spoken against it. Editorials were written against it. Laws were enacted against it—subtle laws, for controls were not wanted.

  The rockets reached Luna and beyond—Mars and Venus and the far satellites of Jupiter and Saturn. Equipment was set up, the trail was blazed at last.

  But who would follow the trail? Where did it go? What did it get you when you got there?

  Starburn leaves scars on the soul. Some men could not give up. Some men knew that man could not turn back.

  Starburned men knew that dreams never really die.

  They dwelt in fantastic loneliness, many of them, waiting. They waited for a few of their fellows on Earth to win over a hostile planet with advertising and lectures and closed-door sessions with industrialists. They fought to lay the long-neglected foundations for a skyscraper that already teetered precariously up into the sky and beyond.

  Far out in space, the fragile network of men and ships held on tight and hoped.

  “Let us revert to verbal communication again,” John said with startling suddenness. “Projection is quite tiring.”

  Gordon Collier jerked back to the present and tried to adjust. He was aware, dimly, that he was being played with consummate skill. He thought of a fish that knew it had a hook in its mouth. What could he do about it? He tried to think….