The Big Book of Science Fiction

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

  My colleagues have asked me that, and I have given what answers I can. Perhaps you could have done better, Father Loyola, but I have found nothing in the Exercitia Spiritualia that helps me here. They were not an evil people: I do not know what gods they worshiped, if indeed they worshiped any. But I have looked back at them across the centuries, and have watched while the loveliness they used their last strength to preserve was brought forth again into the light of their shrunken sun. They could have taught us much: why were they destroyed?

  I know the answers that my colleagues will give when they get back to Earth. They will say that the universe has no purpose and no plan, that since a hundred suns explode every year in our galaxy, at this very moment some race is dying in the depths of space. Whether that race has done good or evil during its lifetime will make no difference in the end: there is no divine justice, for there is no God.

  Yet, of course, what we have seen proves nothing of the sort. Anyone who argues thus is being swayed by emotion, not logic. God has no need to justify His actions to man. He who built the universe can destroy it when He chooses. It is arrogance—it is perilously near blasphemy—for us to say what He may or may not do.

  This I could have accepted, hard though it is to look upon whole worlds and peoples thrown into the furnace. But there comes a point when even the deepest faith must falter, and now, as I look at the calculations lying before me, I know I have reached that point at last.

  We could not tell, before we reached the nebula, how long ago the explosion took place. Now, from the astronomical evidence and the record in the rocks of that one surviving planet, I have been able to date it very exactly. I know in what year the light of this colossal conflagration reached our Earth. I know how brilliantly the supernova whose corpse now dwindles behind our speeding ship once shone in terrestrial skies. I know how it must have blazed low in the east before sunrise, like a beacon in that oriental dawn.

  There can be no reasonable doubt: the ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet, oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?

  Grandpa

  JAMES H. SCHMITZ

  James H. Schmitz (1911–1981) was a German-born US writer of science fiction whose short stories sometimes included ecological or sociological themes that have only become more resonant and relevant in the modern era. Schmitz’s first published story was “Greenface” for Unknown (1943), but his most successful stories with readers were four tales featuring sentient robot spaceships and troubleshooters with psi powers, later assembled as Agent of Vega (1960). A more recent collection from 2001 with the same title includes a more diverse selection of stories. Although he published a few novels, he was primarily known for his short fiction.

  Schmitz’s most popular space-opera adventures, published prior to 1970, featured women who perform an active role and save the universe when necessary, in a manner almost completely free of gender clichés—equal to men in intelligence and strength, which was virtually unheard of in the pulp magazines of the time. Several of his stories share a more or less common backdrop of a galaxy inhabited by humans and aliens with room for all and numerous opportunities for discoveries and reversals that carefully fall short of threatening the stability of that background. Many of his stories, as a result, focus less on moments of conceptual breakthrough than on the pragmatic operations of teams and bureaus involved in maintaining the state of things against unfriendly species; in this they rather resemble the tales of the pulpier Murray Leinster, though they are more vigorous and less inclined to punish the adventurous.

  “Grandpa,” included here, was first published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1955. In this story, as in others he’s written, Schmitz seems to have sympathy for his alien creatures rather than seeing them as monsters, in contrast to the horror-SF written by many of his contemporaries. As a result, “Grandpa” has aged better than much other fiction from the era. Indeed, one of the most interesting aspects of his stories is how he wrote about ecology as a major theme, not only on this story but others as well (see also “Balanced Ecology” from 1965, in Analog). The alien ecosystem described in this story is very intricate and ingenious and points out that human explorers shouldn’t base their reactions and reasoning on the world they think they know. Schmitz is one of the earliest writers to use the word ecology in his fiction.

  GRANDPA

  James H. Schmitz

  A green-winged, downy thing as big as a hen fluttered along the hillside to a point directly above Cord’s head and hovered there, twenty feet above him. Cord, a fifteen-year-old human being, leaned back against a skipboat parked on the equator of a world that had known human beings for only the past four Earth years, and eyed the thing speculatively. The thing was, in the free and easy terminology of the Sutang Colonial Team, a swamp bug. Concealed in the downy fur back of the bug’s head was a second, smaller, semiparasitical thing, classed as a bug rider.

  The bug itself looked like a new species to Cord. Its parasite might or might not turn out to be another unknown. Cord was a natural research man; his first glimpse of the odd flying team had sent endless curiosities thrilling through him. How did that particular phenomenon tick, and why? What fascinating things, once you’d learned about it, could you get it to do?

  Normally, he was hampered by circumstances in carrying out any such investigation. The Colonial Team was a practical, hardworking outfit—two thousand people who’d been given twenty years to size up and tame down the brand-new world of Sutang to the point where a hundred thousand colonists could be settled on it, in reasonable safety and comfort. Even junior colonial students like Cord were expected to confine their curiosity to the pattern of research set up by the station to which they were attached. Cord’s inclination toward independent experiments had got him into disfavor with his immediate superiors before this.

  He sent a casual glance in the direction of the Yoger Bay Colonial Station behind him. No signs of human activity about that low, fortresslike bulk in the hill. Its central lock was still closed. In fifteen minutes, it was scheduled to be opened to let out the Planetary Regent, who was inspecting the Yoger Bay Station and its principal activities today.

  Fifteen minutes was time enough to find out something about the new bug, Cord decided.

  But he’d have to collect it first.

  He slid out one of the two handguns holstered at his side. This one was his own property: a Vanadian projectile weapon. Cord thumbed it to position for anesthetic small-game missiles and brought the hovering swamp bug down, drilled neatly and microscopically through the head.

  As the bug hit the ground, the rider left its back. A tiny scarlet demon, round and bouncy as a rubber ball, it shot toward Cord in three long hops, mouth wide to sink home inch-long, venom-dripping fangs. Rather breathlessly, Cord triggered the gun again and knocked it out in midleap. A new species, all right! Most bug riders were harmless plant-eaters, mere suckers of vegetable juice—

  “Cord!” A feminine voice.

  Cord swore softly. He hadn’t heard the central lock click open. She must have come around from the other side of the station.

  “Hi, Grayan!” he shouted innocently without looking around. “Come see what I got! New species!”

  Grayan Mahoney, a slender, black-haired girl two years older than himself, came trotting down the hillside toward him. She was Sutang’s star colonial student, and the station manager, Nirmond, indicated from time to time that she was a fine example for Cord to pattern his own behavior on. In spite of that, she and Cord were good friends, but she bossed him around considerably.

  “Cord, you dope!” She scowled as she came up. “Quit acting like a collector! If the Regent came out now, you’d be sunk. Nirmond’s been telling her about you!”

  “Telling her what?” Cord asked, startled.

  “For one,” Grayan reported, “that you don’t keep up on your assigned work. Two, tha
t you sneak off on one-man expeditions of your own at least once a month and have to be rescued—”

  “Nobody,” Cord interrupted hotly, “has had to rescue me yet!”

  “How’s Nirmond to know you’re alive and healthy when you just drop out of sight for a week?” Grayan countered. “Three,” she resumed checking the items off on slim fingertips, “he complained that you keep private zoological gardens of unidentified and possibly deadly vermin in the woods back of the station. And four…well, Nirmond simply doesn’t want the responsibility for you anymore!” She held up the four fingers significantly.

  “Golly!” gulped Cord, dismayed. Summed up tersely like that, his record didn’t look too good.

  “Golly is right! I keep warning you! Now Nirmond wants the Regent to send you back to Vanadia—and there’s a starship coming in to New Venus forty-eight hours from now!” New Venus was the Colonial Team’s main settlement on the opposite side of Sutang.

  “What’ll I do?”

  “Start acting like you have good sense mainly.” Grayan grinned suddenly. “I talked to the Regent, too—Nirmond isn’t rid of you yet! But if you louse up on our tour of the Bay Farms today, you’ll be off the Team for good!”

  She turned to go. “You might as well put the skipboat back; we’re not using it. Nirmond’s driving us down to the edge of the bay in a treadcar, and we’ll take a raft from there. Don’t let them know I warned you!”

  Cord looked after her, slightly stunned. He hadn’t realized his reputation had become as bad as all that! To Grayan, whose family had served on Colonial Teams for the past four generations, nothing worse was imaginable than to be dismissed and sent back ignominiously to one’s own homeworld. Much to his surprise, Cord was discovering now that he felt exactly the same way about it!

  Leaving his newly bagged specimens to revive by themselves and flutter off again, he hurriedly flew the skipboat around the station and rolled it back into its stall.

  —

  Three rafts lay moored just offshore in the marshy cove, at the edge of which Nirmond had stopped the treadcar. They looked somewhat like exceptionally broad-brimmed, well-worn sugarloaf hats floating out there, green and leathery. Or like lily pads twenty-five feet across, with the upper section of a big, gray-green pineapple growing from the center of each. Plant animals of some sort. Sutang was too new to have had its phyla sorted out into anything remotely like an orderly classification. The rafts were a local oddity which had been investigated and could be regarded as harmless and moderately useful. Their usefulness lay in the fact that they were employed as a rather slow means of transportation about the shallow, swampy waters of the Yoger Bay. That was as far as the Team’s interest in them went at present.

  The Regent had stood up from the backseat of the car, where she was sitting next to Cord. There were only four in the party; Grayan was up front with Nirmond.

  “Are those our vehicles?” The Regent sounded amused.

  Nirmond grinned, a little sourly. “Don’t underestimate them, Dane! They could become an important economic factor in this region in time. But, as a matter of fact, these three are smaller than I like to use.” He was peering about the reedy edges of the cove. “There’s a regular monster parked here usually—”

  Grayan turned to Cord. “Maybe Cord knows where Grandpa is hiding.”

  It was well meant, but Cord had been hoping nobody would ask him about Grandpa. Now they all looked at him.

  “Oh, you want Grandpa?” he said, somewhat flustered. “Well, I left him…I mean I saw him a couple of weeks ago about a mile south from here—”

  Grayan sighed. Nirmond grunted and told the Regent, “The rafts tend to stay wherever they’re left, providing it’s shallow and muddy. They use a hair-root system to draw chemicals and microscopic nourishment directly from the bottom of the bay. Well—Grayan, would you like to drive us there?”

  Cord settled back unhappily as the treadcar lurched into motion. Nirmond suspected he’d used Grandpa for one of his unauthorized tours of the area, and Nirmond was quite right.

  “I understand you’re an expert with these rafts, Cord,” Dane said from beside him. “Grayan told me we couldn’t find a better steersman, or pilot, or whatever you call it, for our trip today.”

  “I can handle them,” Cord said, perspiring. “They don’t give you any trouble!” He didn’t feel he’d made a good impression on the Regent so far. Dane was a young, handsome-looking woman with an easy way of talking and laughing, but she wasn’t the head of the Sutang Colonial Team for nothing. She looked quite capable of shipping out anybody whose record wasn’t up to par.

  “There’s one big advantage our beasties have over a skipboat, too,” Nirmond remarked from the front seat. “You don’t have to worry about a snapper trying to climb on board with you!” He went on to describe the stinging ribbon-tentacles the rafts spread around them underwater to discourage creatures that might make a meal off their tender underparts. The snappers and two or three other active and aggressive species of the bay hadn’t yet learned it was foolish to attack armed human beings in a boat, but they would skitter hurriedly out of the path of a leisurely perambulating raft.

  Cord was happy to be ignored for the moment. The Regent, Nirmond, and Grayan were all Earth people, which was true of most of the members of the Team; and Earth people made him uncomfortable, particularly in groups. Vanadia, his own homeworld, had barely graduated from the status of Earth colony itself, which might explain the difference. All the Earth people he’d met so far seemed dedicated to what Grayan Mahoney called the Big Picture, while Nirmond usually spoke of it as “Our Purpose Here.” They acted strictly in accordance with their Team Regulations—sometimes, in Cord’s opinion, quite insanely. Because now and then the Regulations didn’t quite cover a new situation and then somebody was likely to get killed. In which case, the Regulations would be modified promptly, but Earth people didn’t seem otherwise disturbed by such events.

  Grayan had tried to explain it to Cord:

  “We can’t really ever know in advance what a new world is going to be like! And once we’re there, there’s too much to do, in the time we’ve got, to study it inch by inch. You get your job done, and you take a chance. But if you stick by the Regulations you’ve got the best chances of surviving anybody’s been able to figure out for you….”

  Cord felt he preferred to just use good sense and not let Regulations or the job get him into a situation he couldn’t figure out for himself.

  To which Grayan replied impatiently that he hadn’t yet got the Big Picture….

  The treadcar swung around and stopped, and Grayan stood up in the front seat, pointing. “That’s Grandpa, over there!”

  Dane also stood up and whistled softly, apparently impressed by Grandpa’s fifty-foot spread. Cord looked around in surprise. He was pretty sure this was several hundred yards from the spot where he’d left the big raft two weeks ago; and as Nirmond said, they didn’t usually move about by themselves.

  Puzzled, he followed the others down a narrow path to the water, hemmed in by tree-sized reeds. Now and then he got a glimpse of Grandpa’s swimming platform, the rim of which just touched the shore. Then the path opened out, and he saw the whole raft lying in sunlit, shallow water; and he stopped short, startled.

  Nirmond was about to step up on the platform, ahead of Dane.

  “Wait!” Cord shouted. His voice sounded squeaky with alarm. “Stop!”

  He came running forward.

  They had frozen where they stood, looked around swiftly. Then glanced back at Cord coming up. They were well trained.

  “What’s the matter, Cord?” Nirmond’s voice was quiet and urgent.

  “Don’t get on that raft—it’s changed!” Cord’s voice sounded wobbly, even to himself. “Maybe it’s not even Grandpa—”

  He saw he was wrong on the last point before he’d finished the sentence. Scattered along the rim of the raft were discolored spots left by a variety of heat-guns, one of which h
ad been his own. It was the way you goaded the sluggish and mindless things into motion. Cord pointed at the cone-shaped central projection. “There—his head! He’s sprouting!”

  “Sprouting?” the station manager repeated uncomprehendingly. Grandpa’s head, as befitted his girth, was almost twelve feet high and equally wide. It was armor-plated like the back of a saurian to keep off plant-suckers, but two weeks ago it had been an otherwise featureless knob, like those on all other rafts. Now scores of long, kinky, leafless vines had grown out from all surfaces of the cone, like green wires. Some were drawn up like tightly coiled springs, others trailed limply to the platform and over it. The top of the cone was dotted with angry red buds, rather like pimples, which hadn’t been there before either. Grandpa looked unhealthy.

  “Well,” Nirmond said, “so it is. Sprouting!” Grayan made a choked sound. Nirmond glanced at Cord as if puzzled. “Is that all that was bothering you, Cord?”

  “Well, sure!” Cord began excitedly. He hadn’t caught the significance of the word “all”; his hackles were still up, and he was shaking. “None of them ever—”

  Then he stopped. He could tell by their faces that they hadn’t got it. Or rather, that they’d got it all right but simply weren’t going to let it change their plans. The rafts were classified as harmless, according to the Regulations. Until proved otherwise, they would continue to be regarded as harmless. You didn’t waste time quibbling with the Regulations—apparently even if you were the Planetary Regent. You didn’t feel you had the time to waste.

  He tried again. “Look—” he began. What he wanted to tell them was that Grandpa with one unknown factor added wasn’t Grandpa anymore. He was an unpredictable, oversized life-form, to be investigated with cautious thoroughness till you knew what the unknown factor meant.