Men Against the Stars - [Adventures in Science Fiction 01]

by Edited By Martin Grrenburg

  Caxton and his fellows unearthed the iridium. Twelve million stellars’ worth. They dragged it out to the clear space of the furrow.

  “Maybe I oughta make you carry it to my ship,” said Slade, genially, “but a little exercise’ll do my gang good. So—”

  He lifted his hand weapon, grinning. It bore upon Caxton. His finger tensed on the trigger.

  And that was all. He ceased to move. His eyes closed. He stood rocking on his feet, breathing heavily.

  There was silence. Inside and outside the wreck there was stillness. Caxton turned his head and saw two men from the pirate ship, on their way back to it with loot taken from the Copernicus. They stood still swaying a little on their feet. There was no movement anywhere.

  “All right,” said Caxton coldly, “we’ll load up the iridium. That’ll be salvage, anyhow. Maybe we’ll come back for the rest. Maybe not.”

  The four men began the transfer. When the last of the iridium was loaded, Caxton went back and took away the weapons from the seemingly paralyzed pirates.

  Burton said furiously:

  “Ain’t you goin’ to blast ‘em off?”

  “I promised not to,” said Caxton grimly. “Besides, we couldn’t. Slade had his finger tensed to kill me and he was stopped. We’d be, too.”

  Burton grumbled. Then he said defiantly:

  “Whadda we do now, then?”

  “Take off,” said Caxton.

  He went into the ship. Its entire company was outside. There were only the four survivors of the Copernicus.

  The strange ship rose vertically from the ground. Caxton, in the control room, looked at the bottom visiplate. The wrecked spaceship below already grew small upon the screen, but the two blasted areas—in which thousands upon thousands of the plants of Aiolo had died—were still visible. And he saw moving dots. The men who had come to Aiolo in this ship, but now were left behind, marched somnambulistically toward the larger burned-out space in which the pirate ship had landed. But that space dwindled still more as the ship rose, until nothing could be seen at all except the illimitable expanse covered by the flowers—the plants of Aiolo.

  ~ * ~

  “They’re the dominant race of Aiolo,” said Caxton doggedly. “It’s as I told you. Like men, they specialized on intelligence. Men specialized on intelligence to tell them what to do. Men had hands to do things with. But those things were plants. They could only specialize on intelligence to tell other things what to do. To tell animals to keep away from them, for instance. They are tiny enough, and maybe the will power of a single one isn’t enough to—well—hypnotize anything or anybody- But when a whole field of them concentrates on telling something or somebody what they must do—why there’s not much chance of disobeying them. Animals, in the past, were useful to them. They made the animals devour other plants— made animals clear ground for them to spread to. But when they’d spread everywhere, they had no use for the animals. So—”

  “Huh!” said Burton, “They didn’t bother us!”

  “We didn’t bother them,” said Caxton dryly. “And the intelligence that can force itself on other minds hasn’t much trouble extracting information from them. They knew everything we thought.”

  “But—”

  “Surely they could have killed us,” said Caxton irritably. “It annoys me to think how completely we were at their mercy! But they knew—from our brains—that our arrival was an accident. They knew we were the victims of others of our own kind. And somewhere on the other side of Aiolo, Slade and his gang had made trouble for the plants. He said something about the plants giving off a smell or something that put men to sleep. That was his interpretation. Actually, he and his gang had burned off a ten-acre space simply to have room to move around in. He killed millions of the plants. They fought back the only way they could. But apparently a four-inch steel hull is a barrier to—whatever force a mind or minds can exert on others. They couldn’t affect anybody inside the ship, and the more they worked on men outside the ship, the bigger the swathe of plants was burned down by the men inside the ship, to ‘clear the air.’ Naturally, the plants wanted to get rid of those men and of their ship, too.”

  “How d’you know all this?” demanded Hannet skeptically.

  “The plants told me,” said Caxton evenly. “Our minds are made to decide things. Their minds are made to communicate and command things. They could read our minds, but they couldn’t communicate ideas—only commands—unless we were asleep, and even then only with difficulty. So I had to go out and sleep among them for them to be able to tell me. We made what you might call a bargain—while I was asleep.”

  “Meanin’,” said Burton, “you dreamed it! Huh!”

  “Who’s dreaming now,” asked Caxton, “that we’re on this ship headed for the Briariades, fifty light-years off, instead of waiting to die on Aiolo?”

  There was no answer to that.

  There was a blackened, empty space where a ship-mounted blaster had played, and there was a deep furrow where the Copernicus had ploughed horribly through soft earth as it stopped. But the blackened space was smaller than it had been. There were new small plants growing up, and tall, full-grown plants leaned strainingly far out beyond them to touch the ground at appropriate spots for yet other new plants to start. It would not be long before the naked furrow and the charred spaces would again be filled with growing plants. There was, to be sure, a curious mound at one place in that clearing—it had been men—and the wreck of the Copernicus would stand up above the flowers for long centuries to come. But the situation was well in hand. On the other side of the globe, too, a process of repair was in progress.

  So that, with a return to normal quite definitely on the way, the flowers could spend most of their daylight hours gazing at their tiny, blue-white sun. But now and again they did turn from it to regard each other, and, of course, they would always turn to regard any singular occurrence that might take place. But there would not be many happenings, because there was— again—nothing on Aiolo but the plants.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  E. M. Hull

  COMPETITION

  Business throughout the universe was complex, but the pattern was familiar—an able man still had his enemies.

  ~ * ~

  T

  he four men in the idling plane sat quiet now, watching. The debarkation of the space freighter from Earth was in full swing. People were packing out onto the landing platforms, carrying suitcases. One of the men in the airabout sneered:

  “These immigrant freighters certainly pack them in.”

  The big man said, “That’s why they call them freighters; they handle human cargoes—”

  “Look, Mr. Delaney,” a third man cut in excitedly. “There’s a girl, a screamer if I ever saw one.”

  The big man was silent; his sleet-gray eyes narrowed on the girl who had paused twenty feet away. She had dark-brown hair, a thin but determined face and a firm, lithe body. She carried one small suitcase.

  “She is pretty and does stand out,” he admitted cautiously. His gaze followed the girl, as she turned and walked slowly toward the distant exit. Abruptly, he nodded.

  “She’ll do. Pick her up and bring her to my apartment.”

  He climbed out of the plane, watched it glide off after the girl, then stepped into a private speedster that instantly hurtled off into the sky.

  ~ * ~

  Evana Travis walked along the Pedestrian Way toward the exit not even vaguely aware of the machineful of men that followed her. She was trembling a little from the excitement of the landing, but her mind was still hard on the trip that had now ended.

  She hadn’t, when she came right down to it, utterly hadn’t expected so much bigness. Figures never had had much meaning for her; and growing up in a world where people said, “Why, that’s only a thousand light-years!”—somehow that had made of space an area as limited in a different way as Earth.

  The very name—Ridge Stars—had a cozy sound. The pic
ture of the system in her mind was of an intimately related group of suns pouring a veritable blaze of light into the surrounding heavens. Immigration-appeal folders did nothing to discourage her opinion.

  The first shock came on the twelfth day out when the loudspeakers blared that the Ridge was now visible to the naked eye.

  It was, all two hundred light-years of it, spread across the heavens. There were one hundred ninety-four suns in the group, seventy of them as large or larger than Sol—at least so the announcer shouted. Evana saw only pin points of light in a darkness the intensity of which was but faintly relieved by a sprinkling of more remote stars.

  Grudgingly, she recognized that there was a resemblance to a ridge—and then all thought of the physical aspect of the stars ended, as the announcer said:

  “—a vote will shortly be taken as to which planet of which sun every passenger of this ship will be landed on. The majority will decide and all must abide by the decision. Good-by for now.”

  Literally, her mind reeled. Then she was fighting through the packed corridors and decks. She reached the captain’s cabin, and began her protest even as the door was banging shut behind her:

  “What kind of outrage is this? I’m going to my sister’s on the third planet of the Doridora sun. That’s what I bought my ticket for, and that’s where I’m going, vote or no vote.”

  “Don’t be such an innocent,” said the young man who sat behind the big desk in one corner of the small room.

  Evana stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  His grinning face mocked her. He had blue eyes and a space-tanned face, and he looked about thirty. He said:

  “You’re in space now, sister, far from the rigid laws of Earth. Where you’re going atomic engineering is building a man-controlled universe, fortunes are made and lost every day, people die violently every hour, and the word of the big operators is the final authority.”

  He stopped. He stared at Evana sardonically. He said:

  “It’s a game, beautiful. That’s what you’ve been caught up in. All the improvements in working conditions on Earth and other static planets during the past fifty years were designed to prevent wholesale immigration to the newer worlds of the Galaxy. The governments of the Ridge Star planets and other star groups have had to develop cunning counterants, including cutting the price of the trip to less than cost. That explains why it’s impossible to do anything but dump each shipload en masse. This cargo, for instance, is headed for Delfi II.”

  ~ * ~

  “But,” Evana gasped, “there’s going to be a ballot taken as to which planet we land on. The announcer said—”

  The young man roared with laughter. “Oh, sure.” The mirth faded from his face. “And it’s going to be all fair and square, too—pictures of each planet, short educational talks, an elimination vote every time four planets have been discussed— absolutely straight merit will decide the issue. But Delfi II will be selected because it’s Delfi’s turn, and so we’re showing that planet to advantage, while the seamier sides of other planets get top billing this trip. Simple, eh?”

  As Evana stood there too stunned to speak, he went on, “Delfi’s a grand place: Endless jobs for everybody. Its capital city, Suderea, has four million population, with ninety buildings of more than a hundred stories—oceans, rivers, mountains, a grand climate— Oh, it’s a great world!

  “You’ll hardly believe me, but there are men out in the Ridge Stars whose names are synonyms for money or power; and the greatest of them all is a young Norwegian-Englishman named Artur Blord. He’s a byword. You’ll hear his name in every town and village. In less than ten years he’s made an astronomical fortune by outsmarting the big shots themselves. They exploit men; he exploits them. Why—”

  “But you don’t understand”—she felt desperate—”my sister expects me!”

  His answer was a shrug. “Look, lady, the Ridge Star governments have offered a prize for the invention of an interstellar drive that won’t infringe existing Earth patents, but until that prize is won the only way you’ll ever get off Delfi II would be to get in good with some private owner of a spaceship. There just isn’t any public transport.

  “And now”—he stood up—”I’m afraid you’ll have to stay here in my cabin until that ballot has been taken. It’s my policy to be honest with those who complain, but it means restrictions for them. Don’t get alarmed! I have no personal designs on you, even though you wouldn’t have a single comeback if I did have. But a man like myself with seventeen wives on as many planets, thirty-eight kids and a soft heart can’t afford to get mixed up with any more women.”

  He went out; the door clicked behind him—and now seven days later here was the unwanted world of Delfi II.

  Evana paused uncertainly, at the great gate of the landing field. For a moment, as she stood there, staring down at the city below and the blue sheen of the sea beyond, she felt constricted, cold with dread.

  There was a sound behind her. Rough hands smashed across her mouth, grabbed her arms. She was lifted bodily through a door into a wingless plane—that curled up into the air like smoke rising from a chimney.

  ~ * ~

  Masked men—how heavy they were! Their very weight resisted her feeble efforts to claw free. She felt the slight bump as the plane landed. Then she was in a room, falling toward a couch.

  She had not the faintest idea whether she had been flung down, or had collapsed. But lying down made things easier. The agony of exhaustion faded. The salty taste in her mouth, product of her terrible struggling, began to go away. Her vision came slowly back into focus.

  She saw that she was in a magnificently furnished living room and—with a gasp Evana clawed to a sitting position— Standing a dozen feet away, staring at her, was a powerful-looking man wearing a mask.

  “Ah,” said the man, “coming back to life, are you? Fine.”

  He moved in a leisurely fashion toward a table which stood against one wall. There were liquor bottles on it, glasses and other odds and ends. He looked over his shoulder; and Evana was aware of hard gray eyes peering at her from the mask slits.

  “What’ll you have, baby?” he said.

  It was an abrupt recognition of the kind of mask he wore that throttled her scream in her throat. There was the exact bulge at the mouth that she had seen so often in movies, the bulge that was the machine which disguised the wearer’s voice.

  The reality of a voice-dissolver mask was so unreal that a wild laughter gurgled from Evana’s lips. She stopped the laughter as she realized the hysteria in it, and found her voice.

  “I want to know the meaning of this!” she gulped. “I’m sure there must be some mistake. I—”

  The big man swung around on her. “Look, kid, quit babbling. There’s been no mistake. I picked you up because you’re a pretty and intelligent-looking girl. You’re going to make a thousand stellors for yourself, and you’re going to make it whether you like it or not. Now, stop looking like a scared fool.”

  Evana tried to speak—and couldn’t. It took a long moment to realize why: Relief! Relief so tremendous that it hurt deep down like a thing badly swallowed. Whatever was here, it wasn’t death.

  The bottom came back into her world; and then the man was speaking again, saying:

  “What do you know of the Ridge Stars?”

  She stared blankly. “Nothing.”

  “Good.” He loomed above her, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction. He went on, “What was your occupation on Earth?”

  “I was a mechanical-filing-system operator.”

  “Oh!” His tone held disappointment in it. “Well, it doesn’t matter,” he said finally. “The employment agency will put an educator on you, and make you into a passable private secretary in one hour.”

  It was like listening to a code message without knowing the key. Helplessness surged through her; and she had a sudden, vivid picture of herself sitting here in this room three thousand light-years from Earth minutes after her landing, with a masked
man mouthing meaningless words at her.

  Abruptly, there was no doubt at all that this was what the stories back on Earth had meant, the stories that said that on the far planets the frontiers extended right into the biggest of the cities. The crude kidnaping of her from an interstellar landing field couldn’t be anything but frontier.

  Her mind spun to a halt; and she saw that the man was fumbling in his pocket. He drew out a small white card. He said:

  “Here’s the name of your hotel. As soon as you’re registered, go to the Fair Play Employment Agency—I’ve written the address on the back of the card—and they’ll take care of you.”