The 13th Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 26 Great SF Stories!

by Lake, Jay

  “‘There’s our big brother Jim. We’ve got enough on him so maybe he won’t squeal. And he’s grown up enough to know what to do.’

  “‘And he was real good at narking and giffling in school.’

  “‘He got an A in narking, and a B plus in giffling, but of course it wasn’t advanced giffling.’

  “‘Still, he should be able to do the job, all right.’

  * * * *

  “Their faces went blank and they both stared off into space as if they were concentrating as hard as they could. Suddenly, with no warning and no noise, a young man of about fifteen or so was standing beside them with his hands on his hips. He wore a kilt and a singlet of some soft, shiny material, but no shoes.

  “‘Well, if it isn’t Mike and Aloysius,’ he said conversationally. ‘Boy, are you two going to get it when you show your faces around home. Dad’s been looking for you.’

  “‘The older boy turned and stuck his hand out at me. ‘Captain Hannah, sir,’ he said. ‘My name’s Jim Monahan. I must apologize for the brats. They bother everybody. They have asked me to help get you out of your difficulties.’

  “‘I must have set the wrong Jump pattern,’ I stammered. ‘It’s incredibly lucky that I came back out of Limbo in a place where I could ask for help. If you can give it to me, I would be most grateful.’

  “‘Well, sir,’ said Jim, ‘your appearing here isn’t quite as incredible as you might think. Dad says that several of you Bumblejumpers....’ He stopped and looked embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry, sir. Several of you who have made errors in your Jump setting have ended up here.’

  “‘Not in our swimming hole,’ asserted Aloysius.

  “‘In this general area of space. Dad calls it the delta of a psionic river. He says that we who are psionic adepts should stop bouncing back and forth between here and the established sectors so much, or we’ll groove the psionic channels so much that everybody who goofs will end up here. And we may even increase the probability of goofing.’

  “‘I just want to get back to where I can recognize the stars,’ I told the boy.

  “‘If you don’t mind my saying so, sir, I nark the impression that you want something more. Something about getting a whale to the planet Penguin II?’

  “I nodded. ‘If these kid brothers of yours can run around mald-bottom in space without catching cold, then I guess you can probably send a whale from one planet to another by mind power—by psionics.’

  “‘But that’s not really what you want?’ the boy persisted.

  “I nodded. ‘Even psionics can’t do what I really want. A Delta class freighter can do almost anything, but it can’t transport an adult blue whale across space. Still, that’s what I really want it to do, and it’s that desire that you are apparently picking out of my mind.’

  “Jim frowned for a couple of minutes in deep concentration while Mike and Aloysius nudged each other slyly, gradually got more rambunctious, and finally lost their tempers and started a half-wrestling, half-boxing tussle.

  “Jim clapped his hands together sharply, twice. The kids quieted down abruptly, looking at Jim indignantly and rubbing their posteriors. At the same time, Jim picked a small box out of the air and handed it to me with a flamboyant gesture.

  “Lettered on the box was the neatly printed instruction ‘EAT ME’.

  “‘Shades of Lewis Carroll,’ I said to myself, opening the box and looking at the little cakes inside.

  “‘Go ahead, sir,’ chorused Mike and Aloysius, ‘Don’t be chicken!’

  “I looked at the pill-sized cakes for a minute. Then I shrugged my shoulders and tossed them all down at once, like taking a shot of whiskey neat. For a few seconds nothing happened except for an odd sort of fizzling feeling inside, and then suddenly I started to shrink, just like Alice in Wonderland. I hardly had time to notice that the whole Monahan tribe was shrinking right along with me, before I found that I was having trouble breathing, and it was as if my insides were trying to climb up past my Adam’s apple. I couldn’t talk, so I tried hard to give Jim Monahan a dirty look before I passed out, which I promptly did.

  “I couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a few seconds. I woke up to find that I had shrunk to a height of maybe two feet, and that Jim was looking at me with a very worried expression.

  “‘Boy, was that a lousy job of giffling,’ I heard Aloysius say, irreverently. At least, it was Aloysius unless the two boys had exchanged positions while I had been out.

  “‘Yup, you’ve got to be careful when you giffle,’ agreed his twin sagely.

  “‘What happened?’ I asked weakly. ‘And why have you shrunk us down this way?’

  “‘Shrunk us down?’ asked Jim blankly, and then he laughed. ‘Oh, I didn’t do anything like that to us. That sort of thing is too dangerous to try unless you’re a Master Giffler. I don’t think even Dad would try a thing like that with a human being. All I did was to enlarge the spaceship. At the same time, of course, I increased the strength of the intermolecular bonds, so that the ship is just as sturdy as it was before. Only now it’s big enough to carry a whale.’

  “‘Only the big jerk forgot that with the space in this room suddenly increased to twenty-five or thirty times as big as it was before, there still wasn’t any more…’

  “‘…air in it, so you nearly suffocated.’ I think it ended with Mike.

  “‘But he finally had sense enough to gather the air in a ball around your head, so you woke up all right, and I nark that now he had brought in enough air…’

  “‘…to fill the room and all your tanks, so you’ll be all right now.’

  “‘And now you can get yourself out of our swimming hole, sir,’ Aloysius, I think, concluded.

  “I was still a little dazed. But I tried to put my brain in gear, while I looked from one smiling, expectant Monahan face to another. ‘I’ve got one question,’ I said at last.

  “‘Yes, sir?’ asked Jim, all eagerness to be helpful.

  “‘Does this psionic ability all of you are playing around with so freely make you basically any smarter than an ordinary untalented run-of-the-mill human of the same age?’

  “‘Well of course, sir,’ said Jim, and then looked at the two brats, who were staring at him with their mouths open.

  “‘Well, of course, we have a lot more to learn than the Normals,’ he began again. ‘But then, I’ve studied hard instead of playing hooky like the imps here.’

  “Now all three of us were staring at him.

  “‘Well, to be truthful, sir, Dad says that we’ve got about the same basic intelligence as the Normals, and that we shouldn’t try to get uppity because of our special talents. But most Normals that I’ve seen usually don’t act very bright.’

  “‘Then,’ I asked with elaborate patience, ‘all you did was to make my Delta Crucis bigger, and to increase the strength of the components to match? Nothing else?’

  “Jim nodded warily. ‘That’s it, sir.’

  “‘It didn’t occur to you, son, that while that might be all right for the hull and the Jumping equipment, you just don’t change the size of a rocket motor to change its power rating? Don’t you realize that if I turned on my landing rockets right now, I’d probably blow us all to Kingdom Come?’

  “Jim thought for a minute. ‘I nark it now, sir,’ he said slowly. ‘And the hull probably isn’t right too, I’m afraid.’

  “‘You’re probably right, son,’ I answered him. ‘Don’t you think you had just better put things right back the way they were before?’

  “I added hastily, ‘Not forgetting to get rid of the extra air you giffled in.’

  “‘No, sir. I can’t do that!’ The boy’s forehead was all wrinkled with his effort at thinking. ‘Dad says that when you start in to giffling, you’ve got to carry through what you sta
rt.’

  “‘But it’s my life you’re giffling around with,’ I protested. ‘You don’t have to worry. You can stay alive in the vacuum of space, or jump around without a ship, but I can’t. Just leave me alone, why don’t you? Just show me the way to go home and then leave me alone, like a good boy.’

  “Jim shook his head. ‘I’m just going to have to get help, sir,’ he said.

  “Mike and Aloysius both looked scared. ‘Jim, why don’t you just do like Captain Hannah says,’ asked one of them.

  “‘If you get Dad into this,’ said the other, ‘he’ll for sure give it to the two of us, but good. And we’ll just bet that he won’t think you’re too old to get it, either.’

  “Jim waved the argument aside. ‘He’ll probably be right, too,’ he commented absently, acting as if he were listening to something the rest of us couldn’t hear. Then he nodded decisively.

  “‘Your Delta Crucis is all fixed up right, now, sir,’ he told me in positive tones. ‘There’s even a tank for you to keep the whale in. But I suggest you not waste any time in getting the beast to Penguin, because the ship won’t stay this way too long. Then it’ll revert to the way it used to be before you ran into us.’

  “He noticed my expression of concentrated unhappiness.

  “‘Oh, not while you are carrying the blue whale,’ he assured me. ‘As soon as you finish the job, or in a couple of months if you don’t get started on it. There is nothing to be worried about, sir.’

  “Then he heaved a kind of deep, shuddering sigh, and said, ‘We have got to go now. Good luck to you.’

  “‘The same to you,’ I said automatically. The two brats gave me a withering look of scorn, apparently for expressing such impossible sentiments, and then all three Monahans disappeared.”

  Captain Hannah took another whiff of rhial and then stared at the beaker broodingly.

  * * * *

  “Well,” I asked. “Did you get the whale to Penguin? And was the Prinkip pleased? Or did you just sit around and drink rhial until your ship popped back to its normal size?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t pass up a chance like that,” he said. “I delivered the whale all right. She turned out to be gravid, too. I seem to make a habit out of picking up pregnant cargoes. The Prinkip was very pleased, and gave me a bonus.

  “Then Delta Crucis went back to being herself again. And I found this note, along with a small gift, in the Control room.” He fished a sheet of paper out of the breast pocket of his blue uniform coat and passed it across the table to me.

  It was an unsigned letter written in a beautiful flowing script. It said:

  My dear Captain Hannah:

  Congratulations to you on the success of your venture. All seems to have worked out well for you.

  For three Monahans, things were less pleasant. For a considerable period of time they experienced difficulty in sitting down in comfort.

  You are welcome at any time to pay a return visit to our remote sector of space and reestablish your acquaintance with the Adepts.

  It is not beyond the bounds of possibilities that Normals can be taught to demonstrate our Psionic abilities.

  Until you return then,

  Farewell!

  The note was unsigned.

  “Well,” I said, “You are going to take them up on it, aren’t you? This is a chance in a lifetime. In a hundred lifetimes—it’s a chance in a million years. What are you waiting for, man?”

  Captain Hannah shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “But does that note sound as if it had been written by a mature Adept—by, say, the father of those boys?

  “Doesn’t it seem more like something written by a teenage boy? Or even by a precocious nine-year-old?”

  “Well, what of it?” I asked. “Provided that it gets you back there, so that you will have the chance of talking with the father?”

  “I’m afraid that one or more of the Monahan children may hold a grudge against me. After all, I apparently did cause the whole tribe of them considerable humiliation and pain, in the end. If they want to get even, they have a lot of power—whatever narking and giffling may be. So here’s a present for you, and I advise you to throw it away, even if I can’t bring myself to do so.”

  Captain Hannah slammed something down on the table, jammed his head, and stalked out of the bar.

  I picked up his gift and examined it. It was a small bottle. On the tag attached to it, neatly and mockingly printed, were the words, “DRINK ME.”

  I stared at it for a long time, thinking of opportunity—and of snarks and of boojums.

  THE NIGHT OF THE TROLLS, by Keith Laumer

  Originally published in Worlds of Tomorrow, October 1963.

  I

  It was different this time. There was a dry pain in my lungs, and a deep ache in my bones, and a fire in my stomach that made me want to curl into a ball and mew like a kitten. My mouth tasted as though mice had nested in it, and when I took a deep breath wooden knives twisted in my chest.

  I made a mental note to tell Mackenzie a few things about his pet controlled-environment tank—just as soon as I got out of it. I squinted at the over-face panel: air pressure, temperature, humidity, O-level, blood sugar, pulse and respiration—all okay. That was something. I flipped the intercom key and said, “Okay, Mackenzie, let’s have the story. You’ve got problems....”

  I had to stop to cough. The exertion made my temples pound.

  “How long have you birds run this damned exercise?” I called. “I feel lousy. What’s going on around here?”

  No answer.

  This was supposed to be the terminal test series. They couldn’t all be out having coffee. The equipment had more bugs than a two-dollar hotel room. I slapped the emergency release lever. Mackenzie wouldn’t like it, but to hell with it! From the way I felt, I’d been in the tank for a good long stretch this time—maybe a week or two. And I’d told Ginny it would be a three-dayer at the most. Mackenzie was a great technician, but he had no more human emotions than a used-car salesman. This time I’d tell him.

  Relays were clicking, equipment was reacting, the tank cover sliding back. I sat up and swung my legs aside, shivering suddenly.

  It was cold in the test chamber. I looked around at the dull gray walls, the data recording cabinets, the wooden desk where Mac sat by the hour re-running test profiles—

  That was funny. The tape reels were empty and the red equipment light was off. I stood, feeling dizzy. Where was Mac? Where were Bonner and Day, and Mallon?

  “Hey!” I called. I didn’t even get a good echo.

  Someone must have pushed the button to start my recovery cycle; where were they hiding now? I took a step, tripped over the cables trailing behind me. I unstrapped and pulled the harness off. The effort left me breathing hard. I opened one of the wall lockers; Banner’s pressure suit hung limply from the rack beside a rag-festooned coat hanger. I looked in three more lockers. My clothes were missing—even my bathrobe. I also missed the usual bowl of hot soup, the happy faces of the techs, even Mac’s sour puss. It was cold and silent and empty here—more like a morgue than a top priority research center.

  I didn’t like it. What the hell was going on?

  There was a weather suit in the last locker. I put it on, set the temperature control, palmed the door open and stepped out into the corridor. There were no lights, except for the dim glow of the emergency route indicators. There was a faint, foul odor in the air.

  I heard a dry scuttling, saw a flick of movement. A rat the size of a red squirrel sat up on his haunches and looked at me as if I were something to eat. I made a kicking motion and he ran off, but not very far.

  My heart was starting to thump a little harder now. The way it does when you begin to realize that something’s wrong—bad wrong.

  * * *
*

  Upstairs in the Admin Section, I called again. The echo was a little better here. I went along the corridor strewn with papers, past the open doors of silent rooms. In the Director’s office, a blackened wastebasket stood in the center of the rug. The air-conditioner intake above the desk was felted over with matted dust nearly an inch thick. There was no use shouting again.

  The place was as empty as a robbed grave—except for the rats.

  At the end of the corridor, the inner security door stood open. I went through it and stumbled over something. In the faint light, it took me a moment to realize what it was.

  He had been an M. P., in steel helmet and boots. There was nothing left but crumbled bone and a few scraps of leather and metal. A .38 revolver lay nearby. I picked it up, checked the cylinder and tucked it in the thigh pocket of the weather suit. For some reason, it made me feel a little better.

  I went on along B corridor and found the lift door sealed. The emergency stairs were nearby. I went to them and started the two hundred foot climb to the surface.

  The heavy steel doors at the tunnel had been blown clear.

  I stepped past the charred opening, looked out at a low gray sky burning red in the west. Fifty yards away, the 5000-gallon water tank lay in a tangle of rusty steel. What had it been? Sabotage, war, revolution—an accident? And where was everybody?

  I rested for a while, then went across the innocent-looking fields to the west, dotted with the dummy buildings that were supposed to make the site look from the air like another stretch of farm land complete with barns, sheds and fences. Beyond the site, the town seemed intact: there were lights twinkling here and there, a few smudges of smoke rising.

  Whatever had happened at the site, at least Ginny would be all right—Ginny and Tim. Ginny would be worried sick, after—how long? A month?

  Maybe more. There hadn’t been much left of that soldier....

  * * * *