The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 02

by Anthology

  "I know. To decide who gets their vast knowledge."

  "Wrong. To find suitable hosts in a one-way relationship which is hardly symbiosis, really out and out parasitism."

  "What?"

  And Sophia: "What are you talking about?"

  "The sick, decadent, tired old creatures you consider your superiors. Parasites. They need hosts in order to survive. Their old hosts have been milked dry, have become too highly specialized, are now incapable physically or emotionally of meeting a wide variety of environmental challenges. The Nowhere Journey is to find a suitable new host. They have found one. You of Earth."

  "I don't understand," Temple said, remembering the glowing accounts of the 'superboys' he had been given by his brother Jason. "I just don't get it. How can we be duped like that? Wouldn't someone have figured it out? And if they have all the power everyone says, there isn't much we can do about it, anyway."

  Arkalion scowled darkly. "Then write Earth's obituary. You'll need one."

  "Go ahead," Sophia told Arkalion. "There's more you want to say."

  "All right. Temple's thought is correct. They have tremendous power. That is why you could be duped so readily. But their power is not concentrated here. These much-faster-than-light ships are an extreme rarity, for the power-drive no longer exists. Five ships in all, I believe. Hardly enough to invade a planet, even for them. It takes them thousands of years to get here otherwise. Thousands. Just as it took me, when I came to Mars and Earth in the first place."

  "What?" cried Temple. "You...."

  "I am one of them. Correct. I suppose you would call me a subversive, but I have made up my mind. Parasitism is unsatisfactory, when the Maker got us started on symbiosis. Somewhere along the line, evolution took a wrong turn. We are--monsters."

  "What do you look like?" Sophia demanded while Temple stood there shaking his head and muttering to himself.

  * * * * *

  "You couldn't see me, I am afraid. I was the representative here to see how things were going, and when my people found you of the Earth divided yourselves into two camps they realized they had been considering your abilities in halves. Put together, you are probably the top culture of your galaxy."

  "So, we win," said Temple.

  "Right and wrong. You lose. Earthmen will become hosts. Know what a back-seat driver is, Temple? You would be a back seat driver in your own body. Thinking, feeling, wanting to make decisions, but unable to. Eating when the parasite wants to, sleeping at his command, fighting, loving, living as he wills it. And perishing when he wants a new garment. Oh, they offer something in return. Their culture, their way of life, their scientific, economic, social system. It's good, too. But not worth it. Did you know that their economic struggle between democratic capitalism and totalitarian communism ended almost half a million years ago? What they have now is a system you couldn't even understand."

  "Well," Temple mused, "even if everything you said were true--"

  "Don't tell me you don't believe me?"

  "If it were true and we wanted to do something about it, what could we do?"

  "Now, nothing. Nothing but delay things by striking swiftly and letting fifty centuries of time perform your rearguard action. Destroy the one means your enemy has of reaching Earth within foreseeable time and you have destroyed his power to invade for a hundred centuries. He can still reach Earth, but the same way you journeyed to Nowhere. Ten thousand years of space travel in suspended animation. You saw me that way once, Temple, and wondered. You thought I was dead, but that is another story.

  "Anyway, let my people invade your planet, ten thousand years hence. If Earth takes the right direction, if democracy and free thought and individual enterprise win over totalitarian standardization as I think they will, your people will be more than a match for the decadent parasites who may or may not have sufficient initiative to cross space the slow way and attempt invasion in ten thousand years."

  "Ten thousand?" said Temple.

  "Five from Earth to Nowhere. The distance to my home is far greater, but the rate of travel can be increased. Ten thousand years."

  "Tell me," Temple demanded abruptly, "is this a dream?"

  Arkalion smiled. "Yes and no. It is not a dream like the others because I assure you your bodies are not now resting on a pair of identical white tables. Still in the other dreams physical things could happen to you, while now you'll find you can do things as in a dream. For example, neither one of you knows the intricacies of a spaceship, yet if you are to save your planet, you must know the operation of the most intricate of all space ships, a giant space station."

  "Then we're not dreaming?" asked Temple.

  "I never said that. Consider this sequence of events about half way between the dream stage you have already seen and reality itself. Remember this: you'll have to work together; you'll have to function like machines. You will be handling totally alien equipment with only the sort of knowledge which can be played into your brains to guide you."

  Sophia sighed. "Being an American, Kit is too much of an individual to help in such a situation."

  Temple snorted. "Being a cog in a simple, state-wide machine is one thing--orienting yourself in a totally new situation is another."

  "Yes, well--"

  "See?" Arkalion cautioned. "See? Already you are arguing, but you must work together completely, with not the slightest conflict between you. As it is, you hardly have a chance."

  "What about you?" said Sophia practically. "Can't you help?"

  * * * * *

  Arkalion shook his head. "No. While I'd like to see you come out of this thing on top, I would not like to sacrifice my life for it--which is exactly what I'd do if I remained with you and you lost.

  "So, let's get down to detail. Imagine space being folded, imagine your time sense slowing, imagine a new dimension which negates the need for extensive linear travel, imagine anything you want--but we are in the process of moving nine hundred thousand light years through deep space. There is a great galaxy at that distance, almost a twin of your Milky Way: you call it the Andromeda Nebula. Closer to your own system are the two Magellanic Clouds, so called, something else which you table NGC 6822, and finally the Triangulum Galaxy. All have billions of stars, but none of the stars have life. To find life outside your galaxy you must seek it across almost a million light years. My people live in Andromeda.

  "Guarding the flank of their galaxy and speeding through inter-galactic space at many light years per minute is what you might call a space station--but on a scale you've never dreamed of. Five of your miles in diameter, it is a fortress of terrible strength, a storehouse of half a million years of weapon development. It has been arranged that the one man running this station--"

  "Just one?" Temple asked.

  "Yes. You will see why when you get there. It has been arranged that he will leave, ostensibly on a scouting expedition. You see, I am not alone in this venture. At any rate, he will report that the space station has been taken--as, indeed, it will be, by the two of you. The only ships capable of overtaking your station in its flight will be the only ships capable of reaching your galaxy before cultural development gives you a chance to survive. They will attack you. You will destroy them--or be destroyed yourselves. Any questions?"

  The whole thing sounded fantastic to Temple. Could the fate of all Earth rest on their shoulders in a totally alien environment? Could they be expected to win? Temple had no reason to doubt the former, as wild as it sounded. As for the latter, all he could do was hope. "Tell me," he said, "how will we learn the use of all the weapons you claim are at our disposal?"

  "Can you answer that for him, Sophia?" Arkalion wanted to know.

  "Umm, I think so. The same way I had all sorts of culture crammed into me on Jupiter."

  "Precisely. Only take it from me our refinement is far better, and the amount you have to learn actually is less."

  "What I'd like to know--" Sophia began.

  "Forget it. I want some sleep and yo
u'll learn everything that's necessary at the space station."

  And after that, ply Arkalion as they would with questions, he slumped down in his chair and rested. Temple could suddenly understand and appreciate. He felt like curling up into a tight little ball himself and sleeping until everything was over, one way or the other.

  CHAPTER X

  "It's all so big! So incredible! We'll never understand it! Never...."

  "Relax, Sophia. Arkalion said--"

  "I know what Arkalion said, but we haven't learned anything yet."

  Hours before, Arkalion had landed them on the space station, a gleaming, five-mile in diameter globe, and had quickly departed. Soon after that they had found themselves in a veritable labyrinth of tunnels, passageways, vaults. Occasionally they passed a great glowing screen, and always the view of space was the same. Like a magnificent, elongated shield, sparkling with a million million points of light, pale gold, burnished copper, blue of glacial ice and silver white, the Andromeda Galaxy spanned space from upper right to lower left. Off at the lower right hand corner they could see their space station; apparently the viewer itself stood far removed in space, projecting its images here at the globe.

  Awed the first time they had seen one of the screens, Temple said, "All the poets who ever wrote a line would have given half their lives to see this as we see it now."

  "And all the writers, musicians, artists...."

  "Anyone, who ever thought creatively, Sophia. How can you say it's breathtaking or anything like that when words weren't ever spoken which can...."

  "Let's not go poetic just yet," Sophia admonished him with a smile. "We'd better get squared away here, as the expression goes, before it's too late."

  "Yes.... Hello, what's this?" A door irised open for them in a solid wall of metal. Irised was the only word Temple could think of, for a tiny round hole appeared in the wall spreading evenly in all directions with a slow, uniform, almost liquid motion. When it was large enough to walk through, they entered a completely bare room and Temple whirled in time to see the entrance irising shut.

  "Something smells," said Sophia, sniffing at the air.

  Sweet and cloying, the odor grew stronger. Temple may have heard a faint hissing sound. "I'm getting sleepy," he said.

  Nodding, Sophia ran, banged on the wall where the door had opened so suddenly, then closed. No response. "Is it a trap?"

  "By whom? For what?" Temple found it difficult to keep his eyes from closing. "Fight it if you want, Sophia. I'm going to sleep." And he squatted in the center of the floor, staring vacantly at the bare wall.

  Just as Temple was drifting off into a dream about complex machinery he did not yet understand but realized he soon would, Sophia joined him the hard way, collapsing alongside of him, unconscious and sprawling gracelessly on the floor.

  Temple slept.

  * * * * *

  "Sleepy-head, get up." Sophia stirred as he spoke and shook her. She yawned, stretched, smiled up at him lazily. "How do you feel now?"

  "Hungry, Kit."

  "That's a point. It's all right now, though. I know exactly where the food concentrates are kept. Three levels below us, second segment of the wall. You can make those queer doors iris by pressing the wall twice, with about a one second interval."

  They found the food compartment, discovered row on row of cans, boxes, jars. Temple opened one of the cans, gazed in disappointment on a sorry looking thing the size of his thumb. Brown, shriveled, dry and almost flaky, it might have been a bird.

  Sophia turned up her nose. "If that's the best this place has to offer, I'm not so hungry anymore."

  Suddenly, she gaped. So did Temple. A savory odor attracted their attention, steam rising from the small can added to their interest. Amazing things happened to the withered scrap of food on exposure to the air. Temple barely had time to extract it from the can, burning his fingers in the process, when it became twice the can's size. It grew and by the time it finished, it was as savory looking a five pound fowl as Temple had ever seen. Roasted, steaming hot, ready to eat.

  They tore into it with savage gusto.

  "Stephanie should see me now," Temple found himself saying and regretted it.

  "Stephanie? Who's that?"

  "A girl."

  "Your girl?"

  "What's the difference? She's a million light years and fifty centuries away."

  "Answer me."

  "Yes," said Temple, wishing he could change the subject. "My girl." He hadn't thought of Stephanie in a long time, perhaps because it was meaningless to think of someone dead fifty centuries. Now that the thoughts had been stirred within him, though, he found them poignantly pleasant.

  "Your girl ... and you would marry her if you could?"

  He had grown attached to Sophia, not in reality, but in the second of their dream worlds. He wished the memory of the dream had not lingered for it disturbed him. In it he had loved Sophia as much as he now loved Stephanie although the one was obtainable and the other was a five-thousand year pinch of dust. And how much of the dream lingered with him, in his head and his heart?

  "Let's forget about it," Temple suggested.

  "No. If she were here today and if everything were normal, would you marry her?"

  "Why talk about what can't be?"

  "I want to know, that's why."

  "All right. Yes, I would. I would marry Stephanie."

  "Oh," said Sophia. "Then what happened in the dream meant ... nothing."

  "We were two different people," Temple said coolly, then wished he hadn't for it was only half-true. He remembered everything about the dream-which-was-more-than-a-dream vividly. He had been far more intimate with Sophia, and over a longer period of time, than he had ever been with Stephanie. And even if Stephanie appeared impossibly on the spot and he spent the rest of his life as her husband, still he would never forget his dream-life with Sophia. In time he could let himself tell her that. But not now; now the best thing he could do would be to change the subject.

  "I see," Sophia answered him coldly.

  "No, you don't. Maybe some day you will."

  "There's nothing but what you told me. I see."

  "No ... forget it," he told her wearily.

  "Of course. It was only a dream anyway. The dream before that I almost killed you out of hatred anyway. Love and hate, I guess they neutralize. We're just a couple of people who have to do a job together, that's all."

  "For gosh sakes, Sophia! That isn't true. I loved Stephanie. I still would, were Stephanie alive. But she's--she's about as accessible as the Queen of Sheba."

  "So? There's an American expression--you're carrying a torch."

  Probably, Temple realized, it was true. But what did all of that have to do with Sophia? If he and Sophia ... if they ... would it be fair to Sophia? It would be exactly as if a widower remarried, with the memory of his first wife set aside in his heart ... no, different, for he had never wed Stephanie, and always in him would be the desire for what had never been.

  "Let's talk about it some other time," Temple almost pleaded, wanting the respite for himself as much as for Sophia.

  "No. We don't have to talk about it ever. I won't be second best, Kit. Let's forget all about it and do our job. I--I'm sorry I brought the whole thing up."

  Temple felt like an unspeakable heel. And, anyway, the whole thing wasn't resolved in his mind. But they couldn't just let it go at that, not in case something happened when the ships came and one or both of them perished. Awkwardly, for now he felt self-conscious about everything, he got his arms about Sophia, drew her to him, placed his lips to hers.

  That was as far as he got. She wrenched free, shoved clear of him. "If you try that again, you will have another dislocated jaw."

  Temple shrugged wearily. If anything were to be resolved between them, it would be later.

  When the ships came moments afterwards--seven, not the five Arkalion predicted--they were completely unprepared.

  * * * * *

&nb
sp; Temple spotted them first on one of the viewing screens, half way between the receiver and the space station itself, silhouetted against the elongated shield of Andromeda. They soared out of the picture, appeared again minutes later, zooming in from the other direction in two flights of four ships and three.

  "Come on!" Sophia cried over her shoulder, irising the door and plunging from the room. Temple followed at her heels but her Jupiter trained muscles pushed her lithe legs in long, powerful strides and soon she outdistanced him. By the time he reached the armaments vault, breathless, she was seated at the single gun-emplacement, her fingers on the controls.

  "Watch the viewing screen and tell me how we're doing," Sophia told him, not taking her eyes from the dials and levers.

  Temple watched, fascinated, saw a thin pencil of radiant energy leap out into space, missing one of the ships by what looked like a scant few miles. He called the corrective azimuth to her, hardly surprised by the way his mind had absorbed and now could use its new-found knowledge.

  Temple understood and yet did not understand. For example, he knew the station had but one gun and Sophia sat at it now, yet in certain ways it didn't make sense. Could it cover all sectors of space? His mind supplied the answer although he had not been aware of the knowledge an instant before: yes. The space station did not merely rotate. Its surface was a spherical projection of a moving Moebius strip and although he tried to envision the concept, he failed. The weapon could be fired at any given point in space at twenty second intervals, covering every other conceivable point in the ensuing time.

  Sophia was firing again and Temple watched the thin beam leap across space. "Hit!" he roared. "Hit!"

  Something flashed at the front end of the lead ship. The light blinded him, but when he could see again only six ships remained in space--casting perfect shadows on the Andromeda Galaxy! The source of light, Temple realized triumphantly, was out of range, but he could picture it--a glowing derelict of a ship, spewing heat, light and radioactivity into the void.