Before The Golden Age - A SF Anthology of the 1930s

by Edited By Isaac Asimov

  “It is impossible to go back in time. Why not remain? We need you badly. Our land grows less and less food every year. We must discover how to make synthetic food or we shall starve. This is only one of our problems. There are many others. You cannot go back. Stay and help us!”

  Again Harl shook his head.

  “No, we must try it. We may fail, but we must try it at least. If we succeed we shall return and bring with us books of knowledge and tools to work with.”

  Agnar combed his beard with skinny fingers.

  “You’ll fail,” he said.

  “But if we don’t we will return,” said Bill.

  “Yes, if you don’t,” replied the old man.

  “We are going now,” said Bill. “We thank you for your thoughtfulness. We must at least try. We are sorry to leave you. Please believe that.”

  “I do believe it,” cried the old man and he seized their hands in a farewell clasp.

  Harl opened the door of the plane and Bill clambered in.

  At the door Harl stood with upraised hand.

  “Good-bye,” he said. “Some day we will return.”

  The crowd burst into a roar of farewell. Harl climbed into the plane and closed the door.

  The motors bellowed, droning out the shouting of the future-men and the great machine charged down the sand. With a rush it took the air. Three times Bill circled the ruined city in a last mute good-bye to the men who watched silently and sorrowfully below.

  Then Harl threw the lever. Again the utter darkness, the feeling of hanging in nothingness.

  The motors, barely turning, muttered at the change. A minute passed, two minutes.

  “Who says we can’t travel back in time!” Harl shouted triumphantly. He pointed to the needle. It was slowly creeping back across the face of the dial.

  “Maybe the old man was wrong after—”

  Bill never finished the sentence.

  “Roll her out,” he screamed at Harl, “roll her out. One of our engines is going dead!”

  Harl snatched at the lever, jerked frantically at it. The faulty motor choked and coughed, sputtered, then broke into a steady drone.

  The two men in the cabin regarded one another with blanched faces. They knew they had escaped a possible crash—and death—by bare seconds.

  Again they hung in the air. Again they saw the brick-red sun, the desert, and the sea. Below them loomed the ruins of Denver.

  “We couldn’t have gone far back in time,” said Harl. “It looks the same as ever.”

  They circled the ruins.

  “We had better land out in the desert to fix up the engine,” suggested Harl. “Remember we have traveled back in time and Golan-Kirt still rules over the land. We don’t want to have to kill him a second time. We might not be able to do it.”

  The plane was flying low and he nosed it up. Again the faulty engine sputtered and missed.

  “She’s going dead this time for certain,” yelled Bill. “We’ll have to chance it, Harl. We have to land and chance getting away again.”

  Harl nodded grimly.

  Before them lay the broad expanse of the arena. It was either that or crash.

  As Bill nosed the plane down the missing motor sputtered for the last time, went dead.

  They flashed over the white walls of the amphitheater and down into the arena. The plane struck the sand, raced across it, slowed to a stop.

  Harl opened the door.

  “Our only chance is to fix it up in a hurry and get out of here,” he shouted at Bill. “We don’t want to meet that damn brain again.”

  He stopped short.

  “Bill,” he spoke scarcely above a whisper, “am I seeing things?”

  Before him, set on the sands of the arena, only a few yards from the plane, was a statue of heroic size, a statue of himself and Bill.

  Even from where he stood he could read the inscription, carved in the white stone base of the statue in characters which closely resembled written English.

  Slowly, haltingly, he read it aloud, stumbling over an occasional queer character.

  “Two men, Harl Swanson, and Bill Kressman, came out of time to kill Golan-Kirt and to free the race.”

  Below it he saw other characters.

  “They may return.”

  “Bill,” he sobbed, “we haven’t traveled back in time. We have traveled further into the future. Look at that stone—eroded, ready to crumble to pieces. That statue has stood there for thousands of years!”

  Bill slumped back into his seat, his face ashen, his eyes staring.

  “The old man was right,” he screamed. “He was right. We’ll never see the twentieth century again.”

  He leaned over toward the time machine.

  His face twitched.

  “Those instruments,” he shrieked, “those damned instruments! They were wrong. They lied, they lied!”

  With his bare fists he beat at them, smashing them, unaware that the glass cut deep gashes and his hands were smeared with blood.

  Silence weighed down over the plain. There was absolutely no sound.

  Bill broke the silence.

  “The future-men,” he cried, “where are the future-men?”

  He answered his own question.

  “They are all dead,” he screamed, “all dead. They are starved—starved because they couldn’t manufacture synthetic food. We are alone! Alone at the end of the world!”

  Harl stood in the door of the plane.

  Over the rim of the amphitheater the huge red sun hung in a sky devoid of clouds. A slight wind stirred the sand at the base of the crumbling statue.

  * * * *

  Cliff Simak is a particularly prominent figure in the science fiction world. “The World of the Red Sun” was his first published story, and it was simply and straightforwardly told. It had a sad ending, too, and I remember that impressed me at the time. I could not help but recognize the force of a dramatic and ironic ending. (“The Man Who Evolved” had possessed one, too.)

  Simak was unusual among the early authors in that he survived the Coming of Campbell. Most early authors did not. (It was rather like the coming of talking pictures, which proved the ruin of so many actors who had learned their job in the world of the silents.)

  Meek, for instance, hardly wrote anything after 1932, and Miller wrote infrequently. Jones and Hamilton continued to write frequently but hardly ever appeared in Campbell’s Astounding, which was all that counted through the 1940s.

  Simak was quite different. He published four more stories in 1932 and then nothing more until the Campbell era began, in 1938. He then began to write prolifically for the various magazines, including Astounding, and was soon numbered among the recognized members of Campbell’s “stable” —that is, those authors whom he had discovered or developed (or both).

  Indeed, Simak went on to grow even larger in stature as the field expanded in the 1950s and 1960s, when Campbell no longer held the monopoly. Simak was Guest of Honor at the World Science Fiction Convention held in Boston in 1971, and just the other day I received the hardback edition of his most recent novel, Cemetery World.

  In the gap between 1932 and 1938, I had forgotten Clifford Simak, though not “The World of the Red Sun.” I rediscovered him when he wrote “Rule 18,” which appeared in the July 1938 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. What followed from that and how we grew to be close friends I mentioned in The Early Asimov.

  It was not till a number of years after I had become friends with Cliff that I discovered, quite by accident, that it was he who had written the story I had once told with such pleasure and success to my junior high school classmates. What a happy discovery that was!

  Simak was the first to teach me, by example, of the value of an unadorned style. I explained that in The Early Asimov, and I want to mention that here, too.

  * * * *

  In the fall of 1931 (inspired, perhaps, by my success in interesting my friends in the science fiction tales I retold), I began to try my hand a
t making up stories of my own.

  I didn’t write science fiction, however. I had a most exalted notion of the intense skills and vast scientific knowledge required of authors in the field, and I dared not aspire to such things. Instead, I began to write a tale of ordinary planetbound adventure called “The Greenville Chums at College.”

  I worked with a pencil and a five-cent notebook and eventually wrote eight chapters before fading out. I remember trying to tell the story of the Greenville Chums to one of those friends who had listened steadily to my retelling of science fiction. With a certain precocious caution, I had chosen the one who seemed most consistently enthusiastic. After I had told him what I had written that day, he asked eagerly if he could borrow the book when I was done.

  I had either neglected to make it clear to him, or he had failed to understand, that I was writing the book. He thought it was another already printed story I was retelling. The implied compliment staggered me, and from that day on, I secretly took myself seriously as a writer.

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  * * * *

  Part Three

  1932

  * * * *

  IN THE SPRING of 1932, I completed my stay at Junior High School 149. The class held the graduation ceremonies at a fancy auditorium somewhere in Brooklyn. My father gave me a fountain pen as a graduation present (the traditional gift, of course, but very appropriate in my case—though neither my father nor I realized that at the time).

  More important, he and my mother actually managed to shake off the candy-store duties (I don’t remember whether they closed the store or hired a temporary store sitter) in order to attend the graduation. They took it very seriously.

  I remember only two things. First, the glee club sang “Gaudeamus Igitur,” which included the line “Glorious youth is with us.” I was at once overwhelmed with a sharp and sorrowful pang at the thought that I was graduating and that youth was slipping fast away.

  Yet I was only twelve years old at the time, and here it is over forty years later and youth still hasn’t slipped away. (Well, it hasn’t, you rotten kids.)

  The second thing I remember was that two awards were given out, one for excellence in biology and the other for excellence in mathematics. Both winners marched forward and onto the stage and were covered with glory in the sight of their proud parents. And I knew that somewhere in the audience my father’s face was setting into lines of grim disapproval, since neither winner was I.

  Sure enough, when we were all home, my father, in awful, patriarchal tones, demanded to know why it was that I had won neither prize.

  “Papa,” I said (for I had had time to think out the best way of putting it), “the kid who won the mathematics prize is lousy in biology. The kid who won the biology prize can’t add two and two. And as for me, I was second in line for both prizes.”

  That was quite true and it took me neatly off the hook. Not another word was said.

  * * * *

  The last months at the junior high school were enlivened for me by “Tumithak of the Corridors,” by Charles R. Tanner, which appeared in the January 1932 Amazing Stories.

  TUMITHAK OF THE CORRIDORS

  by Charles R. Tanner

  Foreword

  It is only within the last few years that archeological science has reached a point where we may begin to appreciate the astonishing advances in science that our ancestors had achieved before the Great Invasion. Excavations in the ruins of London and New York have been especially prolific in yielding knowledge of the life that those ancestors led. That they possessed the secret of flying, and a knowledge of chemistry and electricity far beyond ours is now certain; and there is even some evidence that they surpassed us in medicine and some of the arts. Taking their civilization as a whole, it is quite doubtful if we have even yet surpassed them in general knowledge.

  Until the time of the Invasion, their discoveries of the secrets of Nature seem to have been made steadily in regular geometric progression, and we have good cause to believe that it was the people of earth who first solved the secret of interplanetary flight. The many romances that have been written by novelists dealing with this time, testify to the interest which we of today take in the history of what we call the Golden Age.

  But the present story deals neither with the days of the Invasion, nor with life as it was in the Golden Age before it. It tells, instead, of the life of that semi-mythical, semi-historical character, Tumithak of Loor, who, legend tells us, was the first man to rebel against the savage shelks. Although innumerable facts are still lacking, recent investigations in the Pits anti Corridors have thrown much light on what was obscure in this hero’s life. That he really lived and fought is now certain to be true; that he accomplished the miracles accredited to him by legend is just as certain to be untrue.

  We can feel sure, for instance, that he never lived for the two hundred and fifty years that arc ascribed to him; that his wonderful strength and imperviousness to the rays of the shelks are mythical, as are doubtless the stories of his destruction of the six cities.

  But our knowledge of his life increases as our credi­bility in the legends decreases, and the time has come when we can grasp dimly, but with a more rational viewpoint, the truth about his deeds. So, in this tale, the author makes an attempt to rationalize, to place prop­erly in its historical setting, the early life of a great hero who dared to strike boldly for Mankind, in the days when the Beasts of Venus held all the earth in thrall.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 1 – The Boy and the Book

  As far as eye could see the long somber corridor extended. Fifteen feet high and as many wide it ran on and on, its brown, glassy walls presenting an unvarying sameness. At intervals along the center line of the ceiling large glowing lights appeared, flat plates of cool white luminescence that had shone without attention for centuries. At intervals equally frequent, were deep-cut doors, draped with a rough burlap-like cloth, their sills worn down by the passing generations of feet. Nowhere was the monotony of the scene broken unless it were in some places, where the corridor was crossed by another of equal simplicity.

  The passage was by no means deserted. Here and there, throughout its length, scattered figures appeared men, for the most part blue-eyed and red-haired and dressed in rough burlap tunics that were gathered at the waist by wide, pocketed belts with enormous buckles. A few women were also in evidence, differing from the men in the length of their hair and tunics. All moved with a furtive slinking air, for though it was many years since the Terror had been seen, the habits of a hundred generations were not easily thrown off. And so the hall, its frequenters, their clothes and even their habits combined to complete the somber monotone.

  From somewhere far below this corridor came the steady beat and throb of some gigantic machine; a beat that continued unceasingly and was so much a part of the life of these people that it was only with difficulty that they could be brought to notice it at all. Yes its beat bore down on them, penetrated their minds, and, with its steady rhythm, affected all that they did.

  One part of the hall seemed to be more populous than any other. The lights here glowed brighter, the cloths that covered the doorways were cleaner and newer, and many more people appeared. Sneaking in and out of the doorways they went, for all the world like rabbits engaged in some big business enterprise.

  Out of one of the side doorways, a boy and girl appeared. About fourteen years of age, they were exceptionally tall for children, apparently having already reached their full growth, though their immaturity was evident. They, too, like their elders, were blue-eyed and red-haired; a complexion due to the eternal lack of sunshine and lifelong exposure to the rays of the corridor lights. There was a certain boldness and quickness about them that caused many of the folk of the corridor to frown disapprovingly as they passed. One could see that these older ones felt that the younger generation was fast riding to destruction. Certainly, sooner or later, this boldness and loudness would bring down the Terror from the Surfac
e.

  But sublimely indifferent to the disapproval that was so in evidence around them, the two youngsters continued upon their way. They turned from the main corridor into one less brilliantly lighted, and after traversing it for nearly a mile, turned into another. The hall in which they now found themselves was narrow and inclined upward at a decided angle. It was entirely deserted and the thick dust and neglected condition of the lights showed that it was long since men had lived here. The many doorways were without the draped curtains that concealed the interior of the inhabited apartments in the larger corridors; but many of the doorways were almost entirely covered with draperies of cobwebs covered with dust. The girl drew closer to the boy as they continued up the passage; but aside from this she showed no sign of fear. After some time the passageway grew steeper, and at last ended in a cul-de-sac. The two seated themselves in the rubble that littered the floor and presently began to talk in a low tone.