Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol XIII

by Various

  Near the end of the third day Captain Robb contacted his far flung crew members over helmet intercom. He ordered them back to the Ajax XX for a briefing session.

  Soon the men entered the ship. They were hot, uncomfortable and exhausted. Once back on Earth they could testify that there was nothing romantic about a thirty-five-pound pressure suit.

  * * * * *

  Hamston, the rocket expert, summed it up: "With that damn bulb over his skull a man is helpless to remove a single bead of perspiration. He could easily develop into a raving maniac."

  Robb held his meeting in the control room. "You have eight hours to finish your work, gentlemen. We're blasting off at 0900."

  "I beg your pardon, Captain," said Kingsley, the young man in charge of radio operation, "but what about Washington? They haven't made contact yet and I thought--"

  "I talked with Washington an hour ago!"

  A modest cheer of approval went up from the crew members.

  "Well, why didn't you say so before!" said Anderson, the first officer.

  Robb explained. "It seems their equipment has been haywire for two days, they haven't been able to get through."

  "How do you like that!" cracked Farnsworth, the astrogator. "We're two hundred and forty thousand miles off the Earth and our equipment works fine. They have all the comforts of Earth down at headquarters and they can't repair radio transmission for two days!"

  The men laughed.

  "Gentlemen," Robb continued, "every radio and TV network in the country was hooked up to the chief's office in Washington. I not only talked to General Lovett, I spoke to the whole damn country."

  The men could not contain their excitement. The captain received a verbal pelting of stored-up questions.

  "Did you get word to my family, Captain?" asked Kingsley.

  "I hope you told them we're physically sound, Captain," said Farnsworth. "I have a fiancée that'll never forgive me if anything happens to me--"

  "What's the reaction like around the country--"

  "Have the Russians had anything to say yet--"

  "Ha! I'll bet they're sore as hell--"

  "Do you think the army would mind if I hand in my resignation?" Kingsley's remark brought vigorous applause from the others.

  Captain Robb held up his hand for silence. "Hold on! Hold on! First of all, General Lovett has personally contacted relatives and told them we're all physically and mentally sound. Secondly, you'd better get set to receive the biggest damn welcome in history. The general says half the nation has invaded Florida for the occasion."

  "Tell them we're not coming back," snapped Kingsley, "until the Florida Tourist Bureau gives us a cut."

  "Kingsley, the President has declared a national holiday. We'll all be able to write our own ticket."

  "Yes," Anderson put in, "to hell with the Florida Tourist Bureau!"

  Captain Robb said, "We'll be so sick of parades we'll wish we'd stayed in this God forsaken place."

  "Not me," boasted Farnsworth. "I'm ready for a parade in my honor any old time. The sooner the better."

  "Oh, and about the Russians," said Captain Robb, smiling. "There's been nothing but a steady stream of 'no comment' out of the Kremlin since we landed here."

  "Right now," said Hamston, "it's probably high noon for every scientist behind the iron curtain."

  "I wonder how they plan to talk their way out of this one?" asked Farnsworth.

  "Gentlemen, I'd like to go on talking about the welcome we're going to receive, but I think we'd better take first things first. Before there can be a welcome we have to get back. And we still have work to do before we start."

  "What about souvenirs, Captain?" asked Farnsworth.

  Robb pursed his lips thoughtfully, "Yes, I guess there is a matter of souvenirs, isn't there."

  The others detected a note of disturbance in the way the captain spoke.

  Kingsley asked, "Is anything wrong, Captain?"

  Robb laughed with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. "Nothing is wrong, Kingsley. The fact is we've taken on enough additional weight here to give us some concern on the return trip." He paused to study the faces of his men. They were disappointed. "But," he added emphatically, "I seem to remember promising something about souvenirs--and I guess a man can't travel five hundred thousand miles without something to show for it. I'll get together with Hamston and work out something. But remember that weight problem. First trouble we encounter on the return trip and a souvenir will be our number one expendable."

  The crew was more than happy with Robb's compromise. Robb went into a huddle with Hamston, the rocket expert. When he emerged he informed the crew that each man would be permitted one souvenir which must not exceed two pounds. He allowed them four hours to find whatever they wanted. The men got back into their pressure suits and left the ship.

  * * * * *

  Captain Junius Robb stood outside the Ajax XX. His eyes scanned the great circular plain that stretched for fifty miles in all directions. The distant jagged rises of the crater's rim resembled the lower half of a gigantic bear trap.

  The moon in all its splendor--wasn't there a song that went something like that?--the moon in all its splendor, or lack of it was Robb's mute opinion. The scientists, as usual, were right about the place. To all intents and purposes the moon was as dead as The Roman Empire. True they had found scattered vegetation; there were even two or three volcanoes spewing carbonic acid, but they spewed it as though it were life's last breath.

  Nothing more. The fires of the moon had given way to soft lifeless ashes.

  Robb was glad he had allowed the men to look for souvenirs. After all, it wasn't a hell of a lot to ask for. A man could cut press clippings and collect medals and frame citations; and probably these things would impress grandchildren someday. But it seemed that nothing would be quite as effective as for a man to be able to produce something tangible, an authentic piece of the moon itself.

  Captain Robb had always tried to be a humble man. He recalled an interview held by the three wire services a week before take-off. One of the reporters had asked the obvious question, "Why do you want to go to the moon?" He could have given all of the high sounding, aesthetic reasons, but instead his answer was indirect, given with a modest smile. "To get to the other side, I guess," he had told them.

  Like the chicken crossing the road, that was how simple and uncomplicated Robb's life had been. But now he stood, his feet spread apart, beside his mighty ship, a quarter of a million miles away from home. He was the first! And he could not fight back the feeling of pride and accomplishment that welled in him. The word "first" in this instance conjured up names like Balboa, Columbus, Peary, Magellan--and Junius Robb.

  The crew members deserved the hero's welcome they would receive. They could have the banquets, parades and honorary degrees. But it was Junius Robb who had commanded the flight. It would be Junius Robb's name for the history books.

  He wouldn't be needing any souvenirs.

  * * * * *

  Kingsley and Anderson were the first to return. They both carried small leather bags. Inside the ship they revealed the contents to Robb. He examined them carefully.

  Kingsley had found an uncommonly large patch of brownish vegetation. He had torn away a sizeable chunk and placed it in the bag. "Who knows?" he shrugged. "I might be able to cultivate it."

  "Or let it play the lead in a science fiction movie," snapped Anderson.

  The first officer's bag contained a piece of one of the smaller craters. It had no immediately discernable value. It was Anderson's intention to polish it up and put some kind of a metal plaque on it.

  Four more hours went by and there was no sign of Farnsworth or Hamston. Robb began to worry. He'd never forgive himself if anything happened to either of the two men. He waited another half hour, then ordered Kinsley and Anderson to put on their pressure suits and go look for the two missing crew members.

  The search was avoided as Farnsworth entered the ship dragging Hamston be
hind him.

  "What happened!" yelled Robb.

  Farnsworth began the job of getting out of his pressure suit. "I don't know. Hamston's sick as a dog. I checked every inch of his suit and couldn't find anything out of order."

  Robb bent over the prone rocket expert. Hamston looked up at him with half-opened eyes and an insipid grin on his face. He mumbled something about "a fine state of affairs."

  They removed Hamston's suit and placed his limp frame on a bunk. Robb examined him for forty minutes.

  He reached the curious conclusion that Hamston was as fit as a fiddle.

  The rocket expert fell asleep. Robb and the rest of the crew prepared to blast off.

  * * * * *

  The Ajax XX thrust itself through space, halfway back to its home planet.

  The excitement of her crew members grew with every passing second. In his concern over Hamston, Farnsworth had forgotten about his souvenir. He now opened his bag and displayed it before the others.

  "What is it?" asked Kingsley.

  "Dust!" was Farnsworth's proud reply.

  "What the hell you going to do with dust?"

  "Maybe you don't know it but this is going to be the most valuable dust on the face of the Earth! Do you realize what I can get for an ounce of this stuff?"

  "What's anybody want to buy dust for?"

  "Souvenirs, man, souvenirs!"

  Farnsworth asked to see what Kingsley and Anderson had picked up. The two men obliged. For the next hour the three men and Robb discussed the mementoes and their possible uses on Earth.

  Then Anderson said, "I sure wouldn't turn down about a gallon of good Kentucky whiskey right now!"

  Robb laughed. "We did enough sweating on the way. You wouldn't want to sweat out the trip back on a belly full of booze."

  "That may be a better idea than you think it is, Captain."

  The four men turned to find Hamston sitting up on his bunk.

  "Hamston!" Robb exclaimed, "how do you feel?"

  "Terrible."

  "What happened to you?" asked Kingsley.

  Hamston stared at each man individually. He took a deep breath and his cheeks puffed up as he let it out slowly. "Well, I guess you'd better know now."

  Robb frowned. "What do you mean?"

  "Farnsworth and I separated after we got about four miles from the ship. I thought I saw something that looked like a cave. I figured I might find something interesting there to take back with me. So I told Farnsworth I'd keep radio contact with him and off I went."

  "Did you find a cave?" Robb wanted to know.

  "No, it was just a big indentation in the wall of the crater. I threw some light on it and found it to be ten or fifteen feet deep." He paused as though not sure of what to say next.

  "So?"

  "So that's where I found my souvenir."

  "Well, let's see it!" said Anderson.

  Hamston opened his leather bag. The object he removed rendered the crew weak in the knees. He said, "We can have that drink, Anderson, but I don't think we'll enjoy it."

  He poured them each a shot from a half-filled bottle of Vodka.

  * * *

  Contents

  WHEN THE MOON TURNED GREEN

  By Hal K. Wells

  Outside his laboratory Bruce Dixon finds a world of living dead men--and above, in the sky, shines a weird green moon.

  It was nearly midnight when Bruce Dixon finished his labors and wearily rose from before the work-bench of his lonely mountain laboratory, located in an abandoned mine working in Southern Arizona.

  He looked like some weirdly garbed monk of the Middle Ages as he stretched his tall, lithe figure. His head was completely swathed in a hood of lead-cloth, broken only by twin eyeholes of green glass. The hood merged into a long-sleeved tunic of the same fabric, while lead-cloth gauntlets covered his hands.

  The lead-cloth costume was demanded by Dixon's work with radium compounds. The result of that work lay before him on the bench--a tiny lead capsule containing a pinhead lump of a substance which Dixon believed would utterly dwarf earth's most powerful explosives in its cataclysmic power.

  So engrossed had Dixon been in the final stages of his work that for the last seventy-two hours he had literally lived there in his laboratory. It remained now only for him to step outside and test the effect of the little contact grenade, and at the same time get a badly needed taste of fresh air.

  He set the safety catch on the little bomb and slipped it into his pocket. As he started for the door he threw back his hood, revealing the ruggedly good-looking face of a young man in the early thirties, with lines of weariness now etched deeply into the clean-cut features.

  * * * * *

  The moment that Dixon entered the short winding tunnel that led to the outer air he was vaguely aware that something was wrong. There was a strange and intangibly sinister quality in the moonlight that streamed dimly into the winding passage. Even the cool night air itself seemed charged with a subtle aura of brooding evil.

  Dixon reached the entrance and stepped out into the full radiance of the moonlight. He stopped abruptly and stared around him in utter amazement.

  High in the eastern sky there rode the disc of a full moon, but it was a moon weirdly different from any that Dixon had ever seen before. This moon was a deep and baleful green; was glowing with a stark malignant fire like that which lurks in the blazing heart of a giant emerald! Bathed in the glow of the intense green rays, the desolate mountain landscape shone with a new and eery beauty.

  Dixon took a dazed step forward. His foot thudded softly into a small feathered body there in the sparse grass, and he stooped to pick it up. It was a crested quail, with every muscle as stonily rigid as though the bird had been dead for hours. Yet Dixon, to his surprise, felt the slow faint beat of a pulse still in the tiny body.

  Then a dim group of unfamiliar objects down in the shadows of a small gully in front of him caught Dixon's eye. Tucking the body of the quail inside his tunic for later examination, he hurried down into the gully. A moment later he was standing by what had been the night camp of a prospector.

  The prospector was still there, his rigid figure wrapped in a blanket, and his wide-open eyes staring sightlessly at the malignant green moon in the sky above. Dixon knelt to examine the stricken man's body. It showed the same mysterious condition as that of the quail, rigidly stiff in every muscle, yet with the slow pulse and respiration of life still faintly present.

  * * * * *

  Dixon found the prospector's horse and burro sprawled on the ground half a dozen yards away, both animals frozen in the same baffling condition of living death. Dixon's brain reeled as he tried to fathom the incredible calamity that had apparently overwhelmed the world while he had been hidden away in his subterranean laboratory. Then a new and terrible thought assailed him.

  If the grim effect of the baleful green rays was universal in its extent, what then of old Emil Crawford and his niece, Ruth Lawton? Crawford, an inventor like Dixon, had his laboratory in a valley some five miles away.

  An abrupt chill went over Dixon's heart at the thought of Ruth Lawton's vivid Titian-haired beauty being forever stilled in the grip of that eery living death. He and Ruth had loved each other ever since they had first met.

  Dixon broke into a run as he headed for a nearby ridge that looked out over the valley. His pulse hammered with unusual violence as he scrambled up the steep incline, and his muscles seemed to be tiring with strange rapidity. He had a vague feeling that the rays of that malignant green moon were beating directly into his brain, clouding his thoughts and draining his physical strength.

  Gaining the crest of the ridge, he stopped aghast as he looked down the valley toward Emil Crawford's place. Near the site of Crawford's laboratory home was an unearthly pyrotechnic display such as Dixon had never seen before. An area several hundred yards in diameter seemed one vivid welter of pulsing colors, with flashing lances of every hue crisscrossing in and through a great central cloud of ever-cha
nging opalescence like a fiery aurora borealis gone mad.

  * * * * *

  Dixon fought back the ever-increasing lethargy that was benumbing his brain, and groped dazedly for a key to this new riddle. Was it some weird and colossal experiment of Emil Crawford's that was causing the green rays of death from a transformed moon, an experiment the earthly base of which was amid the seething play of blazing colors down there in the valley?

  The theory seemed hardly a plausible one. As far as Dixon knew, Crawford's work had been confined almost entirely to a form of radio-propelled projectile for use in war-time against marauding planes.

  Dixon shook his head forcibly in a vain effort to clear the stupor that was sweeping over him. It was strange how the vivid rays of that malevolent green moon seemed to sear insidiously into one's brain, stifling thought as a swamp fog stifles the sunlight.

  Then Dixon suddenly froze into stark immobility, staring with startled eyes at the base of a rocky crag thirty yards away. Something was lurking there in the green-black shadows--a great sprawling black shape of abysmal horror, with a single flaming opalescent eye fixed unwinkingly upon Dixon.

  The next moment the vivid moon was suddenly obscured by drifting wisps of cloud. As the green light blurred to an emerald haze, the creature under the crag came slithering out toward Dixon.

  He had a vague glimpse of a monster such as one should see only in nightmares--a huge loathesome spider-form with a bloated body as long as that of a man, and great sprawling legs that sent it half a dozen yards nearer Dixon in one effortless leap.

  * * * * *

  The onslaught proved too much for Dixon's morale, half-dazed as he was by the green moon's paralyzing rays. With a low inarticulate cry of terror, he turned and ran, straining every muscle in a futile effort to distance the frightful thing that inexorably kept pace in the shadowy emerald gloom behind him.