Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by J F Bone

  Cth was a waking nightmare. Even with the shields it was scarcely bearable,—and in the old days before the shields were developed to their present high efficiency crews frequently went mad. Sometimes their ships plunged out of the Cth continuum into normal space travelling faster than Lume One,—and that was disaster. Space itself ruptured under the impossible strain,—and the ship vanished leaving behind a spatial vortex to mark the spot where it had translated into a little universe of its own independent of normal and hyperspace alike. Adams grimaced wryly, shrugged, and settled his spinal base more comfortably into the foamite padding of his chair. He was getting morbid.

  PARSONS’ quiet voice broke the stillness, half musing, half inquiring. “In the beginning,” he said quietly, “God created the Heaven and the Earth.”

  Adams wondered what strange twist the astrogator’s thoughts had taken to come up with this. Not that religion was taboo, but it was a subject seldom mentioned aboard a ship in space. There was too much chance it could produce trouble. It did this time.

  Buenaventura snorted. The sound hung heavily on the yellow air, echoing with faint reverberations as it struck some odd harmonic that had leaked through the shields.

  Jorgenson jerked in his chair as though he had been stuck with a pin. “W hat brought that up?” he asked curiously.

  “I was just thinking aloud,” Parsons said. “I’m sorry.”

  “You should be,” Buenaventura said. “Besides, it isn’t thinking!”

  Adams grinned quietly. Trust Buenaventura to make something of it. He wasn’t going to have to do anything to break the silence. Parsons had done that little chore most effectively. And Buenaventura would keep the pot boiling. The man was a catalyst. Tt. was easy to forget Cth with someone like him around.

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” Jorgenson disagreed. The disagreement in his voice was a conditioned reflex. No one ever agreed with Buenaventura. “Maybe there’s something to it. After all, the Creation story is a common denominator on all inhabited worlds. Allowing for cultural variation it’s essentially the same wherever you go.”

  Adams nodded. It was a good point.

  “Don’t tell me that our choir boy’s converted you!” Buenaventura sneered.

  “I didn’t say that,” Jorgenson replied. “But you’ll have to admit that the story appears too frequently to be merely coincidence.”

  Parsons sat back grinning, enjoying the effect of his conversational bombshell. Adams had the odd feeling that the astrogator had done this deliberately. He didn’t know too much about the youngster yet, but from the looks of things Parsons would get along.

  “I’ll admit nothing,” Buenaventura said doggedly. “All primitive peoples must have some explanation of how they and their worlds came to be. It’s only natural that they would invent some supernatural being to create them. At their early level they couldn’t comprehend a scientific explanation if one were given them. And the superstition is perpetuated from generation to generation until it becomes religion. and develops dogma and ritual. You should know how hard it is for the voice of reason to make headway against things like that!”

  “I’ll grant that,” Parsons said, “But what have your omnipotent scientists proved about planetary origins? Is there one theory that will fit the facts?”

  Adams’ attention sharpened. He was certain now that Parsons had used the Bible quotation as an opening gambit to egg the engineer on. The boy was clever. In time he might turn out to be as obnoxiously essential to ship’s morale as the engineer.

  “There are at least five workable theories as to how solar systems originated,” Buenaventura began.

  “And which is the right one?”

  Buenaventura sputtered. “It hardly matters,” he said. “Any of them are superior to the concept of some anthropomorphic being creating solar systems with a godlike wave of his omnipotent hand.”

  “For every theory,” Parsons went on inexorably, “there is equal proof that it couldn’t possibly happen. For every one you can advance, I’ll bet that I can refute it.”

  “Gaseous-Tidal,” Buenaventura said.

  Parsons laughed. “Why pick an easy one like that? You know that it’s based on a nearcollision between two stars of similar mass, with the gravitational or tidal attraction of each drawing out a thin filament of gas from the solar surfaces of the other. And the tearing of that particular one down is easy. How is it that all those near collisions involved F and G type stars better than 95% of the time? You know, and I know that it’s almost axiomatic that only these stars possess planetary systems.”

  “There’s still that five percent.”

  “Sure,—but those systems are damn few compared with the others. Just think of the relatively small number of F and G type suns compared to the others in the galaxy, and then consider the fact that these pitiful few have a practical monopoly on the planetary systems.

  “As I remember it some scientists calculated that there was a one in two billion chance of such a stellar near collision occurring in our galaxy, and there’s less than two billion F and G suns in the entire lens,—yet there are nearly five hundred planetary systems around those sort of stars,——and there may be more that haven’t yet been discovered. That’s asking for a lot of highly-specialized accidents.”

  “Heidenbrink,” Buenaventura said.

  “You picked a harder one this time,” Parsons said. “Yet the Spiral Generation Theory fails on the same grounds as the Gaseous-Tidal. There isn’t enough random distribution of systems, although I’ll admit that his ideas why the other stars don’t have planetary systems are rather ingenious.”

  “Then you’ll admit that Heidenbrink is better than that religious guff?”

  “Not at all. I merely said that disproving his idea was harder.”

  ADAMS didn’t think much of the conversational trend. Parsons was quitting too easily, and Buenaventura didn’t seem to have the usual fire. Something was lacking. Maybe he could stir it up. This argument on planetary origins had possibilities. It had fascinated him for years, and certainly it was worth more than this desultory attack. It could last perhaps a week if properly nourished. Not that anything would be settled, but for that period of time hyperspace would be forgotten while the contestants searched the ship’s remarkably complete microfilm library for more data to throw at each other.

  “I hate to butt in,” he said insincerely, “but I think that a compromise approach would be more appropriate, possibly a combination of intelligent creation and some phenomena like the Gaseous-Tidal theory could explain how systems were born.”

  “Can you clarify that, sir?” Parsons asked.

  “I believe so,” Adams said. “Have any of you men seen a galacfarium?”

  “There’s one at Luna Base,” Jorgenson said. “I was there once.”

  “I’ve used it,” Parsons said. “We spent three months at Luna working with it as part of astrogation training.”

  Buenaventura shook his head. “I’ve been close, but I’ve never bothered. Why look at an imitation when you can see the real thing?”

  “You get a perspective from the scale model that you can never get from space unless you go out halfway to Andromeda.” Adams said,—and then dropped the subject. “Anyway, that’s not the point. You can do things with a galactarium that you can never do with the galaxy. I suppose you’ve seen the grand finale of a major show when the projectionist reversed the drive and sends the galaxy back in time until it becomes the galactic nucleus?”

  “It’s impressive,” Jorgenson said briefly.

  Parsons nodded agreement.

  “It’s more than that,” Adams said. “At one point in time the suns with planetary systems form radial lines from a common center.”

  “That isn’t new’,” Parsons said, “nor is it news that the intersection of those radial lines hits within a ten light year radius of the Alpha Centralis system.”

  “It’s news to me,” Buenaventura said.

  “How do
you think the boys found that place?” Parsons asked. “The sun is damn near burned out, and every last planet is full of radiostopes with half lives ranging up in the millions of years. There’s no way to spot Alpha Centralis as a planetary system by any of the standard methods.”

  “They certainly picked a non-standard one,” Buenaventura agreed.

  “It paid off,” Parsons said. “By tagging the F and G stars along those radial lines and bringing the projection up to date, we’ve discovered nearly a hundred planetary systems in the past five years,—and it’d have taken us nearly a century by the old method.”

  “What I’m getting at,” Adams interrupted patiently,” is the evidence everyone seems to want to ignore. Those radial lines a few billion years in the past seem to indicate that someone or something came from the Centralis system that caused the F and G type suns to form planetary systems. And I’m inclined to believe that it was someone rather than something. It would at least explain a lot of odd questions that keep popping up,—including the Creation story.”

  BUENAVENTURA looked up with a speculative light in his eye. “So you think that Centralis was the home of the Gods of Space?”

  “If you want to call them that. I like the idea that someone once found a way to create solar systems. There’s plenty of questions such a theory would answer.”

  “There’s nothing unusual in this idea,” Parsons said, “It’s been advanced before.”

  “I never said there was. I merely like it and think it’s logical. It would answer some of the stock puzzlers such as why are 95% of the planetary systems found around F and G type suns; why are there hundreds more apatial vortices in the galaxy than can be accounted for by our lost ships; why are there so few solar systems on the Rim despite the fact that F and G stars are far more numerous there and why all normal life in the galaxy follows the same evolutionary pattern at least up to the reptiles? That’s a few, and I can think of more.”

  “It sounds reasonable,” Jorgenson said.

  “I only have one objection,” Buenaventura interjected. “What force can tear the guts out of a star and scatter it far enough for the material to condense into planets?”

  “I don’t know, but obviously the Centralians did.” Adams said.

  “You’re as bad as the choir boy,” Buenaventura snorted, “‘out instead of sticking to one God you come up with a whole system full of them. And this despite the fact that there’s no proof intelligent life ever existed on Centralis.”

  “Expeditions can’t stay there very long,” Adams said. “T hose planets are radioactive.”

  “I think,” Parsons said suddenly, “that I’ll have to string along with Carlos.” Adams winced. He’d been had! He—not Carlos, had been picked as target for tonight!

  It should have aroused his suspicions when Parsons came out with that timeworn quotation, but the hook was well baited. He smiled wryly at the attentive faces of his companions. There was no help for it. He’d just have to take his medicine like a gentleman. Their faces had taken on a mildly satanic cast, emphasized by the faint orange cast to the yellow light.

  Orange!—It should be yellow,—pure yellow! . . .

  Orange!

  ADAM’S reaction was instantaneous! He spun his shockchair into pilotage position and opened the main switches in one flashing motion almost too fast for the eye to follow!

  Jorgenson rotated his chair into position beside the pilot. It was habit that made him do it. For years he had been following Adams’ lead, and the ingrained patterns were impossible to break. The exclamation of surprise on his lips died unuttered as his eyes fell on the Cth component indicator with its slowly falling needle. His face became oddly grim. Wordlessly he fell into swift rhythm of the pilot’s movement, balancing the trim of the ship as Adams performed the complex maneuver of turnover in Cth space.

  Adams acknowledged Jorgenson’s presence with a grateful nod of his head as he lifted his eyes for a moment from the banks of instruments that had suddenly come to life. He spoke, but not to the co-pilot. Words between them weren’t necessary. “Carlos,” he said in almost a casual tone. “Check the converter.”

  Buenaventura rose from his chair. “Aye, sir!” the engineer said. His stocky figure disappeared aft through the manway hatch in a flat dive, the metal door thudding into place behind him. He was out of sight almost before the astrogator had time to blink.

  Parsons finally found his tongue. “What happened?” he asked.

  “Converter output’s fallen off! We’re dropping through the yellow,—maybe clear out of Cth!” Jorgenson said.

  “Oh! Is there anything I can do?”

  “Pray!” Adams snapped. “Maybe that’ll keep us up here in Cth long enough to kill our speed.”

  “Engine room to Control,” the annunciator announced in Buenaventura’s unmistakable voice.”

  “Go ahead,” Adams said, his hands never pausing their delicate manipulation of the controls.

  “The converter’s okay, but there’s an impure fuel slug in the combustion chamber.”

  “Can you get it out?”

  “From a Mark VII?” the annunciator inquired sarcastically. “Are you crazy? I can’t even fish it out with the slave without taking the cover plate off and killing the old girl for a couple of hour s,—and if I did that we’d drop out of Cth so fast that we’d never know what we hit.”

  “How about advancing the burning rate?”

  “It’s on maximum right now. There isn’t enough fissionable material to boil it off any faster unless you want an explosion.”

  “Well, that’s that,” Adams commented. “We’ll just have to hope we’re low enough when we hit breakout. I suppose those drives of yours can take it?”

  “They can take anything you can give them,” Buenaventura said. “And besides I’ll sit right here and baby them.”

  “Good man!”

  “Turnovers complete,” Jorgenson said.

  Adams slammed the main drive throttles to their farthest notch. From deep within the ship a deep hum built up amplitude and frequency to a nerve wracking whine that was felt rather than heard. But other than the sound there was no sign that the mighty power of the main drive was functioning at maximum blast.

  IN hyperspace, velocity had no physical effects. There was no acceleration pressure. There was friction of course, so one shifted to a higher component as one approached the terminal velocity for the one one was in. But speed was limited entirely to the capacity of the converter.

  The liners and the Navy jobs with their multiple converters working in series could reach the violet, and make perhaps ten thousand lightspeeds, or better than twenty five lightyears a day. Single converter tubs like the “Manitowoc” could barely make a hundred, since their single converter could only take them to about the middle green.

  The drive, of course, was capable of more speed than that, but the extra power couldn’t be used or they’d turn to a cinder from friction. The converter was the important thin g,—a ship’s existence in Cth space depended upon it,—and in freighters there were no spares. They were too expensive and bulky to waste cargo space as standbys,—and besides nothing ever went wrong with them. Adams felt like laughing at that last thought.

  But no matter how fast a ship could travel in Cth, in normal space all had the same limit, Lume One,—one light-speed. Beyond that rigid limit, one millimicron or a million Lumes added up to the same result. The ship simply vanished, rather unspectacularly considering the forces involved, and left behind a tiny coal sack or spatial vortex to mark its passage.

  Fifty Lumes had to be taken off the “Manitowoc” before the failing converter squeezed them out into normal space, and there was only one way to do it, to reverse the axis of the ship and rely upon the stupendous thrust of the drives to slow her down in as short a time as possible. The ship had been reversed, the drives energized, and now there was nothing more to do except to make minor corrections for axial wobble if it developed.

  A DAMS turned
from the board. Jorgenson could handle it well enough from here, and as soon as the distortion patterns began to get him, Adams could take his relief. He couldn’t see the instruments. and was oddly thankful that he could not. It was bad enough to sweat it out in ignorance, but it was worse with knowledge. He took a long glance at Jorgenson sitting stiffly in his chair. There was an odd tenseness to the lean figure. Poor Jorgenson,—he knew what was happening.

  “How we doing?” Buenaventura’s anxious voice came over the annunciator.

  “With luck we may make it,” Jorgenson replied. “At the rate we’re falling, we’ve go three,—maybe four hours left in Cth. The drive’s full on, and maybe we can kill enough speed to get out in one piece. The critical thing will be whether we can take it when we drop into lower Orange. We’re still travelling pretty fast for that component.”

  “I can get a few more dynes out of the converter. She’s a little out of tune.”

  “By all means do it if you can,” Adams cut in. “We’ll need every minute we can get.”

  “Aye sir.” It was a measure of Buenaventura’s state of mind that he didn’t protest. Ordinarily he would have complained at least perfunctorily at the extra duty Adams had requested.

  “I’ve had it,” Jorgenson said. “Take over.” He had lasted ten minutes, which was pretty good for Cth. Adams spun his chair around and checked the instruments. Their speed was dropping satisfactorily. At their present rate of deceleration they’d hit lower orange at a fairly high level but well within the limits of the component, and if they could keep the drives operating at full blast they’d hit the red at about the middle speed level, the infra red in the lower quarter, and Breakout at Lume one point five,—which would be about 160 thousand kilometers per second too fast.

  It would be nice to be able to make a visual check—but that was impossible. The screens were keyed to remain on as long as the converter was operating. Wryly he reflected that of all the crew he was probably the best candidate for the “look and die” type who had wrecked so many ships in the old days by trying to make a visual check of hyperspace. But he never could bring himself to trust the fluid, protean shapes of the instruments.