by J F Bone
“Four-four. Hang on now—we’re going up.” I eased the “Lachesis” into Cth and hung like glue to the border. “How’s it going, skipper?”
“A bit rough but otherwise all right. Now steer right—easy now—aagh!”
“Skipper!”
“Okay, Marsden. You nearly pulled me in half—that’s all. You did fine. We’re in good position in relation to ‘Amphitrite.’ Now let’s get our signals straight. Front is the way we’re going now—base all my directions on that—got it?”
“Aye, sir.”
“Good, Marsden, throttle back and hang on your converters.”
I did as I was told.
“Ah—there she is—bear left a little. Hmm—she’s looking for us—looks suspicious. Now she’s turning toward ‘Amphitrite.’ Guess she figures we are gone. She’s in position preparing to fire. Now! Drop out and fire—elevation zero, azimuth three sixty—Move!”
I moved. The “Lachesis” dropped like a stone. Chase was dead now. Nothing made of flesh could survive that punishment but we—we came out right on top of them, just like Chase had done to the other—except that we fired before we collided. And as with the other Rebel we gained complete surprise. Our eighteen torpedoes crashed home, her magazines exploded, and into that hell of molten and vaporized metal that had once been a Rebel scout we crashed a split second later. Two thousand miles per second relative is too fast for even an explosion to hurt much if there isn’t any solid material in the way, and we passed through only the outer edges of the blast, but even so, the vaporized metal scoured our starboard plating down to the insulation. It was like a giant emery wheel had passed across our flank. The shock slammed us out of control and we went tumbling in crazy gyrations across space for several minutes before I could flip the “Lachesis” into Cth, check the speed and motion, and get back into threespace.
Chase was gone—and “Lachesis” was done. A week in drydock and she’d be as good as new, but she was no longer a fighting ship. She was a wreck. For us the battle was over—but somehow it didn’t make me happy. The “Amphitrite” hung off our port bow, a tiny silver dot in the distance, and as I watched two more silver dots winked into being beside her. Haskins reported the I.F.F. readings.
“They’re ours,” he said. “A couple of cruisers.”
“They should have been here ten minutes ago,” I replied bitterly. I couldn’t see very well. You can’t when emotion clogs your tubes. Chase—coward?—not him. He was man clear through—a better one than I’d ever be even if I lived out my two hundred years. I wondered if the crew knew what sort of man their skipper was. I turned up the command helmet. “Men—” I began, but I didn’t finish.
“We know,” the blended thoughts and voices came back at me. Sure they knew! Chase had been on command circuit too. It was enough to make you cry—the mixture of pride, sadness and shame that rang through the helmet. It seemed to echo and reecho for a long time before I shut it off.
I sat there, thinking. I wasn’t mad at the Rebels. I wasn’t anything. All I could think was that we were paying a pretty grim price for survival. Those aliens had better show up pretty soon—and they’d better be as nasty as their reputation. There was a score—a big score—and I wanted to be there when it was added up and settled.
THE END
1961
A PRIZE . . . FOR EDIE
The Committee had, unquestionably, made a mistake. There was no doubt that Edie had achieved the long-sought cancer cure . . . but awarding the Nobel Prize was, nonetheless, a mistake . . .
THE letter from America arrived too late. The Committee had regarded acceptance as a foregone conclusion, for no one since Boris Pasternak had turned down a Nobel Prize. So when Professor Doctor Nels Christianson opened the letter, there was not the slightest fear on his part, or on that of his fellow committeemen, Dr. Eric Carlstrom and Dr. Sven Eklund, that the letter would be anything other than the usual routine acceptance.
“At last we learn the identity of this great research worker,” Christianson murmured as he scanned the closely typed sheets. Carlstrom and Eklund waited impatiently, wondering at the peculiar expression that fixed itself on Christianson’s face. Fine beads of sweat appeared on the professor’s high narrow forehead as he laid the letter down. “Well,” he said heavily, “now we know.”
“Know what?” Eklund demanded. “What does it say? Does she accept?”
“She accepts,” Christianson said in a peculiar half-strangled tone as he passed the letter to Eklund. “See for yourself.”
Eklund’s reaction was different. His face was a mottled reddish white as he finished the letter and handed it across the table to Carlstrom. “Why,” he demanded of no one in particular, “did this have to happen to us?”
“It was bound to happen sometime,” Carlstrom said. “It’s just our misfortune that it happened to us.” He chuckled as he passed the letter back to Christianson. “At least this year the presentation should be an event worth remembering.”
“It seems that we have a little problem,” Christianson said, making what would probably be the understatement of the century. Possibly there would be greater understatements in the remaining ninety-nine years of the Twenty-first Century, but Carlstrom doubted it. “We certainly have our necks out,” he agreed.
“We can’t do it!” Eklund exploded. “We simply can’t award the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology to that . . . that C. Edie!” He sputtered into silence.
“We can hardly do anything else,” Christianson said. “There’s no question as to the identity of the winner. Dr. Hanson’s letter makes that unmistakably clear. And there’s no question that the award is deserved.”
“We still could award it to someone else,” Eklund said.
“Not a chance. We’ve already said too much to the press. It’s known all over the world that the medical award is going to the discoverer of the basic cause of cancer, to the founder of modern neoplastic therapy.” Christianson grimaced. “If we changed our decision now, there’d be all sorts of embarrassing questions from the press.”
“I can see it now,” Carlstrom said, “the banquet, the table, the flowers, and Professor Doctor Nels Christianson in formal dress with the Order of St. Olaf gleaming across his white shirtfront, standing before that distinguished audience and announcing: ‘The Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology is awarded to—’ and then that deadly hush when the audience sees the winner.”
“You needn’t rub it in,” Christianson said unhappily. “I can see it, too.”
“These Americans!” Eklund said bitterly. He wiped his damp forehead. The picture Carlstrom had drawn was accurate but hardly appealing. “One simply can’t trust them. Publishing a report as important as that as a laboratory release. They should have given proper credit.”
“They did,” Carlstrom said. “They did—precisely. But the world, including us, was too stupid to see it. We have only ourselves to blame.”
“If it weren’t for the fact that the work was inspired and effective,” Christianson muttered, “we might have a chance of salvaging this situation. But through its application ninety-five per cent of cancers are now curable. It is obviously the outstanding contribution to medicine in the past five decades.”
“But we must consider the source,” Eklund protested. “This award will make the prize for medicine a laughingstock. No doctor will ever accept another. If we go through with this, we might as well forget about the medical award from now on. This will be its swan song. It hits too close to home. Too many people have been saying similar things about our profession and its trend toward specialization. And to have the Nobel Prize confirm them would alienate every doctor in the world. We simply can’t do it.”
“Yet who else has made a comparable discovery? Or one that is even half as important?” Christianson asked.
“That’s a good question,” Carlstrom said, “and a good answer to it isn’t going to be easy to find. For my part, I can only wish that Alphax Laboratories had dis
played an interest in literature rather than medicine. Then our colleagues at the Academy could have had the painful decision.”
“Their task would be easier than ours,” Christianson said wearily. “After all, the criteria of art are more flexible. Medicine, unfortunately, is based upon facts.”
“That’s the hell of it,” Carlstrom said.
“There must be some way to solve this problem,” Eklund said. “After all it was a perfectly natural mistake. We never suspected that Alphax was a physical rather than a biological sciences laboratory. Perhaps that might offer grounds—”
“I don’t think so,” Carlstrom interrupted. “The means in this case aren’t as important as the results, and we can’t deny that the cancer problem is virtually solved.”
“Even though men have been saying for the past two generations that the answer was probably in the literature and all that was needed was someone with the intelligence and the time to put the facts together, the fact remains that it was C. Edie who did the job. And it required quite a bit more than merely collecting facts. Intelligence and original thinking of a high order was involved.” Christianson sighed.
“Someone,” Eklund said bitterly. “Some thing you mean. C. Edie—C.E.D.—Computer, Extrapolating, Discriminatory. Manufactured by Alphax Laboratories, Trenton, New Jersey, U.S.A. C. Edie! Americans!!—always naming things. A machine wins the Nobel Prize. It’s fantastic!”
Christianson shook his head. “It’s not fantastic, unfortunately. And I see no way out. We can’t even award the prize to the team of engineers who designed and built Edie. Dr. Hanson is right when he says the discovery was Edie’s and not the engineers’. It would be like giving the prize to Albert Einstein’s parents because they created him.”
“Is there any way we can keep the presentation secret?” Eklund asked.
“I’m afraid not. The presentations are public. We’ve done too good a job publicizing the Nobel Prize. As a telecast item, it’s almost the equal of the motion picture Academy Award.”
“I can imagine the reaction when our candidate is revealed in all her metallic glory. A two-meter cube of steel filled with microminiaturized circuits, complete with flashing lights and cogwheels,” Carlstrom chuckled. “And where are you going to hang the medal?”
Christianson shivered. “I wish you wouldn’t give that metal nightmare a personality,” he said. “It unnerves me. Personally, I wish that Dr. Hanson, Alphax Laboratories, and Edie were all at the bottom of the ocean—in some nice deep spot like the Mariannas Trench.” He shrugged. “Of course, we won’t have that sort of luck, so we’ll have to make the best of it.”
“It just goes to show that you can’t trust Americans,” Eklund said. “I’ve always thought we should keep our awards on this side of the Atlantic where people are sane and civilized. Making a personality out of a computer—ugh! I suppose it’s their idea of a joke.”
“I doubt it,” Christianson said. “They just like to name things—preferably with female names. It’s a form of insecurity, the mother fixation. But that’s not important. I’m afraid, gentlemen, that we shall have to make the award as we have planned. I can see no way out. After all, there’s no reason why the machine cannot receive the prize. The conditions merely state that it is to be presented to the one, regardless of nationality, who makes the greatest contribution to medicine or physiology.”
“I wonder how His Majesty will take it,” Carlstrom said.
“The king! I’d forgotten that!” Eklund gasped.
“I expect he’ll have to take it,” Christianson said. “He might even appreciate the humor in the situation.”
“Gustaf Adolf is a good king, but there are limits,” Eklund observed.
“There are other considerations,” Christianson replied. “After all, Edie is the reason the Crown Prince is still alive, and Gustaf is fond of his son.”
“After all these years?”
Christianson smiled. Swedish royalty was long-lived. It was something of a standing joke that King Gustaf would probably outlast the pyramids, providing the pyramids lived in Sweden. “I’m sure His Majesty will cooperate. He has a strong sense of duty and since the real problem is his, not ours, I doubt if he will shirk it.”
“How do you figure that?” Eklund asked.
“We merely select the candidates according to the rules, and according to the nature of their contribution. Edie is obviously the outstanding candidate in medicine for this year. It deserves the prize. We would be compromising with principle if we did not award it fairly.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Eklund said gloomily. “I can’t think of any reasonable excuse to deny the award.”
“Nor I,” Carlstrom said. “But what did you mean by that remark about this being the king’s problem?”
“You forget,” Christianson said mildly. “Of all of us, the king has the most difficult part. As you know, the Nobel Prize is formally presented at a State banquet.”
“Well?”
“His Majesty is the host,” Christianson said. “And just how does one eat dinner with an electronic computer?”
THE END
WEAPON
The Dauntless was one of the most powerful ships in the Confederation space navy. Yet, in the showdown with the Eglani, victory was not necessarily to the mighty.
BRIGHT CHATTER flowed around her, filling the clean conditioned air of the room with inconsequential noise that hid the tension in a froth of words. It was what wasn’t being said that was important, Ellen Fiske thought as she listened to the high pitched voices. Of course, one never paraded feelings. It was indecent,—something like undressing in public. But this matter of keeping a stiff upper lip could be carried to extremes. You went to these get-togethers, played cards and talked about dresses and children and grocery bills just as though there was no war, as though the Eglani never existed, as though the men in the Navy would come back as regularly and predictably as they did from commercial runs in the old days. But try as you did, you couldn’t keep the undercurrents hidden. Fear clung to the sharp shards of sound. There was longing, grief, resignation, and hope, all mixed with a firm unreasoning conviction that if one buried her feelings deep enough everything would solve itself and wind up with a happy ending.
Her hands tightened convulsively and cards squirted from her fingers to the floor as the high-pitched keening shriek of a spaceship’s jets came to her ears. The talk stopped suddenly as every woman in the room paused, to listen and every eye turned involuntarily toward the ceiling. A big one was coming in. The entire house shivered, quivering in resonant sympathy to the throbbing pulse of the spaceship’s drives. The sound swelled to a crescendo—to stop abruptly with a sharp finality that left an aching silence in its wake.
“I’m sorry, Anne,” Ellen said as she bent to retrieve the cards scattered on the floor. “For a moment I couldn’t help thinking that—” she stopped and blushed.
“Don’t apologize,” Anne Albertsen said. “I know how you feel. Fact is I’ve felt that way myself—more than once.” Her eyes were gray and wise in the frame of her pointed elfin face.
Ellen felt a rush of gratitude. Anne was understanding beyond her years, little Anne with her piercing giggle and gay smile. Anne with a husband already a week overdue. She didn’t allow herself the luxury of worry, Ellen thought enviously, but then she had been married nearly four years now. She was a veteran of a thousand nights of waiting, not a bride of four months who had only seen her husband twice since that utterly mad and beautiful honeymoon, that precious two weeks torn from a reluctant Navy.
It wasn’t easy to be a Navy wife, to listen to the shriek of jetblasts that lowered ships to earth or sent them hurtling outward into the void. It wasn’t easy to constantly wonder with each incoming craft “Is it his ship? Has he come home safely once more?” Or as the weeks passed to feel the question turn to a prayer “Please God, make this one his,—make it his!” This one wasn’t Alton’s ship. It couldn’t be. He wasn’t due back from
patrol for another week, and until that week had passed she needn’t worry. Her reaction was just the involuntary twitch of overwrought nerves.
The talk began again,—the bright chatter that tried so hard to hide the constant unvoiced prayer “Please,—oh please God—let this war end. Make this senseless killing stop. Turn the Eglani back to where they came from and let us go back to the ways of peace we know and love.” The prayer, Ellen thought bitterly, didn’t have a ghost of a chance of being answered. God apparently was on the side of the biggest fleet and the best battle discipline, and neither of these was the property of the Confederation.
For centuries men had travelled the starlanes unopposed. Intelligent races were seldom encountered, and those that were were always on a lower technological level than the outwardsweeping hordes of Earth. They could be safely ignored and their worlds bypassed. There were plenty of others without intelligent life.
Colonies were planted. Civilizations were built. Wealth was produced, traded, and exploited. And in-time a loosely organized Confederation was established,—a glorified Board of Trade that advised rather than governed. And as system after system passed by default into mankind’s hands, the idea grew that the galaxy was man’s oyster and the Creator had graciously provided him with a knife.
At that, there was some justice in the thought. An expanding civilization meeting no obstacles for centuries is unlikely to believe the minority of Cassandras. So when the expanding front of humanity collided with that of the Eglani, the first reaction was disbelief, the second panic,—and the third grim anger.
But anger was not enough. Mankind was trying desperately, but a thousand years of peaceful expansion were poor experience to pit against an organized race of warlike conquerors.
The war wasn’t going too well. Even the communiques had stopped calling the shrinking sphere of human power “strategic withdrawals” and “tactical regroupments.” Nowadays they either didn’t mention the loss of another world, or published the new frontier line without comment. Long ago the dent in mankind’s expanding perimeter had become a bulge, and the bulge a dome that cut inexorably into the worlds of the Confederation. Slowly man’s domination of this sector of the galaxy was being blotted out. In slightly more than five years a hundred Confederation worlds had fallen into the hands of the Eglani as the Confederation evacuated and withdrew, bartering precious space and lives for infinitely more precious time to forge the weapons and battle skills to crush the aliens.
