The Golden Age Of Science Fiction is a Webnovel created by Various.
This lightnovel is currently completed.
Odal said nothing, but strained every cell in his pain-wracked body to get free of the boulder. Hector reached over his shoulder and began fumbling with the valves that were pressed against the rocks.
“Sorry to do this … but I’m not, uh, killing you, at least … just defeating you. Let’s see … one of these is the oxygen valve, and the other, I think, is the emergency rocket pack … now, which is which?” Odal felt the Watchman’s hands searching for the proper valve. “I should’ve dreamed up suits without the rocket pack … confuses things … there, that’s it.”
Hector’s hand tightened on a valve and turned it sharply. The rocket roared to life and Odal was hurtled free of the boulder, shot uncontrolled completely off the planetoid. Hector was bowled over by the blast and rolled halfway around the tiny c.h.i.n.k of rock and metal.
Odal tried to reach around to throttle down the rocket, but the pain in his body was too great. He was slipping into unconsciousness. He fought against it. He knew he must return to the planetoid and somehow kill the opponent. But gradually the pain overpowered him. His eyes were closing, closing– And, quite abruptly, he found himself sitting in the booth of the dueling machine. It took a moment for him to realize that he was back in the real world. Then his thoughts cleared. He had failed to kill Hector.
And at the door of the booth stood Kor, his face a grim mask of anger.
XVI.
The office was that of the new prime minister of the Acquataine Cl.u.s.ter. It had been loaned to Leoh for his conversation with Sir Harold Spencer. For the moment, it seemed like a great double room: half of it was dark, warm woods, rich draperies, floor-to-ceiling bookcases. The other half, from the tri-di screen onward, was the austere, metallic utility of a starship compartment.
Spencer was saying, “So this hired a.s.sa.s.sin, after killing four men and nearly wrecking a government, has returned to his native worlds.”
Leoh nodded. “He returned under guard. I suppose he is in disgrace, or perhaps even under arrest.”
“Servants of a dictator never know when they will be the ones who are served–on a platter.” Spencer chuckled. “And the Watchman who a.s.sisted you, this Junior Lieutenant Hector, what of him?”
“He’s not here just now. The Dulaq girl has him in tow, somewhere. Evidently it’s the first time he’s been a hero–“
Spencer shifted his weight in his chair. “I have long prided myself on the conviction that any Star Watch officer can handle almost any kind of emergency anywhere in the galaxy. From your description of the past few weeks, I was beginning to have my doubts. However, Junior Lieutenant Hector seems to have won the day … almost in spite of himself.”
“Don’t underestimate him,” Leoh said, smiling. “He turned out to be an extremely valuable man. I think he will make a fine officer.”
Spencer grunted an affirmative.
“Well,” Leoh said, “that’s the complete story, to date. I believe that Odal is finished. But the Kerak Worlds have made good their annexation of the Szarno Confederacy, and the Acquataine Cl.u.s.ter is still very wobbly, politically. We haven’t heard the last of Ka.n.u.s–not by a long shot.”
Spencer lifted a s.h.a.ggy eyebrow. “Neither,” he rumbled, “has he heard the last from us.”
Contents
KEEP OUT.
By Fredric Brown
With no more room left on Earth, and with Mars hanging up there empty of life, somebody hit on the plan of starting a colony on the Red Planet. It meant changing the habits and physical structure of the immigrants, but that worked out fine. In fact, every possible factor was covered-except one of the flaws of human nature….
Daptine is the secret of it. Adaptine, they called it first; then it got shortened to daptine. It let us adapt.
They explained it all to us when we were ten years old; I guess they thought we were too young to understand before then, although we knew a lot of it already. They told us just after we landed on Mars.
“You’re home, children,” the Head Teacher told us after we had gone into the gla.s.site dome they’d built for us there. And he told us there’d be a special lecture for us that evening, an important one that we must all attend.
And that evening he told us the whole story and the whys and wherefores. He stood up before us. He had to wear a heated s.p.a.ce suit and helmet, of course, because the temperature in the dome was comfortable for us but already freezing cold for him and the air was already too thin for him to breathe. His voice came to us by radio from inside his helmet.
“Children,” he said, “you are home. This is Mars, the planet on which you will spend the rest of your lives. You are Martians, the first Martians. You have lived five years on Earth and another five in s.p.a.ce. Now you will spend ten years, until you are adults, in this dome, although toward the end of that time you will be allowed to spend increasingly long periods outdoors.
“Then you will go forth and make your own homes, live your own lives, as Martians. You will intermarry and your children will breed true. They too will be Martians.
“It is time you were told the history of this great experiment of which each of you is a part.”
Then he told us.
Man, he said, had first reached Mars in 1985. It had been uninhabited by intelligent life (there is plenty of plant life and a few varieties of non-flying insects) and he had found it by terrestrial standards uninhabitable. Man could survive on Mars only by living inside gla.s.site domes and wearing s.p.a.ce suits when he went outside of them. Except by day in the warmer seasons it was too cold for him. The air was too thin for him to breathe and long exposure to sunlight-less filtered of rays harmful to him than on Earth because of the lesser atmosphere-could kill him. The plants were chemically alien to him and he could not eat them; he had to bring all his food from Earth or grow it in hydroponic tanks.
For fifty years he had tried to colonize Mars and all his efforts had failed. Besides this dome which had been built for us there was only one other outpost, another gla.s.site dome much smaller and less than a mile away.
It had looked as though mankind could never spread to the other planets of the solar system besides Earth for of all of them Mars was the least inhospitable; if he couldn’t live here there was no use even trying to colonize the others.
And then, in 2034, thirty years ago, a brilliant biochemist named Waymoth had discovered daptine. A miracle drug that worked not on the animal or person to whom it was given, but on the progeny he conceived during a limited period of time after inoculation.
It gave his progeny almost limitless adaptability to changing conditions, provided the changes were made gradually.
Dr. Waymoth had inoculated and then mated a pair of guinea pigs; they had borne a litter of five and by placing each member of the litter under different and gradually changing conditions, he had obtained amazing results. When they attained maturity one of those guinea pigs was living comfortably at a temperature of forty below zero Fahrenheit, another was quite happy at a hundred and fifty above. A third was thriving on a diet that would have been deadly poison for an ordinary animal and a fourth was contented under a constant X-ray bombardment that would have killed one of its parents within minutes.
Subsequent experiments with many litters showed that animals who had been adapted to similar conditions bred true and their progeny was conditioned from birth to live under those conditions.
“Ten years later, ten years ago,” the Head Teacher told us, “you children were born. Born of parents carefully selected from those who volunteered for the experiment. And from birth you have been brought up under carefully controlled and gradually changing conditions.
“From the time you were born the air you have breathed has been very gradually thinned and its oxygen content reduced. Your lungs have compensated by becoming much greater in capacity, which is why your chests are so much larger than those of your teachers and attendants; when you are fully mature and are breathing air like that of Mars, the difference will be even greater.
“Your bodies are growing fur to enable you to stand the increasing cold. You are comfortable now under conditions which would kill ordinary people quickly. Since you were four years old your nurses and teachers have had to wear special protection to survive conditions that seem normal to you.
“In another ten years, at maturity, you will be completely acclimated to Mars. Its air will be your air; its food plants your food. Its extremes of temperature will be easy for you to endure and its median temperatures pleasant to you. Already, because of the five years we spent in s.p.a.ce under gradually decreased gravitational pull, the gravity of Mars seems normal to you.
“It will be your planet, to live on and to populate. You are the children of Earth but you are the first Martians.”
Of course we had known a lot of those things already.
The last year was the best. By then the air inside the dome-except for the pressurized parts where our teachers and attendants live-was almost like that outside, and we were allowed out for increasingly long periods. It is good to be in the open.
The last few months they relaxed segregation of the s.e.xes so we could begin choosing mates, although they told us there is to be no marriage until after the final day, after our full clearance. Choosing was not difficult in my case. I had made my choice long since and I’d felt sure that she felt the same way; I was right.
Tomorrow is the day of our freedom. Tomorrow we will be Martians, the Martians. Tomorrow we shall take over the planet.
Some among us are impatient, have been impatient for weeks now, but wiser counsel prevailed and we are waiting. We have waited twenty years and we can wait until the final day.
And tomorrow is the final day.
Tomorrow, at a signal, we will kill the teachers and the other Earthmen among us before we go forth. They do not suspect, so it will be easy.
We have dissimulated for years now, and they do not know how we hate them. They do not know how disgusting and hideous we find them, with their ugly misshapen bodies, so narrow-shouldered and tiny-chested, their weak sibilant voices that need amplification to carry in our Martian air, and above all their white pasty hairless skins.
We shall kill them and then we shall go and smash the other dome so all the Earthmen there will die too.
If more Earthmen ever come to punish us, we can live and hide in the hills where they’ll never find us. And if they try to build more domes here we’ll smash them. We want no more to do with Earth.
This is our planet and we want no aliens. Keep off!
Contents
INDIRECTION.
BY EVERETT B. COLE.
The best way to keep a secret is to publish it in a quite unbelievable form–and insist that it is the truth.
Elwar Forell leaned back in his chair, looking about the small dining salon. The usual couples were there, he noticed. Of course, the faces were different from those of last evening, but the poses were similar. And the people were there for the same reasons. They were enjoying the food and drinks, just as many others had enjoyed them before. But like all those others, their greater enjoyment was in the company of one another. Forell glanced at the vacant chair across the table from him and sighed.
It would be nice, he thought, if– But any arrangement involving a permanent companion would be hardly practical under his circ.u.mstances. After all, prudence dictated limits.
He picked up his cup and drained it, then leaned back and beckoned the waiter over.
“The reckoning, please,” he ordered.
He looked again at the letter on the table before him, then folded it and put it in his pocket. It was well, he thought. His latest book of fairy tales and fantasy had enjoyed good acceptance. And the check in the letter had been of satisfactory size. He smiled to himself. There were compensations in this job of his. It seemed to be profitable to have a purpose other than the obvious and usual one.
He paid his bill and left the restaurant, to walk slowly along the street, enjoying the mild, spring air.
As he pa.s.sed a sidewalk cafe, a man beckoned from one of the tables.
“Oh, Forell,” he called. “I was hoping I’d see you this evening.” He held up a book.
“Just finished your ‘Tales of the Sorcerers,'” he added. “Some of those yarns of yours seem almost real.”
Elwar Forell nodded. They should, he thought. Factual material, however disguised, often shines through its fictional background. And he had an inexhaustible source of material, drawn from many sources. He twisted his face into a gratified smile.
“That’s my objective,” he said aloud. “I do all in my power to place the reader inside the story.”
Charo Andorra nodded. “It’s the secret of good fiction, I know,” he admitted, “and every storyteller tries to do it. But I seem to see more than that in your stuff. There’s an almost believable pattern.” He hesitated. “You know, while I’m reading it, I can almost see beings of superior powers walking the earth. And sometimes, I visualize us working with them.” He laughed shortly.
“Of course, I may be more credulous and imaginative than most. Probably why I’m a critic. And I really should know better.” He looked down at the book in his hands.
“But that stuff of yours can be mighty convincing.” He tilted his head. “Somehow, I can’t help but look at some of the old legends–and some of the things that have happened in more recent years, too. Can’t help but wonder if we actually are babes of the cosmos, and if we haven’t been visited and watched by some form of extra-planetary life at one time or another.”
Forell looked closely at his friend. Andorra, he knew, was a clear thinker in his own right. And he just might start a serious a.n.a.lysis–and publish it. He grimaced. It wasn’t time for that, he knew. Many years must pa.s.s before it would be time.
He placed a hand on the back of Andorra’s chair, remembering the words of one of the teachers.
“Remember, Elwar,” he had been told, “your objective is clear, but your methods must be most indirect–even unclear. Some things you must obscure in a ma.s.s of obviously imaginative detail, while you bring others to the fore. You must hint. You must suggest. You should never fully explain or deny. And you must never be guilty of definite, direct falsehood.
“There may come a time when you will be directly questioned–when discovery of your real background and purpose seems imminent, and you will have to take positive action. For such an eventuality, I cannot outline any steps, or even any definite plan of action, since I neither fully understand many of the factors involved, nor have any way of knowing the circ.u.mstances which may arise. You’ll have to prepare yourself for almost anything, always keeping in mind the peculiarities and capabilities of your own people.”
It looked as though the time might have come. If Andorra, a clever, influential critic, should guess at the real background and the sources of the Forell tales, and if he should misunderstand the motives behind those tales, he would probably publish his thoughts. And those thoughts would be widely read. Many would smile as they read and regard the thing as a hoax. But others might start their own a.n.a.lyses. And some of those might come to highly undesirable conclusions and cause undesirable, even disastrous, reactions. It would be many generations before clear explanations could be made and definite principles outlined without causing misunderstanding and serious damage. The Forell tales were evasive and preparatory as well as vaguely instructive.
He recovered his self-discipline and waved his hand negligently.
“You know, Charo,” he said laughingly, “I’ve been thinking along similar lines for a long while. Of course, you know I must have built up some sort of fantasy world to base my yarns on?”
Andorra nodded. “That’s obvious. I’ve been wondering about some of your basic theory. Like to see your notes some time.”
Forell spread his hands. “You’re quite welcome to look them over,” he said. “Come on up to my rooms now.” He smiled. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been doing a little extension on my dream world. Built up a little sketch a while ago, and I’m not just sure what to do with it.”
As they entered the study, Forell walked across to his desk. He fumbled for a few seconds under the desk, then opened a drawer. For a moment, he paused, looking inside, then pulled out a thin folder. Again, he hesitated. At last, he picked a small, metallic object from the drawer and held it in his left hand.
“Might need this,” he told himself. “If I’m wrong, it’ll take a sector patrolman to straighten out the mess. And I could be wrong–two ways.”
Casually, he placed his left hand in his pocket, then he turned toward Andorra, holding out the folder.
“Here,” he said. “See what you think of this one.”
Andorra opened the folder, taking out a few sheets of paper. He read for a moment, then looked up quizzically.