The Complete Short Stories- The 1950s - Volume One Read online

  Below the heading ‘It’s Fabulous – It’s Pabulous!’ he read: ‘Just as anti-gravity lifts a man against the direction of weight, chrono-grab can lift a machine out of the direction of time and send it speeding back over the dark centuries. It can be accurately guided from the present to scoop up a fragment from the past, slapping that fragment – all unknown to the people in it – right into your lucky laps. The terrific expense of this intricate operation need hardly be emphas – ’

  ‘Driver!’ Rodney screamed. ‘Do you know anything about this time-grabbing business?’

  ‘Only what I have heard, sir.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘My built-in information centre contains only facts relating to my duty, sir, but since I also have learning circuits I am occasionally able to collect gossip from passengers which – ’

  ‘Tell me this, then: can human beings as well as machines travel back in time?’

  The buildings were still flashing by, silent, hostile in the unknown world. Drumming his fingers wildly on his seat, Rodney awaited an answer.

  ‘Only machines, sir. Humans can’t live backwards.’

  For a long time he lay and cried comfortably. The automoto made solacing cluck-cluck noises, but it was a situation with which it was incompetent to deal.

  At last, Rodney wiped his eyes on his sleeve, the sleeve of his Sunday suit, and sat up. He directed the driver to head for the main offices of Chronoarcheology, and slumped back in a kind of stupor. Only at the headquarters of that fiendish invention might there be people who could – if they would – restore him to his own time.

  Rodney dreaded the thought of facing any creature of this unscrupulous age. He pressed the idea away, and concentrated instead on the peace and orderliness of the world from which he had been resurrected. To see Oxford again, to see Valerie … Dear, dear Valerie …

  Would they help him at Chronoarcheology? Or – supposing the people at the fair-ground repaired their devilish apparatus before he got there … What would happen then he shuddered to imagine.

  ‘Faster, driver,’ he shouted.

  The wide-spaced buildings became a wall.

  ‘Faster, driver,’ he screamed.

  The wall became a mist.

  ‘We are doing mach 2.3, sir,’ said the driver calmly.

  ‘Faster!’

  The mist became a scream.

  ‘We are about to crash, sir.’

  They crashed. Blackness, merciful, complete.

  A bedspring groaned and pinged and the mists cleared. Rodney awoke. From the bathroom next door came the crisp, repetitive sound of Jim shaving …

  Our Kind of Knowledge

  It was a glorious day for exploring the Arctic Circle. The brief and violent spring had exploded over the bleak lands with a welter of life. The wilderness was a wilderness of flowers. Flocks of tern and golden plover, with the world to sport in, stood here leg-deep in blossom. Acres of blue ice crocus stretched away into the distance like shallow pools reflecting the clear skies. And on the near horizon rose a barrier of snow-covered mountains, high and harmless.

  Five of them constituted the exploring party: the Preacher, Aprit, Woebee, Calurmo and Little Light – the Preacher ahead as usual. They moved to the top of a rise, and there was the valley stretched before them, washed and brilliant. There, too, was the spaceship.

  Calurmo cried out in excitement and darted down among the flowers. The others saw instantly what was in his mind and followed fast behind, calling and laughing.

  To them it was the most obvious feature of the colourful plain. Calurmo touched it first, and then they crowded around looking at it. The Preacher bent down and sniffed it.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Definitely wood sorrel: Oxalis acetosella. How clever of it to grow up here.’ His thoughts held a pious tinge; they always did; it was for that he bore the name Preacher.

  Only afterwards did they notice the spaceship. It was very tall and sturdy and took up a lot of ground that might more profitably have been used by the flowers. It was also very heavy, and during the time it had stood there its stem had sunk into the thawing earth.

  ‘A nice design,’ Woebee commented, circling it. ‘What do you think it is?’

  High above their heads it towered. On the highest point sat a loon, preening itself in the sun and uttering occasionally its cry, the cry of emptiness articulate. Around the shadowed side of the ship, a shriveled heap of snow rested comfortably against the metal. The metal was wonderfully smooth, but dark and unshining.

  ‘However bulky it is down here, it manages to turn into a spire at the top,’ the Preacher said, squinting into the sun.

  ‘But what is it?’ Woebee repeated; then he began to sing, to show that he did not mind being unaware of what it was.

  ‘It was made,’ Aprit said cautiously. This was not like dealing with wood sorrel; they had never thought about spaceships before.

  ‘You can get into it here,’ Little Light said, pointing. He rarely spoke, and when he did he generally pointed as well.

  They climbed into the airlock, all except Calurmo, who still stooped over the wood sorrel. Its fragrant pseudo-consciousness trembled with happiness in the fresh warmth of the sun. Calurmo made a slight churring noise, persistent and encouraging, and after a minute the tiny plant broke loose of the soil and crawled onto his hand.

  He brought it up to his great eyes and let his thoughts slide gently in through the roots. Slowly they radiated up a stalk and into one of the yellow-green trefoils, probing, exploring the sappy being of the leaf. Calurmo brought pressure to bear. Reluctantly, then with excitement, the plant yielded, and among its pink-streaked blossoms formed another, with five sepals, five petals, ten stamens and five stigmas, identical with the ones the plant had grown unaided.

  The taste of oxalic acid still pleasant in his thoughts, Calurmo sat back and smiled. To create a freak – that was nothing; but to create something just like the originals – how the others would be pleased!

  ‘Calurmo!’ It was Aprit, conspiratorial, almost guilty. ‘Come and see what we’ve found.’

  Knowing it would not be as delightful as the sorrel, nevertheless Calurmo jumped up, eager to share an interest. He climbed into the airlock and followed Aprit through the ship, carrying his flower carefully.

  The others were drifting interestedly around the control room, high in the nose.

  ‘Come and look at the valley!’ invited Little Light, pointing out at the spread of bright land which shone all around them. From here, too, they could see a wide river, briefly shorn of ice and sparkling full of spawning fish.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ Calurmo said simply.

  ‘We have indeed discovered a strange object,’ remarked the Preacher, stroking a great upholstered seat. ‘How old do you think it all is? It has the feel of great age.’

  ‘I can tell you how long it has stood here,’ said Woebee. ‘The door through which we entered was open for the snow to drift in. When the snow melts it can never run away. I scanned it, and the earliest drops of it fell from the sky twelve thousand seasons ago.’

  ‘What? Three thousand years?’ exclaimed Aprit.

  ‘No. Four thousand years – you know I don’t count winter as a season.’

  A line of geese broke V-formation to avoid the nose of the ship, and joined faultlessly again on the other side. Aprit caught their military thoughts as they sailed by.

  ‘We should have come up this way more often,’ said Calurmo regretfully, gazing at his sorrel. The tiny flowers were so very beautiful.

  The next thing to decide was what they had discovered. Accordingly, they walked slowly around the control room, registering in unison, blithely unaware of the upper-level reasoning that lay behind their almost instinctive act. It took them five minutes, five minutes after starting completely from scratch; for the ship represented a fragment of a technology absolutely unknown to them. Also, it was a deep-spacer, which meant a corresponding complexity in drive, accommodation
and equipment; but the particular pattern of its controls – repeated only in a few ships of its own class – designated unfailingly the functions and intentions of the vessel. At least, it did to Calurmo and party, as easily as one may distinguish certain features of a hand from finding a lost glove.

  Little surprise was wasted on the concept of a spaceship. As Aprit remarked, they had their own less cumbrous methods of covering interplanetary distances. But several other inferences fascinated them.

  ‘Light is the fastest thing in our universe and the slowest in the dimension through which this ship travels,’ said Woebee. ‘It was made by a clever race.’

  ‘It was made by a race incapable of carrying power in their own bodies,’ said Little Light.

  ‘Nor could they orient very efficiently,’ the Preacher added, indicating the astro-navigational equipment.

  ‘So there are planets attending other stars,’ said Calurmo thoughtfully, his mind probing the possibilities.

  ‘And sensible creatures on those planets,’ said Aprit.

  ‘Not sensible creatures,’ said Little Light, pointing to the gunnery cockpit with its banks of switches. ‘Those are to control destruction.’

  ‘All creatures have some sense,’ said the Preacher.

  They switched on. The old ship seemed to creak and shudder, as if it had experienced too much time and snow ever to move again.

  ‘It was content enough without stars,’ muttered Woebee.

  ‘Rain water must have got into the hydrogen,’ Aprit said.

  ‘It’s a very funny machine indeed to have made,’ said the Preacher sternly. ‘I don’t wonder someone went away and left it.’

  The boredom of manual control was not for them; they triggered the necessary impulses directly to the motors. Below them, the splendid plain tilted and shrunk to a green penny set between the white and blue of land and sea. The edge of the ocean curved and with a breath-catching distortion became merely a segment of a great ball dwindling far beneath. The further they got, the brighter it shone.

  ‘Most noble view,’ commented the Preacher.

  Aprit was not looking. He had climbed into the computer and was feeding one of his senses along the relays and circuits of the memory bank and inference sector. He clucked happily as data drained to him. When he had it all he spat it back and returned to the others.

  ‘Very ingenious,’ he said, explaining it. ‘But built by a race of behaviourists. Their souls were obviously trapped by their actions, consequently their science was trapped by their beliefs; they did not know where to look for real progress.’

  ‘It’s very noisy, isn’t it?’ remarked the Preacher, as if producing a point that confirmed what had just been said.

  ‘That noise should not be,’ said Calurmo coolly. ‘It is an alarm bell, and indicates something is wrong.’

  The sound played about them unceasingly until Aprit cut it off.

  ‘I expect we are doing something wrong,’ he sighed. ‘I’ll go and see what it is. But why make the bell ring here, and not where the trouble is?’

  As Aprit left the control room, Little Light pointed into the huge celestial globe in which the stars of the galaxy were embalmed like diamonds in amber. ‘Let’s go there,’ he suggested, rattling the calibrations until a tangential course lit up between Earth and a cluster of worlds in the center of the galaxy. ‘I’m sure it will be lovely there. I wonder if sorrel will grow in those parts; it won’t grow on Venus, you know.’

  While he spoke he spun the course integrator dial, read off the specifications of flight, and fed the co-ordinates as efficiently into the computer as if he had just undergone a training course.

  Aprit returned smiling.

  ‘I’ve fixed it,’ he said. ‘Silly of us. We left the door open when we came in – there wasn’t any air in here. That was why the bell was ringing.’

  They were picked up on Second Empire screens about two parsecs from the outpost system of Kyla. An alert-beetle pinpointed them and flashed their description simultaneously to Main Base on Kyla I and half a dozen other interested points – a term including the needle fleet hovering two light-years out from Kyla system.

  Main Base to GOC Pointer, Needle Fleet 305A: Unidentified craft, mass 40,000 tons, proceeding outskirts system toward galaxy centre. Estimated speed, 20 SLU. Will you intercept?

  GOC Pointer to Main Base, Kyla I: Am already on job.

  Main Base to GOC Pointer: Alien acknowledges no signals, despite calls on all systems.

  Pointer to Main Base: Quiet type. Appears to be heading from region Omega Y76 W592. Is this correct?

  Main Base to Pointer: Correct.

  Pointer to Main Base: Earth?

  Main Base to Pointer: Looks like it.

  Pointer to Main Base: Standing by for trouble.

  Main Base to Pointer: Could be enemy stratagem, of course.

  Pointer to Main Base: Of course. Going in. Out.

  Officer Commanding needleship Pointer was Grand-Admiral Rhys-Barley. He was still a youngish man, the Everlasting War being very good for promotion, but nevertheless thirty-four years of vacuum-busting lay behind him, sapping at his humanity. He stood now, purple of face under 4Gs, peering into the forward screens and snapping at Deeping.

  Confusedly, Deeping flicked through the hand-view, trying to ignore the uniform that towered over him. On the hand-view, ship after ship appeared, only to be rejected by the selector. Here was trouble; the approaching alien, slipping in from a quarantined sector of space, could not be identified. The auto-view did not recognise it, and now old records were being checked on the hand-view; they, too, seemed to be drawing a blank.

  Sweating, the unhappy Deeping glanced again at the image of the alien. Definitely not human; equally definitely, not Boux – or was it an enemy ruse, as Base suggested? The Pointer was only half a parsec away from it now. They were within hitting distance, and the unidentified craft might hit first.

  Fear, thought Deeping. My stomach is sick of the taste of fear; it knows all its nuances, from the numb terror of man’s ancient enemy, the Boux, to the abject dread of Rhys-Barley’s tongue. He flicked desperately. Suddenly the hand-view beeped.

  The Grand-Admiral pounced, struck down the specificator bar and pulled out the emergent sheet. Even as he read it, a prolonged scrunching sound from the bowels of the ship announced that traction beams from Pointer and a sister ship had interlocked on the speeding alien. The gravities wavered for a moment under the extra load and then came back to normal.

  ‘By Vega!’ Rhys-Barley exclaimed, flourishing the flimsy under Captain Hardick’s nose. ‘What do you make of it? Tell Intake to go easy with our prize out there; they’ve got a bit of history on their hands. It’s a First Empire ship, built something like four thousand seven hundred years ago on Luna, the satellite of Earth. Windsor class, with a Spannell XII Light Drive. Ever hear of a Spannell Drive, Captain?’

  ‘Before my day, I’m afraid, sir.’

  ‘Deeping, get Communications to have Kyla I send us details of all ships of Windsor class, dates of obsolescence, etc. I think there’s something queer … Where’d it come from, I’d like to know.’

  Interest made Rhys-Barley hop in front of the screens with less dignity than the Grand-Admiral usually mustered. Deeping relaxed enough to wink covertly at a friend on Bombardment Panel.

  The alien was already visible through the ports as a gleaming chip a mile away, its terrific velocity killed by the traction beams. Now the tiny alert-beetle which had first discovered it headed toward the Pointer. The beetle gleamed pale red, scarcely visible against the regal profusion of Central stars. A beetle from the Pointer shot out to meet it, bearing a cable. The beetles connected and floated back across the narrowing void. They touched the Windsor-class ship and instantly it was surrounded by the pale amber glow of a force shield.

  Everyone on the Pointer breathed more easily then. No energy whatsoever could break through that shield.

  ‘Haul her in,’ the Captain said.r />
  Intake acknowledged the order and gradually the little ship was drawn closer.

  Rhys-Barley cast an eye again at the encephalophone reading on the bulkhead panel. Reading still ‘Nil’. But the Nil wavered as if it was unsure of itself. Maybe they had caught a dead ship; thought waves should have registered before now, whether Boux or human.

  Tension heightened again as the alien was drawn aboard. Matching velocities was a tricky business, and the manoeuvre always entailed a great deal of noise audible throughout the ship. A pity that super-science had never come up with a competent sound-absorber, Rhys-Barley thought morosely. The deck under him swayed a little.

  Deeping handed him a slip from Kyla records. There had been four ships of the Windsor class. Three had gone to the scrap yards over three thousand years ago. The fourth had been abandoned for lack of fuel during the great Boux invasion waves that had resulted in the collapse of the First Empire. Its name: Regalia.

  ‘That must be our pigeon. Let’s get down to Interrogation Bay, Captain,’ Rhys-Barley suggested. Together the pair adjusted their arm-synchs and stepped into the teleport.

  They reappeared instantly beside their captive. Aliens Officer was already there, enjoying a brief spell of glory, supervising the batteries of every type of recorder, scanner, probe and what-have-you the ship possessed in concealed positions about the Regalia. The latter looked like a small whale stranded in a large cave.

  The Preacher came first out of the airlock because he always went ahead anywhere. Then followed Calurmo and Aprit, stopping to examine the crystalline formations clinging to the lock doors. After them came Woebee and Little Light. Together they gazed at the severe functionalism and grey metal that surrounded them.

  ‘This is not a pretty planet,’ the Preacher observed.

  ‘It is not the one Little Light chose,’ Woebee explained.