Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  He was grappling with a huge man, smashing blows into his middle, twisted over his back. He struggled vainly as he felt his tendons about to give, then—a club rose and fell on the head of his foe, and he slid to the floor saved by Sven. “Thanks,” he said hastily, scrambling to his feet and sailing into another pirate. A kick to the groin disposed of the man; this was small season for the niceties of combat. He turned as an arm snaked about his neck, and jerked out his pistol, pressing it into the belly of the strangler. He pulled the trigger, his jaw set, and the pressure relaxed suddenly.

  From knot of men to struggling knot he swung, firing till his gun was empty, and not daring to stop for a reload. In a few short minutes all was silent save for the panting of the bloody victors—Jerry’s men. Two had fallen forever. Gently Jerry straightened their twisted bodies and turned his back on them.

  Gruffly he said, “I believe that we are in a position to make an attack on their main forces, which would be concentrated in the control room. Follow me.”

  And grimly, without a backward glance at the carnage behind them, they followed stealthily down a corridor to pause before a door triply sealed against them. Jerry pounded on it with a pistol. “This is the fourth call to surrender,” he shouted through the steel.

  There was a mocking laugh. “Come and get us, garbage man,” answered a voice dry as dust. “We’re ready for you.”

  Jerry’s face hardened. “Give me the torch,” he said. They passed the tube to him, and primed it.

  He braced himself and touched it to the door, opening the torch to its widest capacity. The arc sprung out; he swung it in a great oval over the steel. The door glowed a fiery white; then the slab of metal fell inward with a clang. Through the opening they saw a score of men, guns poised. There was a pause, then their own semi-portable cut loose and tore through a half dozen of the pirates before Dehring, who was feeding ammunition, fell twisting to the floor.

  GUNS blazing, then the battle-mad crew of the scow leaped to the attack. Men paired off and swung fists and boots; only Jerry stood aside—Jerry and one other. His face a grey ruin, one of the pirates stood aside and watched, taking no hand and seeking none in the destruction. Jerry walked up to him. Again the strange, knightly drama of conflict in space was to be enacted.

  “You, sir,” said Jerry, “are the captain?”

  The dry, bleak voice that he knew answered from the head without features. “Captain Cole, at your disposal, Captain Leigh. Shall we withdraw?” No insults now—the archaic code of the space-pirates demanded this rigidly formal procedure on the meeting of the two enemy captains in battle. Jerry nodded, and the pirate chief led the way into a luxurious room.

  Alice sat up. “Jerry!” she cried. “Has he taken your ship?” He smiled. “No—just the opposite. Our men are fighting it out in the control room; Captain Cole has been so kind as to offer me individual combat.”

  The pirate chuckled richly, “Pray speak no more of it. I thought you would be pleased to see your Alice again—she is an extraordinarily high-principled young lady. She has refused to join my little band. Well; perhaps she was right—we shall soon see.

  “I believe the choice of weapon is mine?”

  “Certainly, Captain,” answered Jerry according to formula. “And they will be—?”

  “Boarding pikes,” said the pirate succinctly. “There is a pair here, if you will excuse me.” He opened a locker in a corner of the room and withdrew two of the vicious five-foot pole-arms from it. Jerry accepted his weapon with a murmur of thanks and examined it briefly. He struck its shaft over his knee and smiled at its satisfactory weight. “Shall we fight free or formal?” he asked Cole.

  “Formal, if Miss Adams will be good enough to referee.” The girl nodded, her face white. “The line of combat is not to be departed from,” she began in the traditional phrasing, “and will extend along the center of the room from the door to the bed.

  “The first figure will be low-crossed; challenger, Captain Leigh, attacking. The defender, Captain Cole, will attempt to disarm the challenger within three disengagements.” She poised her handkerchief. “At the drop of the scarf,” she said, “the challenger will attack.”

  It fell to the floor, and Jerry hooked a tine of his weapon into the pirate’s guard and swung upward, then darted at the chest of his enemy. There was a clash of steel, and—his hands were stinging and empty. He had been disarmed. Cole stood smiling, his pike held easily, waiting for the next figure, as Jerry’s mind raced furiously back to the days of his school training. He remembered another such disarming at the hands of an old, quick instructor. He had been padded then, and the blades of the pike could not, dulled, penetrate his quartz practice helmet.

  Faintly he heard or seemed to hear the instructor’s voice say, “Counter once conventionally; then engage, and rocking from the heels twist and thrust at once to disarm.” Grimly Jerry smiled. He would not forget again.

  “Second figure,” said Alice faintly. “The defender will attack high,-cross; the challenger will attempt to disarm within three engagements.” Again the handkerchief—“scarf” in the language of the pike—fell, and again the steel clashed.

  For many minutes they battled through twelve figures; Leigh had again parried Cole’s blade, and they turned to Alice. But she was in no condition to continue, having fainted when the pirate’s blade had swooped past Jerry’s cheek a moment ago.

  “Since the referee is incapacitated,” said the pirate, after a moment of thought, “shall we continue fighting—free?”

  “Challenger agrees,” said Jerry. “On guard!” And again the vicious pikes glistened in the light, swinging madly. Jerry abandoned the formal line of combat and cut fiercely at Cole’s head, who grinned and swung at his enemy’s chest with a practiced flick of his wrists. Jerry sprang back, blood pouring from his side and shortened his grip by three feet of the haft, leaped through an opening, and stretched his body into one terrible blow that sent his blade through the belly of the pirate and out the other side.

  The salvage man fell to the floor, and the transfixed body of Cole remained erect, propped on the pole of the weapon.

  Jerry’s own eyes closed quietly; his hands sought his side, and were wet with blood.

  JERRY awoke in a very soft bed with those eyes swimming before his face and a sense of pressure on his lips. “What happened?” he asked, dizzily.

  “I kissed you,” said the eyes.

  He considered. “What did you want to do a thing like that for?” he said.

  “Just a hunch. It worked on the Sleeping Beauty, you know.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Thanks. Where am I?”

  “Marsport County Hospital,” said the eyes. “Officially you are Gerald DePugh Leigh, master of the salvage scow Leigh Salvage, Incorporated, if there’s anything else you want to know. That DePugh nearly changed my mind about you, but I decided that you could bury it as a crossroad with a stake through its heart and maybe it wouldn’t bother us.”

  “This us business,” he said reflectively. “Just what does it mean?”

  “Why, Jerry!’ said the eyes, deeply pained. “Don’t you remember?”

  “No,” he said, “but whatever it was it seems to have been a good idea. Did I propose to you?”

  “Yes,” she said, crossing her fingers. “And I accepted in good faith and here I find myself jilted practically at the—”

  “Oh, all right,” said Jerry irritably. “Will you marry me?”

  “Yes,” said the eyes.

  There was a pause. “I wonder if you would know how I got here,” he sleepily asked.

  “I flew the ship back after you ran that Mother Goose murderer through and got your own appendix clipped. You’ll be out of here soon—”

  “Who flew the ship?”

  “I did.”

  “A woman can’t fly a—”

  “This one did.

  “Well . . . I suppose so—I feel myself getting drowsy. Do you think the Sleeping Beauty technique will w
ork twice?”

  “I’ll try—” Jerry heard footsteps, and the eyes retreated. A thin, grey voice spoke up, “Ah, Leigh, I thought I’d call. As you no doubt remember I was telling you of my space-battle with the Mercurian Menace. We were jockeying for position when—”

  “Alice, darling,” said Jerry.

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Will you kick that man very hard, please?” He closed his eyes, heard a yelp of pain, and the slam of a door. He smiled sweetly in his sleep.

  THE END

  Before the Universe

  An “off-trail” story, the odyssey of the strangest trip ever made by man, the tale of the How of the Beginning.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Nobel Prize Twins

  JOCELYN EARLE was listening closely to her employer’s instructions. That was one of the things about Jocelyn; she always listened closely, even if she paid no attention to suggestions once she stopped listening and started doing. He was telling her how to get the story he wanted for the Helio; he knew she would get the story her own way, but he told her anyway. The important thing was, she would get the story.

  “Do you know anything at all about Clair and Gaynor?” he asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “Well, you’re the only one in the world who doesn’t. Don’t you ever read the papers?” She shook her head. He sighed and went on. “They are the Nobel Prize winners for the last half-dozen years. They’re the ones who wiped out cancer, made possible the beam-transmission of power, created about fifty new alloys that have revolutionized industry, and originated the molecular-stress theory which is the cornerstone of the new physics.

  “Gaynor is the kid of the pair. He’s the one that never went to grade school, completed high school in eighteen months, and had a Ph.D. by the time he was fifteen. A child prodigy. Unlike most of those, he never burnt out. He’s still going stronger than ever.

  “Clair is the older and not quite so bright. He was almost old enough to vote by the time he brought out his thesis on Elementary Arithmetic (Advanced), which is a little bit harder to master than vector analysis. But, as I say, he’s older than Gaynor, and he’s had a chance to learn a lot more. So I guess you could say that they’re about even, mentally.

  “Now, this is what I want: the complete and exclusive story of what they’re working on now. It won’t be easy, because they don’t want to give out any information. And they’re smart enough to be able to keep a secret for a long, long time. That’s why I want you to take the job. I wouldn’t think of giving it to anybody else on the staff.”

  Jocelyn smiled. “I’m smart too. Is that what you mean?”

  “Sure you’re smart. Maybe, even, you’re smart enough to get the story . . . Oh, one more thing. They’re both a little childish in some ways. They have a habit of playing practical jokes on people. Don’t let them joke you out of the story.”

  “I won’t,” said Jocelyn Earle. “That’s all?” she asked, rising.

  “That’s enough, isn’t it?” her employer said. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet. But don’t worry about it—I’ll try to have the story by deadline tomorrow. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye,” said her employer, and Jocelyn Earle walked out of the room . . .

  “AND there goes another tube, Art,” called Gaynor. “Shot to hell.”

  Clair walked over to the meter board with a sigh, stripping off his gloves as he came. “The damn things act so funny. They test fine, no flaws, and the math says they ought to work. But you shoot the juice into them, and all that’s left when the smoke clears away is a thoroughly ruptured tube. Why do you suppose that is, Paul?”

  He got no answer from Gaynor but a strangling gasp. He looked up to find his colleague pointing at the door, his face a mask of horror. There stood a hideous creature, presumably female, apparently Scandinavian. “Ay bane call from de agency,” it said.

  Gaynor recovered himself first, and asked, “How the hell did you get through seven locked doors, woman? What do you want?”

  The creature began to talk rapidly and excitedly, and the two scientists looked at each other. “This is just like the Nobel ceremony,” howled Clair over the woman’s voice. “What do you suppose she’s saying?”

  “Haven’t the faintest notion. Let’s sit down. Let’s kill her. Let’s do something to shut her up. How about a shot of static at her?”

  “Should help,” agreed Clair. He swung a cumbersome machine on, the figure in the door and pressed a button. A feeble but spectacular bolt of electricity shot at the woman with a roar, pinking her neatly. Suddenly her stream of Swedish was shut off. “You brace of heels!” she snapped. “If you don’t know how to treat a lady, I’m leaving.”

  Gaynor sprang for the door and slammed it. “No,” he said, “not until you explain—” But she cut him off with a snake-swift clip of the palm to his solar plexus and he folded. Clair swung a switch and the machine roared again, this time louder, and the woman fell beside Gaynor.

  Clair knelt and felt his colleague’s pulse. “She moves fast, that one,” said Gaynor, without opening his eyes. “Did you get her?”

  “Sure—with just enough static to put her out for a while. Get some cable and we’ll see what kind of scrub-woman can breeze through locked doors.”

  They tied her securely; then Clair unceremoniously dumped a bucket of water over her. She came to with a sputter and gasp. “Was that thing a death-ray?” she asked with professional interest.

  “No. Just high tension. Who are you and what’s your business with us?”

  “With a hefty tug you can take off my wig,” the woman answered. Gaynor laid hold of a strand of hair and pulled. “My God!” he cried. “Her face comes with it!”

  “Mask,” she said briefly. “I am a reporter for the Helio, name being Earle. I want to congratulate you. gentlemen. This get-up fooled Billikin, Zweistein, and Current. You aren’t the ordinary brand of scientist.”

  “Nor are you the ordinary brand of reporter,” said Clair raptly studying her cameo-like features. “Gaynor, you ape, untie the lady.”

  “Not I,” said his colleague hastily backing away. “It’s your turn to get socked.”

  “I promise to behave,” she said with a smile. Reluctantly the scientist cut the cables that confined her and she rose. “Do you mind if I take off this thing?” she asked indicating her horrible dress. The men stared; Clair finally said, “Not at all.”

  She pulled a long slide-fastener somewhere in the garment and it fell away to reveal a modish street-outfit. Gaynor gulped strangely. “Won’t you sit down, Miss Oil,” he said.

  She settled gracefully into a chair. “Earle,” she corrected him. Clair was looking fixedly at an out-of-date periodic table tacked high on the wall, aware that this peculiar woman was studying him. Approvingly? he wondered.

  “Now, just what was it that you wanted with us, Miss Earle,” he inquired. “Maybe we can work out some arrangement . . .”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Prototype

  IF JOCELYN hadn’t been a pretty girl, the deal would never have been made. But pretty Jocelyn was, and moreover she was smart enough to capitalize on her good looks.

  So, it was decided that Jocelyn, in return for a promise of strict secrecy until the experiment was concluded, would be included in the maneuvers of the two scientists, would have every opportunity of finding things out and a promise that no other paper would get a crumb of information. That was a very good bargain, for Jocelyn didn’t have to put anything at all up in exchange. She was pretty, and smart. That was enough.

  “Maybe I can help you two great minds anyhow,” she said. “What’re you trying to do?”

  The two looked at each other. Finally Gaynor said: “You’re not a mathematician, Miss—Jocelyn, that is. I don’t know whether we can translate our language into yours. But—maybe you’ve heard of protomagnetism?”

  “No. Whit is it?”

  “Well, proto—we’ll call it pro
to for short—is something like ordinary magnetism. Only this: ordinary magnetism attracts steel and iron, principally, and only to a very slight degree anything else—such as, for instance, copper and cobalt, which respond just the tiniest bit. Proto attracts a bunch of elements, a little, but so little that it’s never been noticed before For instance, it attracts radium, niton, uranium, and thorium—the radioactive group—a little. The more radioactive, the greater the attraction. And the thing it attracts most of all is the new artificial Element 99.

  “Another difference—magnetism, generally speaking, is a force exerted between two particles of iron or whatever. Proto, on the other hand, ain’t. Radium doesn’t attract radium—both particles are attracted by something else.”

  “Tell her which way they’re attracted,” interjected Clair.

  “I was coming to that,” started Gaynor, but Jocelyn interrupted with: “What am I supposed to gather from all this? According to my boss, you’ve got some sort of a ship. That’s what he sent me here for: to find out what this ship was, and what you’re going to do with it.”

  Clair was startled. “So it’s an open secret now,” he said to Gaynor.

  “Oh, no,” said Jocelyn; “but I know there’s a ship. I don’t know what kind of a ship it is, but I know it’s there. That’s all we could find out. Now, if you will kindly stop stalling and live up to your end of the bargain . . .’

  “I wasn’t stalling, though,” said Gaynor resentfully. “That’s what I was going to tell you, that we’ve got the Prototype, and we’re just about ready to use it. And, what’s more, you’re coming along, because that’s your part of the bargain. It wasn’t before, but it is now, because I just made it so.”

  “Fine,” said Jocelyn, unperturbed. “But where are we going?”

  “That’s what I was coming to—” (“It’s been a long time coming,” murmured Jocelyn). “We’re going to the place whence comes proto. What Art was driving at a while ago is that proto doesn’t pull things upward or downward, or backward or frontward or North-by-East-half-a-point-East, for that matter. It pulls them—out. Into another dimension—or so we think.”