Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  “Lights!” yelled Battle. “Turn the damned lights on, Miss Millicent!” As the overhead indirects flared up, bathing the huge lab in a lambent, flaming radiance, the four figures of the Sabre Club members, the Billionaire Clubman and one other leaped into sharp reality.

  It was the figure of the sofa. “We took the liberty,” said Battle, his gun not swerving an inch, “of removing this object from the smoking room. It’s going lock, stock and barrel into the enlarging machine you have here.”

  “You fool!” roared Cromleigh. “Don’t you know—” The descending gun butt cut off any further conversation.

  “Hurry up!” grated the Lieutenant. He hefted the sofa to his broad shoulders.

  “That trembling hand was a signal if ever I saw one. His friends’ll be here any minute. Open that damned machine and plug in the power!”

  The Russian philosopher, muttering wildly to himself, swung wide the gates of the box-like magnifier through which Battle had come only a few hours before.

  “Thank God there’s plenty of room!” groaned Battle. “And if this doesn’t work, prepare for Heaven, friends!” He turned on the machine full power and speed, took Miss Millicent by the arm and dragged her to the far end of the vast lab.

  DURING THE INCREDIBLY long three minutes that ensued, they made ready their weapons for what might prove to be a siege, while Battle explained in rapid-fire undertones what he had had no time for during the plane-ride from Manhattan.

  As he checked the load of his quickfirers he snapped: “Invaders—fooey! Anybody could tell that those women were fresh from an office. They had the clerical air about them. The only invader—as a carefully logical process of deduction demonstrated—was the gruesome creature who’s been posing as Cromleigh. Just murdered the old guy—I suppose—and took over his body. Him and his friends whom he just signaled. He’s the only baby who hypnotized the Phi Beta Kappas they use for busboys.

  “Why did he risk sending me in there? The inevitable mark of a louse. Doesn’t trust anybody, not even his own office-staff dyed a pale green and reduced to half gnat-size. So he sent me in for a spy on them. The whole cock-and-bull story of the creatures from an asteroid was so that there’d be no suspicion directed at him in case some bright waiter should find the louse-people. Wouldn’t be surprised if he’s from an asteroid himself. Crazy business! Craziest damned business!”

  “How about the financial angle?” asked Vaughn, who could be intelligible when money was involved.

  “I picked that bird’s pocket slick as a whistle just before I conked him. Feels like a hundred grand.”

  “Here they come!” snapped Miss Millicent.

  “They” were creatures of all shapes and sizes who were streaming through the only door to the lab, at the other end of the room.

  “Awk!” gulped the lady involuntarily. “They” were pretty awful. There were a hundred or so of them, many much like men, a few in an indescribable liquid-solid state that sometimes was gaseous. The luminous insides of these churned wildly about; there were teeth inside them two feet long.Others were gigantic birds, still others snakes, still others winged dragons.

  “That settles it,” grunted the Russian philosopher as he flicked his gun into and out of its holster faster than the eye could follow. “That settles it. They are amoebic, capable of assuming any shape at all. One is changing now—awk!” He persevered. “Indubitably possessed of vast hypnotic powers over unsuspecting minds only. Otherwise they would be working on us.”

  “They” were rolling in a flood of shifting, slimy flesh down the floor of the lab.

  “The machine! The sofa!” cried Miss Millicent. Battle breathed a long sigh of relief as the cabinet-like expander exploded outward and the sofa it held kept on growing—and growing—and growing—and growing! It stopped just as it filled the segment of the lab that it occupied.

  With a squeaking of tortured timbers the laws of cross-sectional sufferance power asserted themselves and the hundred-yard-high sofa collapsed in a monstrous pile of rubble.

  “Sit very still,” said the Lieutenant. “Be quite quiet and blow the head off any hundred-yard centipede that wanders our way.”

  There were agonized yells from the other side of the couch’s ruins. “That couch,” Battle informed them, “was just plain lousy. Full of centipedes, lice, what have you. And when a louse smells blood—God help any invaders around, be they flesh, fish, fowl or amoebic!”

  AFTER TEN MINUTES there was complete quiet.

  “What about the insects?” asked Vaughn.

  “They’re dead,” said Battle, rising and stretching. “Their respiratory system can’t keep up with the growth. They were good for about ten minutes, then they keel over. Their tracheae can’t take in enough oxygen to keep them going, which is a very good thing for the New Jersey countryside.”

  He strolled over to the vast pile of rubble and began turning over timbers, Miss Millicent assisting him.

  “Ah!” he grunted. “Here it is!” He had found the body of an apple-green young lady whose paint was beginning to peel, revealing a healthy pink beneath. With many endearing terms he brought her out of her swoon as Miss Millicent’s eyebrows went higher and higher.

  Finally she exploded, as the two were cozily settled on a mountainous upholstery-needle that had, at some time, got lost in the sofa.

  “Just when, Lieutenant, did you find out that these people weren’t invaders from an asteroid?”

  Rattle raised his eyebrows and kissed the girl. “Have no fear, darling,” he said. “A gentleman never—er—kisses—and tells.

  Mars-Tube

  The dead Martians had made no distinction between fact and fiction in their writings. So naturally, Earth’s archaeologists took it for granted that some of the impossible things they mentioned were fictitious. . . .

  CHAPTER ONE

  After Armageddon

  RAY STANTON set his jaw as he stared at the molded lead seal on the museum door. Slowly he deciphered its inscription, his tongue stumbling over the unfamiliar sibilants of the Martian language as he read it aloud before translating. “To the—strangers from the third planet—who have won their—bitter—triumph—we of Mars charge you—not to wantonly destroy—that which you will find—within this door . . . Our codified learning—may serve you—better than we ourselves—might have done.”

  Stanton was ashamed of being an Earthman as he read this soft indictment. “Pathetic,” he whispered. “Those poor damned people”

  His companion, a slight, dark-haired girl who seemed out of place in the first exploratory expedition to visit Mars after the decades-long war that had annihilated its population, nodded in agreement.

  “The war was a crying shame,” she confirmed. “But mourning the dead won’t bring them back. To work, Stanton!” Stanton shook his head dolefully, but copied the seal’s inscription into his voluminous black archaeologist’s notebook. Then he tore off the seal and tentatively pushed the door. It swung open easily, and an automatic switch snapped on the hidden lights as the two people entered.

  Both Stanton and Annamarie Hudgins, the girl librarian of the expedition, had seen many marvels in their wanderings over and under the red planet, for every secret place was open to their eyes. But as the lights slowly blossomed over the colossal hall of the library, he staggered back in amazement that so much stately glory could be built into one room.

  The synthetic slabs of gem-like rose crystal that the Martians had reserved for their most awesome sanctuaries were here flashing from every wall and article of furnishing, winking with soft ruby lights. One of the typically Martian ramps led up in a gentle curve from their left. The practical Annamarie at once commenced to mount it, heading for the reading-rooms that would be found above. Stanton followed more slowly, pausing to examine the symbolic ornamentation on the walls.

  “We must have guessed right, Annamarie,” he observed, catching up with her. “This one’s the central museum-library for sure. Take a look at the wall-motif.” />
  Annamarie glanced at a panel just ahead, a bas-relief done in the rose crystal. “Because of the ultima symbol, you mean?”

  “Yes, and because—well, look.” The room in which they found themselves was less noble than the other, but considerably more practical. It was of radial design, corridors converging like the spokes of a wheel on a focal point where they stood. Inset in the floor—they were almost standing on it—was the ultima symbol, the quadruple linked circles which indicated pre-eminence. Stanton peered down a corridor lined with racks of wire spools. He picked up a spool and stared at its title-tag.

  “Where do you suppose we ought to start?” he asked.

  “Anywhere at all,” Annamarie replied.

  “We’ve got lots of time, and no way of knowing what to look for. What’s the one in your hands?”

  “It seems to say, ‘The Under-Eaters’—whatever that may mean.” Stanton juggled the tiny “book” undecidedly. “That phrase seems familiar somehow. What is it?”

  “Couldn’t say. Put it in the scanner and we’ll find out.” Stanton obeyed, pulling a tiny reading-machine from its cubicle. The delicacy with which Stanton threaded the fragile wire into its proper receptacle was something to watch. The party had ruined a hundred spools of records before they’d learned how to adjust the scanners, and Stanton had learned caution.

  Stanton and his companion leaned back against the book-racks and watched the fluorescent screen of the scanner. A touch of the lever started its operation. There was a soundless flare of light on the screen as the wire made contact with the scanning apparatus, then the screen filled with the curious wavering peak-and-valley writing of the Martian graphic language.

  BY THE end of the third “chapter” the title of the book was still almost as cryptic as ever. A sort of preface had indicated that “Under-Eaters” was a name applied to a race of underground demons who feasted on the flesh of living Martians. Whether these really existed or not Stanton had no way of telling. The Martians had made no literary distinction between fact and fiction, as far as could be learned. It had been their opinion that anything except pure thought-transference was only approximately true, and that it would be useless to distinguish between an intentional and an unintentional falsehood.

  But the title had no bearing on the context of the book, which was a kind of pseudo-history with heavily allusive passage®, It treated of the Earth-Mars war; seemingly it had been published only a few months before the abrupt end to hostilities. One rather tragic passage, so Stanton thought, read:

  “A special meeting of the tactical council was called on (an untranslatable date) to discuss the so-called new disease on which the attention of the enemy forces has been concentrating. This was argued against by (a high official) who demonstrated conclusively that the Martian intellect was immune to nervous diseases of any foreign order, due to its high development through telepathy as cultivated for (an untranslatable number of) generations. A minority report submitted that this very development itself would render the Martian intellect more liable to succumb to unusual strain. (A medical authority) suggested that certain forms of insanity were contagious by means of telepathy, and that the enemy-spread disease might be of that type.” Stanton cursed softly: “Damn Moriarty and his rocket ship. Damn Sweeney for getting killed and damn and doubledamn the World Congress for declaring war on Mars!” He felt like a murderer, though he knew he was no more than a slightly pacifistic young exploring archaeologist. Annamarie nodded sympathetically but pointed at the screen. Stanton looked again and his imprecations were forgotten as he brought his mind to the problem of translating another of the strangely referential passages:

  “At this time the Under-Eaters launched a bombing campaign on several of the underground cities. A number of subterranean caves were linked with the surface through explosion craters and many of the sinister creations fumbled their way to the surface. A corps of technologists prepared to re-seal the tunnels of the Revived, which was done with complete success, save only in (an untranslatable place-name) where several

  Under-Eaters managed to wreak great havoc before being slain or driven back to their tunnels. The ravages of the Twice-Born, however, were trivial compared to the deaths resulting from the mind diseases fostered by the flying ship of the Under-Eaters, which were at this time. . . .”

  The archaeologist frowned. There n was again. Part of the time “Under Eaters” obviously referred to the Earth men. the rest of the time it equally obviously did not. The text would limp along in styleless, concise prose and then in would break an obscure reference to the “Creations” or “Twice-Born” or “Raging Glows.”

  “Fairy tales for the kiddies,” said Annamarie Hudgins, snapping off the scanner.

  Stanton replied indirectly: “Put it in the knapsack. I want to take it back and show it to some of the others. Maybe they can tell me what it means.” He swept a handful of other reading-bobbins at random into the knapsack, snapped it shut, and straightened. “Lead on, MacHudgins,” he said.

  OF THE many wonders of the red planet, the one that the exploration party had come to appreciate most was the colossal system of subways which connected each of the underground cities of Mars.

  With absolute precision the web of tunnels and gliding cars still functioned, and would continue to do so until the central controls were found by some Earthman and the vast propulsive mechanisms turned off.

  The Mars-tube was electrostatic in principle. The perfectly round tunnels through which the subway sped were studded with hoops of charged metal. The analysis of the metal hoops and the generators for the propulsive force had been beyond Earthly science, at least as represented by the understaffed exploring party.

  Through these hoops sped the singlecar trains of the Mars-tube, every four minutes through every hour of the long Martian day. The electrostatic emanations from the hoops held the cars nicely balanced against the pull of gravity; save only when they stopped for the stations, the cars never touched anything more substantial than a puff of air. The average speed of the subway, stops not included, was upwards of five hundred miles an hour. There were no windows in the cars, for there would have been nothing to see through them but the endless tunnel wall slipping smoothly and silently by.

  So easy was the completely automatic operation that the men from Earth could scarcely tell when the car was in motion, except by the signal panel that dominated one end of the car with its blinking lights and numerals.

  Stanton led Annamarie to a station with ease and assurance. There was only one meaning to the tear-drop-shaped guide signs of a unique orange color that were all over Mars. Follow the point of a sign like that anywhere on Mars and you’d find yourself at a Mars-Tube station—or what passed for one.

  Since there was only one door to a car, and that opened automatically whenever the car stopped at a station, there were no platforms. Just a smaller or larger anteroom with a door also opening automatically, meeting the door of the tube-car.

  A train eventually slid in, and Stanton ushered Annamarie through the sliding doors. They swung themselves gently onto one of the excessively broad seats and immediately opened their notebooks. Each seat had been built for a single Martian, but accomodated two Terrestrials with room to spare.

  At perhaps the third station, Annamarie, pondering the implications of a passage in the notebook, looked up for an abstracted second—and froze. “Ray,” she whispered in a strangled tone. “When did that come in?”

  Stanton darted a glance at the forward section of the car, which they had ignored when entering. Something—something animate—was sitting there, quite stolidly ignoring the Terrestrials. “A Martian” he whispered to himself, his throat dry.

  It had the enormous chest and hips, the waspish waist and the coarse, bristly hairs of the Martians. But the Martians were all dead—

  “It’s only a robot” he cried more loudly than was necessary, swallowing as he spoke. “Haven’t you seen enough of them to know what they look like by now?�
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  “What’s it doing here?” gulped Annamarie, not over the fright.

  As though it were about to answer her question itself, the thing’s metallic head turned, and its blinking eyes swept incuriously over the humans. For a long second it stared, then the dull glow within its eye-sockets faded, and the head turned again to the front. The two had not set off any system of reflexes in the creature.

  “I never saw one of them in the subway before,” said Annamarie, passing a damp hand over her sweating brow.

  Stanton was glaring at the signal panel that dominated the front of the car. “I know why, too,” he said. “I’m not as good a linguist as I thought I was—not even as good as I ought to be. We’re on the wrong train—I read the code-symbol wrong.”

  Annamarie giggled. “Then what shall we do—see where this takes us or go back?”

  “Get out and go back, of course,” grumbled Stanton, rising and dragging her to her feet.

  The car was slowing again for another station. They could get out, emerge to the surface, cross over, and take the return train to the library.

  Only the robot wouldn’t let them.

  For as the car was slowing, the robot rose to its feet and stalked over to the door. “What’s up?” Stanton whispered in a thin, nervous voice. Annamarie prudently got behind him.

  “We’re getting out here anyhow,” she said. “Maybe it won’t follow us.”

  But they didn’t get out. For when the car had stopped, and the door relays clicked, the robot shouldered the humans aside and stepped to the door.

  But instead of exiting himself, the robot grasped the edge of the door in his steel tentacles, clutched it with all his metal muscles straining, and held it shut!

  “DAMNED if I can understand it,” said Stanton. “It was the most uncanny thing—it held the door completely and totally shut there, but it let us get out as peaceful as playmates at the next stop. We crossed over to come back, and while we were waiting for a return car I had time to dope out the station number. It was seventh from the end of the line, and the branch was new to me. So we took the return car back to the museum. The same thing happened on the trip back—robot in the car; door held shut.”