Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  The two glared at Nick with injured expressions. “So this,” stated Vickers sadly, “is how you refer to your loyal aides behind their backs.” He turned to Marquis: “Colleague, we may as well tear up that paper and save ourselves further humiliation.”

  Dorothy Gilbert closed her book with a snap. “Far be it from me to poke my pretty nose into your little brawls, but haven’t you two been rather long in getting the data?” Marquis made a sweeping bow. “Fair lady,” he replied softly, “I appeal to your innate sense of justice and fair play. Did or did not our noble captain, on two occasions, call us all away from our gruelling labor to strain our ears trying to hear an alleged distress signal?”

  Dorothy laughed gaily, shaking her hair away from her forehead. “Indeed, our noble captain did. Not only was your invaluable time wasted, but mine as well. I was rechecking the course and had to start from scratch after the interruption.”

  “My lady is as gracious as she is charming,” bowed Vickers. He faced Nick. “We will be generous, sir, and accept your apology.”

  “The ship’s company,” sighed Nick, “is reminded that the original Hartnett expedition was not entirely lost. It is to be assumed that they are still trying to contact someone, us in particular. Thus the careful attention to what appeared to be distress signals.

  “Now may I suggest that you save your precious time by letting me know what you found?”

  “That,” murmured Marquis to Vickers, “is as close to an apology as he’ll ever get.”

  MARQUIS unrolled a small chart, holding it so both Dorothy and Nick could see. “This,” he explained, “you can check at your leisure, though I’m a monkey’s uncle if you find anything wrong with it. To sum it up briefly, the Columbia is not only the largest space-ship ever made but also the fastest and most powerful.”

  “Very nice,” replied Nick, “but that alone isn’t good enough. We can still be the fastest thing aspace and not be capable of a voyage to Alpha Centauri and back within the span of a lifetime.”

  “If this is correct,” interrupted Dorothy, jabbing at an equation with her index huger, “then we can do it easily.”

  “It’s too damn bad,” mused Nick, “that my father was so secretive about things. Whatever it is we have here, I’ll bet he had just as good—if not better—on the Orion ten years ago.”

  “Didn’t he leave any notes?” asked Vickers.

  “None. Apparently he feared their falling into the wrong hands in case anything happened to him. The only thing he did leave was wave n, the one he promised to use for communications. That’s what the contracel formula came over.”

  Dorothy’s nose wrinkled in puzzlement. “I was under the impression,” she said, “that the contracel formula was radioed to Earth mysteriously—only it was badly garbled, just fractions coming through. And you, Nick, were the only one who could make anything out of it.”

  “Partly ferae,” he admitted. “The ‘mysterious’ radio message however was something I cooked up to keep the newspapers satisfied. I wanted to let out the publicity that the Hartnett expedition wasn’t completely done in, but I didn’t want to draw attention to wave n. The fewer people who know it exists, the better. If I hadn’t thrown them offtrack with a little hocus-pocus, the secret might be out.”

  Vickers blinked. “Excuse me,” he put in—“in this case, I guess I am a goop. But can you explain the contracel to me? I never really got it.”

  “I’m no better off,” grinned Nick, “I managed to get enough data from the radio so as to know how to throw the thing together, but as to precisely what it does and why I can only guess, and I’d rather not get out on a limb on it.

  “All I know is this: interstellar travel, to be anything at all, requires really tremendous speed. To get that speed you have to accelerate like hell. And human bodies aren’t equipped to take the acceleration required.

  “Well, what Dad did was to figure out a counter-acceleration device, which he called the ‘contracel’ for short. All I know is that it blankets the effects of really terrific acceleration so far as our feeling it goes.”

  “Have you any idea, Nick,” asked Dorothy Gilbert, suddenly serious, “where the Hartnett party is?”

  He shook his head. “They were outward bound for Alpha Centauri, just as we’ll be after we get home and check these results. I’ve no idea how far they got, because I don’t know how to check distances by wave n. In fact, I don’t think it can be done; the damned thing doesn’t travel right.

  “You, Dorothy, and Bob, Edgar, and I are all members of the family of the original Hartnett expedition. The reason I wanted you three was because I really expect to look for Dad and his friends on our way to Alph. You. Fred, and Grenville and Timbie aren’t exactly family members in our little circle, but you’re next thing to it. We’ll have to have a bigger crew. for the outing, of course.”

  Dorothy ran her fingers through her hair. “It’s been over twelve years since I last saw Harry,” she whispered. “I wonder what he looks like now?”

  JOE TIMBIE was sucking laboriously on a water-tube as they pulled themselves into the control room. He laid it aside at their entrance, and wiped his face furiously.

  “The interference is terrific,” he began, “but I sounded the alarm because I’m definitely getting something every now and then, although it’s hard to say what.”

  “Any idea as to the source?”

  “You know how wave n is. Edgar’s been cooped up in his cage for about seven hours now, and. if he survives, I damn well think he’ll have taken wave n to pieces and put it together again. Then we’ll know how to trace the signals.”

  Dorothy Gilbert sat on a bench swinging her legs thoughtfully. “How’s the intensity, Joe?”

  Timbie clutched his hair. “O gawd!” he groaned. “It just shouldn’t happen to a dog. This wave has the most unholy variations ever conceived by Lucifer. You remember how it was on Earth?”

  “Yeah,” agreed Nick. “Pretty wavy to say the least.”

  “Well it’s all of that here—only the little jigger has got itself another twist. Not only does the intensity vary according to no laws whatsoever, but every now and then, she comes through full blast, sans interference, backwards!”

  “What!” There was a chorus on that.

  “You heard rightly. I used to have a hobby back on Terra. Superimposition of recordings. I’d take several records of music, and play them simultaneously, working in various others now and then and thus make a new recording. At times I’d run them in backwards, lyrics and all. So, after awhile, I got pretty accustomed to hearing common English words spoken backwards. And damned if some of the apparently garbled signals didn’t sound familiar until suddenly it struck me. I was just beginning to set them down when, whup! in comes the interference, then they’re straight again, but so faint I can’t make them out.”

  “Joe,” called Dorothy softly, “are they always in reverse when they’re strong?”

  “Why—yes, they are.”

  “Does Edgar know that?”

  “Nope.”

  She slid off the table. “I think I’d better tell him before he wastes any more time.”

  “Hold it a moment,” protested Nick. “I want to see if we can get anything. Is the power on, Joe?”

  “Yeah. Apparently they stopped just an instant after I rang you.”

  “Any idea when they might be on again?”

  “Ought to be a few minutes, Nick. I’ve found that they apparently repeat each broadcast three times with a few hours interval between units of three.” He shoved a slip of paper over to Nick. “Here’s what I’ve managed to make out so far.”

  Nick picked it up frowning. “Hmm—not much here—it reads ‘horribly warped by effects of motion’, then there’s a blank—‘had to stay and one’—damn, another blank.”

  “That’s where it either faded out or interference came in,” explained Joe.

  “I see. This is where it reversed, eh? ‘Left and I am’ blank space ‘too
slight to lift.’ That’s all.”

  “Do you suppose,” asked Marquis, “that the phrase ‘left and I am’ might mean that the person sending the signals is the only one left and he’s about at his rope’s end?”

  “Maybe,” suggested Bob Vickers, “something happened to the crew as a result of their acceleration. ‘Horribly warped by effects of motion sounds ominous. Perhaps the crew went bats and they had to land to save the ship. Then something happened to them on the planet so that they had to stay and one—well, maybe he’s telling about the ghastly fate of one of them.”

  What—what about ‘too slight to lift’ ?” reminded Fred.

  “As I recall,” said Nick in hushed tones, “there was one outstanding bad point about Dad’s setup. The contracel controls were pretty heavy and it took a strong man to work them alone. If but one man were on the ship, and he sick, or weak from hunger, he couldn’t lift those levers.” He stared a moment, then added, “Particularly if the gravity on whatever planet the ship is were greater than that of Earth.”

  “I thought the controls were automatic,” protested Dorothy.

  “They were. But Dad had manual controls installed just in case.”

  At this point a wild-eyed, disheveled figure burst in upon them. “I’ve found them,” he cried in a high, strained falsetto. “They’re in a tight little orbit around Proxima Centauri.” Dorothy Gilbert took his arm. “Come with me,” she whispered. “I have some more data for you; you’ve done wonderfully.”

  The two left the room, heads close together. An instant later a faint shriek reached the ears of those in the control room, followed by gibbering noises. Nick made a dive for the exit, to find Edgar cackling faintly to himself as Dorothy led him away. “There, there,” she soothed, “it wasn’t your fault. Now you just go and get a nice long rest, then we’ll help you with the new calculations . . .”

  CHAPTER II

  INCREDIBLE WORLD

  “HERE IT IS,” exclaimed Dorothy wearily, planking down a sheaf of motors. “If you can follow through on this, Joe, we’ll find the missing. We keep on straight ahead, at right angles to Earth’s ecliptic.” She closed her eyes. “Did you know,” she murmured to no one in particular, “that Edgar’s secret ambition is to purr like a cat?”

  “How is he?” asked Nick anxiously.

  “In a drunken stupor. After all he’s been through I didn’t have the heart to say no to him. So he emptied an almost full bottle of the rocket blast.” She beamed at Nick. “Edgar has a special name for each grade of alcoholate we distill; this is the stiff one.”

  “We’ll have to make some more of that,” declared Marquis. “Heigh ho, it’s back to the primitive. Y’know, scientists are pretty sure that savages spend most of their ingenuity in figuring out ways to make better and still better hooch. Disgusting, isn’t it?”

  “Hang on to your stanchions,” yelled Timbie as he pressed a button which would send a warning signal throughout the ship, “we’re accelerating.” Instinctively they obeyed. Without the contracels, they would have been an obscene mass of mangled protoplasm in the seconds that followed; as it was, they experienced something like the feeling one obtains on the downward sweep of a stiff roller coaster.

  “Keep a close check on the direction, Joe,” grated Nick.

  The impact of acceleration did not last long, but it was some five minutes before they really felt normal again. Timbie bent over calculations, a frown working its way across his forehead. “I don’t like the way this is working out,” he muttered.

  “Following Edgar’s equations?” asked Dorothy, picking up the sheet. She glanced over them quickly. “Nothing wrong here only—jeepers, you’re right, Joe! Stop the bus, quick!”

  “What’s wrong?” demanded Nick.

  “Nothing—except that we’ve passed them. They’re behind us now!”

  Timbie’s hands flew over the controls rapidly. “Some day, after the contracel principle has really been perfected, we’re going to have ships that are practically without inertia so long as the power’s on. Ships that can stop dead like that without any terrifying results and go back the way they came as neat as the ancient’s trains on their tracks. But we have to decelerate slowly or we’re basket cases, if anybody ever finds us at all.”

  “WHEREVER they are,” mused Nick, “it’s going to be one sweet job finding the planetoid in this space. It’ll be practically invisible because of the distance from the sun. We may go by it a couple of times.” He jabbed a call button sharply then spoke into a mike. “Grenville? What’s doing? Oh, you are!” He turned to the others. “Our chemical engineer is turning his inventive genius to a superior blend of the rocket blast. How lovely.”

  “Noble pastime,” put in Dorothy. “The last batch was pretty raw—I think it would have dissolved my teeth if I hadn’t swallowed it quickly.”

  “Listen,” yelped Nick. “Lay off the monkey business for a minute and attend. Hop down to the observation room and look for a small planetoid—I don’t know—could be any port. Use maximum magnification because it may be small—oh, big enough to hold a ship about this size perhaps. Possibly—quite probably dark. Signal us as soon as you see something.”

  “If he’s been sampling his wares,” he’s likely to see anything,” suggested Marquis.

  “That being the case,” replied Nick, “you’d better go down and help him, all of you. It’s a tough job for one man in any condition.”

  “Coming?” inquired Marquis of Dorothy. She shook her head.

  “Yaaah!” he jibed. “Captain’s pet!”

  DOROTHY bit her lip. “When I think that we almost went right by it without suspecting. . . almost missed it completely, I mean.”

  Nick clasped her shoulder, his eyes fixed upon the almost invisible planetoid slowly growing before them. “Were you and your brother—very good friends?”

  “I scarcely knew him,” she murmured. “He ran away from home when I was seven or eight, and we only saw him once in awhile after that. I think it was nearly six years after he first hit out before he came back. He was mature then and I was just a silly adolescent, but I idolized him because he was so famous.

  “He spent nearly a whole month with me—with us, that is—about four years before he signed up with your father. But all that seems unreal now. If he’s—still alive, I’ll probably say ‘hello, Harry,’ and kiss him with sisterly affection and be glad he’s all right, but it won’t really mean much. What about your father, Nick?”

  He frowned. “Dad and I were pretty close. Matter of fact, I never called him ‘dad’ until after he disappeared. It was always Steve. He preferred that; didn’t like his own name, though I didn’t know about it for a long time.

  “I never could figure out the relationships between the other kids I knew and their parents. I always felt sorry for them; you see, Steve explained to me once—it’s amazing that I got it the first time—that ‘father’ or ‘dad’ or ‘pop’ was something I’d better call him when other people were around just for the sake of appearances. And, when I was in school, why he was ‘my father.’ But when we were alone together—or just the three of us, Steve, Mater, and I—we didn’t have to be formal at all. We were always the best of friends.”

  She drew closer to him. “I’d like to meet—Steve.”

  He looked at her as if it were the first time they were meeting. “Steve would like you, too,” he replied.

  The alarm clanged for some time before they noticed it.

  “Sorry!” exclaimed Timbie as he came into the room. “We’ve spotted it. It’s less than 500 miles in diameter.”

  He eased himself into the control seat and started to shift them into the proper curve for landing. Fascinated, the three stared out the large port at the rapidly increasing globe before them. Unbroken in surface, it loomed before, a seemingly fantastic and impossible thing, a perfect sphere.

  Slowly, prodigiously slow, they approached, coasting gracefully, for inertia or no, there was still the great mass of the s
hip to take into consideration. There was something w r o n g about this—somewhere—then, suddenly, the same thought struck all three of them.

  “It isn’t a sphere!” voiced Nick. “It just looks that way because of its tremendous speed of rotation!”

  Dorothy wheeled out the z-special camera and turned on the power, let it operate for a full minute. Quietly they waited for the automatic developing process, then cut the lights and flashed a projection on the panel in the rear of the room which was ideally suitable for a motion-picture screen. Eyes glued on the meters, Dorothy adapted the flow of film until the images of the planetoid on the panel corresponded to what they saw outside.

  “What’s the period of rotation?”

  “100 per minute. That, to put it mildly, is fast. It must be extremely dense to hang together at all—and even then, made of ultracohesive matter.”

  AS JOE put it some time later, the business of landing on Hastur (as the planetoid came to be known, Marquis first dubbed it that after some legendary, elemental windbeing; they found out later that Hastur wasn’t really the being Fred had in mind, but it stuck nonetheless) was roughly analogous to that of a fly lighting on a spinning top. There was Hastur looming before them in the deeps of space, gleaming like phosphor on black velvet, the pseudosphere of it slowly swelling before their eyes. And there was the Columbia, a great overgrown cylinder with a turret in the middle—a turret that completely encircled her, because she spun, too,—albeit slowly in comparison to the planetoid—gently curving in to try to light upon the little world’s surface.

  What happened? They should have known, but they didn’t. The Columbia swooped down upon Hastur, like the proverbial falcon upon its prey. Only it wasn’t as simple as that, because the ship touched the outer fringe of that terrifically-accelerated rotating atmosphere and bounced off, ricocheted much like a smooth stone splatting across the surface of water.