A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  “I had just about got over this when I went to London in the middle of ’41. I was sitting in what was left of Claridge’s when Jack Freysling walked in wearing a bomb helmet. I didn’t say anything. I just stared at him, and felt the ice doing a machine gun act through my veins, and waited for him to talk. He ordered a drink and stood there chuckling a while, and then said, ‘Surprised? Suppose you thought I got washed out in Alaska?’

  “I spent three terrible nights and days, and the bombing of the city didn’t mean a thing. It was Jack Freysling being alive that got me. I have sat hand-in-hand with death a dozen times, but I have never felt the cold, maddening fear I felt then. I couldn’t stand to see him, but the moment he got out of sight I’d go almost hysterical until I caught up with him again.

  “You can stand just about so much of that, and then one of two things happens. Your mind accepts what it can’t understand, or it cracks and you go nuts. I was lucky, unless I’m actually in a nuthatch thinking all this now. My mind simply accepted it. I settled down to being rational again, and accepting life as it came. Jack Freysling’s mystery was something I put aside, and knew was there, but did not try to solve. Except for this. I did repeat the fingerprint business, and the man with those fingerprints had been buried in New York, Rio, and Seattle!

  “I went back to the States in company with Jack, and I was with him the night his old boss walked in on him at dinner. This was the man who had identified and buried him in Seattle. The poor man turned ash-white, but he did sit at the table. He sat down and ordered, and midway of the dinner he leaned over and felt Jack’s jaw. Then he said very quietly, ‘I’ve gone crazy,’ and passed out on the floor. The last I heard, he was quietly but completely screwy.

  “About a month before Pearl Harbor I was in Chicago and picked up the paper to see that Jack Freysling, the feature writer, had been killed in a South Side gun brawl between two gangs. Apparently, he was following up some story. I tried to get out of town before I saw him, but too many people knew I knew him, and I got roped in. I had to visit the morgue, and identify him. It was easy enough. His face never changed. Beside, they had those fingerprints.

  “By some stroke of fate, his hearse was smashed by a train en route to the graveyard. The coffin and everything else was smashed wide. It involved insurance, and they had to check everything again, and this time about all that was left of Jack were his fingerprints. But those were enough, and so they put his remains in a basket and carried them. I thought to myself that this time, he was really through, and I was released from that haunting mystery. There might be some explanation, some trick, of a man reappearing after his supposed death if his body was intact. But this time his body had been chopped into a hundred pieces.

  “Well, then there was Pearl Harbor and all of a sudden we had more to worry about than our private lives. I was called up, and shipped out to the Pacific pronto. I had been flying out here about two months when I was transferred to the outfit we were all in. We flew over to join the row in the Solomons, and coming down on that field that first afternoon, I saw a big, wild red-head beside a hangar. Before I even got out of the plane, I knew it was Jack Freysling. It was, grinning and shouting, ‘How’s Chicago?’ ”

  Bill Play stopped and lighted a cigarette, and then looked around the circle of faces with an ironic grin. For a moment, he sat there chuckling softly before he said, “So you think the gremlins have got me? Well, boys, you’ll find out. One of these fine days, you’ll bump into Jack Freysling again!”

  Personally, I agreed one hundred percent with the gremlin part, but not the part about Jack Freysling. There is something uncomfortable about being with a crazy man, even if he’s been a buddy and a friend, and after that, I kept pretty much out of Bill Hay’s way. I recuperated, and got back into action as an observer, and then we were knocked out. Our plane was badly, hit, and we came wobbling into the home field, and just before landing, went off on one wing and crashed. They got us out before we fried, but I was pretty well blistered up, and had the good luck to get shipped back to the States for discharge and recuperation.

  After a while I was able to get around and Broadway looked pretty good, believe me, after those deserts and jungles! I had gone to a show one night and stopped in at a restaurant afterward for a steak.

  I was just about to bite into the first dripping mouthful when I heard that organ voice. It was Jack Freysling, and he sat down grinning, and said, “This has got the Solomons licked a dozen ways!”

  It was a kind of dull jolt, like the kind of blow that knocks your wind and senses out, but doesn’t hurt. Maybe that last crack-up had done something to my sense of shock. I was surprised, but not as much as I should have been, and after a long piece, I asked, “Are you alive?”

  “As much,” he grinned, “as you.”

  That was a heck of a thing for him to say, because it got me to thinking maybe I wasn’t. Maybe this was some particular sort of Hades or something. And so I did what Bill Hay had claimed he did.

  I stole Jack’s fingerprints and checked them. I learned from the War Department that he had died in action, and from the New York police that he had committed suicide, and from the Rio authorities that he was buried there, and from the Seattle undertaker I got the location of his grave. He was also duly recorded as dead and buried in Chicago.

  By a little hocus-pocus and at considerable cost, I got these graves looked into. Excepting for the war, I am afraid I would be in a first-rate front page scandal. No remains were-found in a single one of those graves!

  There is no use trying to get anything out of Jack Freysling on the matter. His eyes simply fire up with those devilish lights and he says airily, “Oh, I die every now and then!”

  I have been to several alienists myself on the matter, and had other old friends of Jack’s identify him. I believe one or two have landed in the nuthatch as a result. The others won’t even mention him out of fear that if they get to talking, they will go there, too. Personally, I have now settled down to the attitude Bill Hay took, and I can understand it now. It isn’t possible, but it’s so. Jack Freysling has died a number of times, but he is going to meet me, nevertheless, in twenty minutes for dinner, unless he has died again by then. He called up awhile back to make the date. He said his little daughter was with him, and he had promised to show her a real battle ace.

  I am going to take a very stiff drink, and then go and meet them. I am very curious about the daughter. This daughter is the one who died, also.

  THE END.

  INVADER FROM INFINITY

  George Whittington

  “Destroy the Invader,” the orders road—and Captain McPartland’s expendable spacer flashed into suicidal battle.

  COMMANDER JON McPARTLAND stared with hard blue eyes into his view screen. He watched a tiny dot in one corner grow slowly, and heard the unnecessary words of his Lieutenant-Commander, Clemens:

  “Observation Officer reports enemy craft sighted, Sir.”

  “Very good,” acknowledged McPartland. “Have Lieutenant Parek compute their speed and course.”

  Clemens spoke softly into the intra-ship phone, and Commander Jon McPartland returned momentarily to his thoughts. His square jaw was set as though cast in bronze, with hard muscles machined into its contour.

  Here was the enemy—the unknown, the alien, who spoke only with destruction! This was the ship that had destroyed System patrols; later a full battle fleet of the Solar System’s most powerful space fighters. The interceptors had been unable to establish communication of any sort; and they were blasted into fiery chunks of space debris before getting close enough to use their own guns.

  “Well, here they are, Clemens,” the Commander said aloud, “and getting uncomfortably close to the System. It looks like they’re some other System’s dominant intelligence, and we’ve got planets they want.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the other, “and here we are, with the fastest, most heavily armed space fighter ever built—in the System.”

&nbs
p; “In the Universe,” snapped McPartland. His full lips curved into a grim smile. “Under sealed orders which every citizen from Pluto to Mercury knows are: ‘Destroy this ship—or it conquers our System.’ ”

  Lieutenant-Commander Clemens bent to his intra-phone, turned to relay. “Navigation Officer reports enemy ship has altered course to head on. Speed fifty Spatial units.”

  “Thank you,” McPartland stepped to the phone himself.

  “This is it, men. You know what it means!” His hands flicked levers swiftly, as he spoke to component units individually:

  “Propulsion—full speed ahead. Make every blast tell!

  “Navigation—evasive course. Swing wide to draw them away from the System so that if—if—”

  “I understand, sir,” came the crisp reply from Lieutenant Parek.

  “All ray stations,” went on McPartland, “fire at maximum range. Radio—any contact?”

  “None, sir.”

  “Magnetic screen interference?” asked the Commander.

  “No, sir. No magnetic defense screens apparent on enemy.”

  “Put ours up full power.” Jon McPartland was smiling now, but his eyes were flashing hatred of the alien. Another ten seconds would find them in effective range. The enemy was looming in the view screen, a round glistening sphere—a ball of destruction pitted again his own slim, sleek avenger.

  “Screens up, sir, full power,” came the response.

  Lieutenant-Commander Clemens had headphones clamped over his ears. He was standing by for reports from stations. He turned suddenly, face lined and taut, and reported almost in a whisper:

  “We’re hit, sir, right through our screens at this range! Partial disintegration in section four. Bulkheads holding.”

  The Commander was standing woodenfaced, incredulous. But the hatred was building up in his eyes until Clemens shuddered.

  “Through our defense screens at this range!” McPartland ground out savagely. He turned back to his view screen with a bitter oath.

  There was the sphere, gleaming, flashing against the bottomless black of space—catching starlight, and throwing it back as though the touch of that pure light was distasteful.

  What form of intelligence destroyed, killed without warning—without speech?

  CLEMENS’ voice broke into the red haze that hovered over his Commander: “Hit again, sir, Section 8. Almost complete disintegration of hull. Bulkheads holding.”

  Jon McPartland spoke his thoughts aloud. “I saw the ray that time, just a faint glimmer across the black. It should have hit Section 6! And—and THEY have no magnetic screen!”

  His hand flicked a lever. “Navigation—break away! Straight course back toward the System.”

  There was a long pause before Lieutenant Parek replied. It was easy to guess his thoughts; quitting, running away! Then he answered; “Yes, sir!”

  Clemens’ voice, speaking softly to the intra-ship, was suddenly the only sound in the control room above the muted whine of generators underneath. Jon McPartland, his battle-ending order acknowledged, glared silently into his screen.

  There the hateful silver sphere shrank slightly in size. Once again McPartland caught the faint flicker of a ray, the star-studded blackness. The Commander looked a fierce question at Clemens.

  “No further damage, sir,” said the latter. He laid the headphones aside. “I believe we are out of range. Lieutenant Parek reports our speed sixty-five Spatial Units; we are drawing away from the enemy.”

  There was no relief in the last words; and Commander McPartland felt a sudden surge of sympathy for the other break through his own bitter anger. Clemens had been gloomy about their chances in the battle; now, the Earth ship broke away from the fight, the Lieutenant-Commander was gloomier in the belief that they hadn’t tried hard enough—that they’d turned in cowardly flight. His eyes avoided his superior’s.

  The latter looked about the room, and no glance was raised to meet his own. Reynolds, the Ray Control Officer stared glumly at his calculators, and fingered the phone that had waited vainly for his range data and fire commands. Clemens, stood quietly, awaiting orders. Engineer McTavish sat in stony silence, gaze fixed on the desk before him, where sensitive indicators flashed red damage signals against a three dimensional scale projection of the ship.

  McPartland felt his eyes misting, and ground his teeth, remembering the alien ship and using his hatred of it to fight back the weakness of his own pride in his men. They wanted to fight! They hated cowardice almost as much as they did the murderers they were running from; and these Earthmen thought their own commander a coward. But discipline and training held them to his judgment.

  “Hell!” barked McPartland. “We’re going back after them.”

  His words shattered the silence and the gloom. Reynolds’ face was suddenly radiant; Clemens relaxed into an expression of smug worry; McTavish grunted.

  “Mister McTavish, what about that damage?” demanded the Commander.

  Engineer McTavish brought his lanky form up from the chair and into rigidity. “You gave no orders, sir,” he reproached, his grey eyes eager.

  “Have your men break out two spacesuits, Mister,” said McPartland. “You and I will go through the bukheads and inspect the damaged hull.”

  “Yes, sir.” McTavish turned eagerly to his phone.

  “Mister Clemens,” snapped the Commander, “hold our course. And you may tell the men we’re not through fighting.”

  McPARTLAND and McTavish stepped carefully through the darkness of section four. Behind them, the bulkhead door had been securely dogged shut against the vacuum of space; before them was a ragged jet patch from which distant stars sent faint light to outline the great rip in the hull.

  Both men carried powerful flashlights, but preferred to step carefully among dim outlines rather than use lights until they reached the hull. There had been a ray gun here—and its crew; and men, suddenly exposed to cold and pressureless space, make grim corpses.

  At the thought, McPartland’s big hand gripped the hammer he carried, so that he almost felt the handle through his heavy gauntlet. He had an insane desire to leap out and wait for the other ship—to batter at its silver hull!

  As though sensing the thought, the Engineer broke in, speaking through his suit-communicator: “Here we are, sir.”

  The flashlight blazed in his hand, its beam spreading along the twisted broken metal of the ship’s side. Instantly the big hammer flashed into the beam and against the metal near its broken edge, swung with every ounce of fury and strength in Jon McPartland’s arm, shoulder and torso.

  “If I’m right,” he muttered with the swing,” we’ll know it now. We’ll have a fighting—chance.”

  He faltered on the last word, as his blow landed and sent some of its force smashing back up his arm and body. But the Commander knew—as a smith knows—the feel of metal under his strength; and Jon McPartland knew his hunch had been right even before McTavish cried:

  “You—you bent it!”

  “Right, Mister. I bent it. And I couldn’t bend the steel that went into this ship’s hull, could I, McTavish?”

  “Blasting right you couldn’t, begging your pardon, sir. No man could.”

  “Then it isn’t steel any longer, McTavish—not near the edges of the spot their ray hit!” McPartland twirled the hammer in his hand, eager as a small boy just learning how to whip the neighborhood bully. “Where that ray hit there was disintegration at the center, transmutation at the edges.”

  Understanding was spreading over the Engineer’s face behind the transparent helmet of his space suit. “Then, man, that ray has one magnetic charge; positive or negative, proton or electron.”

  “And your technicians will tell us which,” ordered the Commander. “Get them busy cutting out samples. We want to know quickly. But you and I have enough to do while we wait, Mister.”

  He led the way back to the bulkhead. Inside, McTavish gave orders, while shedding his space suit and starting down the corrido
r to the control room.

  McPartland explained as they went. “Our magnetic screens, having electrons and protons, bent their ray. I saw it. That made me think they used a mono-charged stream of particles. Some of the particles in the screen attracted the ray charges, others repelled them. You know, of course,” he went on, “how our screens diffuse our own type of duo-charge beam at long range and protect the ship against them.”

  “Yes, man!” His Engineer agreed, excitedly now. “And beams from the screened ship go through on initial velocity. But they couldn’t use a screen—the enemy: there’d be no balance of forces—they’d bend their own ray!”

  “The way we’ll bend it, Mister, when we go back after those murderers!” Jon McPartland took a deep, triumphant breath, and his face lit up with a battle smile that made the Engineer’s heart lift.

  “Mister McTavish, we’re going to string a space lifeboat out behind us on about two miles of cable. You are going to rig up our dynamos to make this ship and the lifeboat the poles of an electromagnet. When your Technicians determine the polarity of the enemy ray, we’ll make the ship the repelling pole.”

  “Then, man, begging your pardon, sir, we go back and let them blast,” cried the Engineer. “Their ray curves away from us—toward the lifeboat. By the time they figure the trick out, we’ll be close enough to blast them wide open.”