A Large Anthology of Science Fiction

by Jerry

  Faircloth carefully folded the paper and spoke to the driver of the limousine. The huge car rose at the next tunnel exit, and sped north along the surface, then rose again. Paul waited, impatiently, and then stepped out of the car at the given address. Five minutes later he was holding Jean Sanders in his arms, while Robert Roberts sat chewing a cigar at the far side of the room, looking vastly pleased with himself.

  IX

  “IT WAS handled beautifully,” Faircloth was saying. “The timing was perfect, and there’s no question but that it will go across.” He looked up at Jean. “You’re sure you got everything across to him when he contacted you again?”

  She nodded. Her face was still pale. “He turned me inside out. Cleaned out everything I knew. I didn’t resist. And then when we’d heard from you he contacted me again, and I knew that we were right. He’s been in touch with me ever since. He’ll be here soon.”

  Faircloth nodded to Roberts. “And you’ve arranged for the raids to start up through New England?”

  Roberts nodded. He looked slightly high. “Everything’s under control. Marino has a ship ready for takeoff, and we have guns up near Eagle Rock to blast it down. Ain’t many people around in northern Ontario. The pictures will be rather bad, probably, but after all—field conditions, you know.

  It will certainly look like the same sort of ship that landed out in Iowa, and there won’t be enough left when the blasting is over to tell for sure whether the mangled mess that they drag out of it later is man, Alien or oily rags. Those guns do a good job.”

  Something touched Faircloth’s mind, lightly, like a quiet knock. He swung around, his eyes wide. “He’s here,” he said, and then he saw that Jean already knew. “Tell him to come up.”

  She nodded, and dosed her eyes, Moments later they heard the footsteps on the stairs, hesitant footsteps. Then the door swung open. They stared at him for a moment, and then both men were wringing the man’s hand, offering him a glass, and he sank down on the cot they had prepared for him, exhausted. “You must be dead,” Paul said quietly.

  “I am, I am,” said the man. “Mind if I lie down?”

  He was an ordinary looking man. He was slender, about thirty, and very pale. A single-factor Psi-High had no distinguishing physical characteristics; there really was no reason to expect a double-factor psi-positive to look any different. But somehow they had half expected a god-like creature, and he just looked like a frightened young man.

  His face was mild and rather sad. But his eyes were clear and sharp, and the mouth was in a grim line, as he sank back on the couch. “I was afraid you’d never spot it,” he said. “For a while it looked as though the whole thing would backfire. I mean when Towne was planning the shift in the Council and trying to force an election. I was afraid—and in the midst of that, you started your cat-and-mouse game—”

  Faircloth nodded. “We had no choice. We didn’t know, and you didn’t dare reveal what you were doing at that point.”

  The man shook his head. “It was better this way, much better. I planned to kill Towne and then let you capture me. Counting on you to work the propaganda right. Then nobody would have known that the Alien was killed before he even got started.” Faircloth smiled. “The computer even listed that as a possibility. Low probability, but that was on the basis of what we knew. We hadn’t even considered it—yet every living Psi-High has known for a long time that someday two Psi-Highs would have a child. We could only guess what the child might be like.”

  The man looked up at them sadly. “The child would be lonely beyond words,” he said. “He would be able to hide, yes. He would be able to slow down his psi-powers in order to appear like an ordinary Psi-High. He could never have revealed it. Not even to his closest friends.”

  “And you knew that the real Alien had been killed?”

  “Almost as soon as it happened. He died in agony. He had a powerful mind. He broadcast so wildly that every Psi-High within a hundred miles must have gotten a shower. I was in Des Moines, and got the whole picture clear as a bell. Went down and picked the details out of the farmer’s brain. He was too frightened to tell what he had done, and nobody paid too much attention to him anyway.” He shifted wearily on the cot. “The Alien must have been working so hard to maintain his disguise that the farmer caught him short. I knew it, and I knew what I had to do. I went ahead and did it.”

  “Of course Towne will fight,” said Roberts later, when the man had drifted off into a deep sleep. “He’s clever, and resourceful. When we ‘rescue’ him from Eagle Rock, he’s going to know exactly what has happened.”

  Jean Sanders laughed happily. “I’d like to see him,” she said. “I’d like to see him helpless just once.”

  Paul grinned. “You will. Things will be too far ahead of him by then. And of course, there will be a physical and mental examination. It will be a pity that the Alien left his mind in such a state of shock and delusion but maybe after a few months of psychiatric treatment we can find out the real reason why he hates Psi-Highs so much. And then, perhaps, we’ll have a powerful fighter on our side instead of against us.”

  He looked around at the others, his face grave. “We can’t afford to have the world against us again, not ever. That part of the news broadcast was perfectly true. There was an Alien. He was telepathic. And there Will be others coming—maybe in a year, maybe in five, or ten, or a hundred—” He leaned back wearily in the relaxer. “We cashed in on it, this time, but we mustn’t forget the parts that are true.”

  Jean smiled and put her arm around him. “They’ll come, sometime—yes. But when they come they’ll find the Earth well guarded.” Her eyes drifted to the sleeping figure on the cot, and then came back to Paul’s and held them. “When they do come, there’ll be others—like him—to stop them.”

  THE STUTTERER

  R.R. Merliss

  A man can be killed by a toy gun—he can die of fright, for heart attacks can kill. What, then, is the deadly thing that must be sealed away, forever locked in buried concrete—a thing or an idea?

  Out of the twenty only one managed to escape the planet. And he did it very simply, merely by walking up to the crowded ticket window at one of the rocket ports and buying passage to Earth. His Army identification papers passed the harassed inspection of the agent, and he gratefully and silently pocketed the small plastic stub that was handed him in exchange for his money.

  He picked his way with infinite care through the hordes of ex-soldiers clamoring for passage back to the multitudinous planets from which they had come. Then he slowly climbed the heavy ramp into the waiting rocket.

  He saw with relief that the seats were strongly constructed, built to survive the pressure of many gravities and he chose one as far removed as possible from the other passengers.

  He was still very apprehensive, and, as he waited for the rocket to take off, he tried hard to remember the principles of the pulse drive that powered the ship, and whether his additional weight would upset its efficiency enough to awaken suspicion.

  The seats filled quickly with excited hurrying passengers. Soon he heard the great door clang shut, and saw the red light flicker on, warning of the take-off. He felt a slow surge of pressure as the ship arose from the ground, and his chair creaked ominously with the extra weight. He became fearful that it might collapse, and he strained forward trying to shift some of the pressure through his feet to the floor. He sat that way, tense and immobile, for what seemed a long time until abruptly the strain was relieved and he heard the rising and falling whine of the rockets that told him the ship was in pulse drive, flickering back and forth across the speed of light.

  He realized that the pilots had not discovered his extra weight, and that the initial hazards were over. The important thing was to look like a passenger, a returning soldier like the others, so that no one would notice him and remember his presence.

  His fellow travelers were by this time chatting with one another, some playing cards, and others watching the teledepth
screens. These were the adventurers who had flocked from all corners of the galaxy to fight in the first national war in centuries. They were the uncivilized few who had read about battle and armed struggle in their history books and found the old stories exciting.

  They paid no attention to their silent companion who sat quietly looking through the quartz windows at the diamond-bright stars, tacked against the blackness of infinity.

  The fugitive scarcely moved the entire time of the passage. Finally when Earth hung out in the sky like a blue balloon, the ship cut its pulsations and swung around for a tail landing.

  The atmosphere screamed through the fins of the rocket, and the continents and the countries, and then the rivers and the mountains took shape. The big ship settled down as gently as a snowflake, shuddered a few times and was quiet.

  The passengers hurriedly gathered up their scattered belongings and pushed toward the exit in a great rush to be out and back on Earth.

  The fugitive was the last to leave. He stayed well away from the others, being fearful that, if he should touch or brush up against someone, his identity might be recognized.

  When he saw the ramp running from the ship to the ground, he was dismayed. It seemed a flimsy structure, supported only by tubular steel. Five people were walking down it, and he made a mental calculation of their weight—about eight hundred pounds he thought. He weighed five times that. The ramp was obviously never built to support such a load.

  He hesitated, and then he realized that he had caught the eye of the stewardess waiting on the ground. A little panicky, he stepped out with one foot and he was horrified to feel the steel buckle. He drew back hastily and threw a quick glance at the stewardess. Fortunately at the moment she was looking down one field and waving at someone.

  The ramp floor was supported by steel tubes at its edges and in its exact center. He tentatively put one foot in the middle over the support and gradually shifted his weight to it. The metal complained creakily, but held, and he slowly trod the exact center line to Earth. The stewardess’ back was turned toward him as he walked off across the field toward the customhouse.

  He found it comforting to have under his feet what felt like at least one yard of cement. He could step briskly and not be fearful of betraying himself.

  There was one further danger: the customs inspector.

  He took his place at the end of the line and waited patiently until it led him up to a desk at which a uniformed man sat, busily checking and stamping declarations and traveling papers. The official, however, did not even look up when he handed him his passport and identification.

  “Human. You don’t have to go through immigration,” the agent said. “Do you have anything to declare?”

  “N-no,” the traveler said. “I d-didn’t bring anything in.”

  “Sign the affidavit,” the agent said and pushed a sheet of paper toward him.

  The traveler picked up a pen from the desk and signed “Jon Hall” in a clear, perfect script.

  The agent gave it a passing glance and tossed it into a wire basket.

  Then he pushed his uniform cap back exposing a bald head. “You’re my last customer for a while, until the rocket from Sirius comes in. Guess I might as well relax for a minute.” He reached into a drawer of the desk and pulled out a package of cigarettes, of which he lit one.

  “You been in the war, too?” he asked.

  Hall nodded. He did not want to talk any more than he had to.

  The agent studied his face.

  “That’s funny,” he said after a minute. “I never would have picked you for one of these so-called adventurers. You’re too quiet and peaceful looking. I would have put you down as a doctor or maybe a writer.”

  “N-no,” Hall said. “I w-was in the war.”

  “Well, that shows you can’t tell by looking at a fellow,” the agent said philosophically. He handed Hall his papers. “There you are. The left door leads out to the copter field. Good luck on Earth!”

  Hall pocketed the stamped documents. “Thanks,” he said. “I’m glad to be here.”

  He walked down the wide station room to a far exit and pushed the door open. A few steps farther and he was standing on a cement path dug into a hillside.

  Across the valley, bright in the noon sun lay the pine covered slopes of the Argus mountains, and at his feet the green Mojave flowering with orchards stretched far to the north and south. Between the trees, in the center of the valley, the Sacramento River rolled southward in a man-made bed of concrete and steel giving water and life to what had a century before been dry dead earth.

  There was a small outcropping of limestone near the cement walk, and he stepped over to it and sat down. He would have been happy to rest and enjoy for a few moments his escape and his triumph, but he had to let the others know so that they might have hope.

  He closed his eyes and groped across the stars toward Grismet. Almost immediately he felt an impatient tug at his mind, strong because there were many clamoring at once to be heard. He counted them. There were seventeen. So one more had been captured since he had left Grismet.

  “Be quiet,” the told them. “I’ll let you see, after a while. First I have to reach the two of us that are still free.”

  Obediently, the seventeen were still, and he groped some more and found another of his kind deep in an ice cave in the polar regions of Grismet.

  “How goes it?” he asked.

  The figure on Grismet lay stretched out at full length on the blue ice, his eyes closed. He answered without moving: “They discovered my radiation about an hour ago. Pretty soon, they’ll start blasting through the ice.”

  The one on Earth felt the chill despair of his comrade and let go. He groped about again until he found the last one, the only other one left. He was squatting in the cellar of a warehouse in the main city of Grismet.

  “Have they picked up your trail yet?” he asked.

  “No,” answered the one in the cellar. “They won’t for a while. I’ve scattered depots of radiation all through the town. They’ll be some time tracking them all down, before they can get to me.”

  In a flash of his mind, Hall revealed his escape and the one on Grismet nodded and said: “Be careful. Be very careful. You are our only hope.”

  Hall returned then to the seventeen, and he said with his thoughts: “All right, now you can look.” Immobile in their darkness, they snatched at his mind, and as he opened his eyes, they, too, saw the splendors of the mountains and the valley, the blue sky, and the gold sun high overhead.

  The new man was young, only twenty-six. He was lean and dark and very enthusiastic about his work. He sat straight in his chair waiting attentively while his superior across the desk leafed through a folder.

  “Jordan. Tom Jordan,” the older man finally said. “A nice old Earth name. I suppose your folks came from there.”

  “Yes, sir,” the new man said briskly.

  The chief closed the folder.

  “Well,” he said, “your first job is a pretty important one.”

  “I realize that, sir,” Jordan said. “I know it’s a great responsibility for a man just starting with the Commission, but I’ll give it every thing I have.”

  The chief leaned back in his seat and scratched his chin thoughtfully.

  “Normally we start a beginner like you working in a pair with an older man. But we just haven’t got enough men to go around. There are eight thousand planets there”—he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder to a wall-sized map of the galaxy—“and we’ve got to cover every one. It seems reasonable that if he escaped this planet, he’ll go to another that will by its atmosphere or its temperature give him some natural advantage over us—some place that is either burning hot or at absolute zero, or perhaps with a chlorine or sulfur dioxide atmosphere. That’s why”—he hesitated a minute, but continued because he was a truthful man—“I picked you for Earth. It’s the most populated of all the planets and it seems the least likely one that he would choose
.”

  Jordan’s face dropped a little bit when he heard the last piece of information, but he said: “I understand, sir, and if he’s there, I’ll bring him back.”

  The chief slouched farther back in his seat. He picked up a shard of rubidium that served as a paper weight and toyed with it.

  “I guess you know most of the facts. They are made out of permallium. Have you ever seen any of the stuff?”

  The new man shook his head. “I read about it though—some new alloy, isn’t it?”

  “Plenty new. It’s the hardest stuff anybody has ever made. If you set off one hundred successive atom blasts over a lump of permallium, you might crystallize and scale maybe a micron off the surface. It will stand any temperature or pressure we can produce. That just means there’s no way to destroy it.”

  Jordan nodded. He felt a little honored that the chief was giving him this explanation in person rather than just turning him over to one of the scientific personnel for a briefing. He did not understand that the old man was troubled and was talking the situation through as much for his own sake as for anyone else’s.

  “That’s the problem,” the chief continued. “Essentially an indestructible machine with a built-in source of power that one can’t reach. It had to be built that way—a war instrument, you know.”

  He stopped and looked squarely at the bright young man sitting across the desk. “This lousy war. You’d think the human race would grow up some time, wouldn’t you?” He filled a pipe with imported Earth tobacco and lit it, and took a few deep puffs. “There’s something else. I don’t know how they do it, but they can communicate with one another over long distances. That made them very useful for military purposes.

  “They are loyal to one another, too. They try to protect each other and keep one another from being captured. Do you find that surprising?”

  The question caught Jordan unprepared. “Well, yes. It is, kind of—” he said. “They are only machines.”