by Jerry
“We spent ten days compressing a small portion of lunar atmosphere, mining water from the rocks, setting up a permanent camp and stocking it with enough frozen food to permit one of our number to remain in residence until our next trip, which is planned for October of this year.
“Then, just before blastoff for Earth, at 23:05 solar time, August 27, 1968, I planted a British flag and claimed sole ownership of the entire Moon by right of prior development.”
“Your Honor! Please, Your Honor!” Reuters, minus all sang-froid, was on his feet. “You must . . . you simply can’t refuse to permit me to phone this story to my office. England expects . . .”
“England expects every man here to shut up and sit down!” Gavin roared. When the journalist collapsed he continued:
“Colonel Kane, what plans do your German and English backers have for developing the Moon as a military base?”
“I did not mention the nationality of my backers, Your Honor. Neither did I say anything about a military base . . . only a permanent camp.”
“That will be all for the present, Colonel.” Gavin did not seem annoyed because his leading question had been evaded. “Colonel Horace Brown, please take the stand.”
As the tall shock-haired officer stepped into the limelight, Gerry wondered once more why he disliked him so. Brown was handsome in an unfinished sort of way. He was competent; no doubt about that. Perhaps it was because he was so certain of himself; so confident that the rest of the world was wrong.
“I am Colonel Horace Brown of the United States Air Force, temporarily on assignment to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration,” the witness volunteered.
“The court has been given to understand that you made some discovery of epoch-making importance while on the Moon,” said the Chief Justice. “Will you please tell us about it if you are authorized to do so.”
“I am authorized by the President of the United States.” Brown stuck out his bemedaled chest for the benefit of the cameras and TV recorders. “I found there a beacon which was radiating signals of some sort into space.”
“Order! Order!” Gavin yelled as the courtroom exploded. “A beacon?” he demanded when partial quiet had been restored. “What on earth . . .?”
“On Luna, Your Honor,” Brown corrected. “This happened after the unfortunate intrusion of Russia’s ship made construction of a base inadvisable without further instructions from my government.
“To pass the time profitably I set out, with some of my crewmen, of course, to explore the highest peak of Copernicus. From that vantage point I hoped to obtain . . .”
“Never mind that.” Gavin was becoming tired and edgy. “Come to the point.”
“That exploration party was a stroke of genius on my part, as you soon shall see,” Brown continued as though he had not been interrupted. “It also was a frightening experience . . . for my men, I mean. The forbidding aspect of the Moon far exceeds:
“ ‘The grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead.’ ”
“None of yer poetry,” cried little Judge Hawkins of Australia. He was on the edge of his chair biting his nails. “Tell us what you found.”
“I’m coming to that, sir. After several hours spent hopping dangerously upward from cliff to crumbling cliff I came upon what appeared to be a tripod or steeple built of metal scaffolding.
“ ‘Troops,’ I cried to my men through my helmet mike, ‘somebody must have moved the Seattle Space Needle up here.’ ”
“An original cry,” Gavin said.
“Well, that’s what it looked like!” Brown flushed as the shot went home. “Except that it was many times taller. It was awe-inspiring.
“ ‘Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new . . .’ ”
“We want to know w’at you saw, not ’ow John Keats felt!” demanded Hawkins.
“Brown,” Gavin warned, “people here are becoming hysterical. I don’t know how much longer I can control them. Be brief. If you can.”
“Yes, Your Honor. The spire was inaccessible from the ground, despite the Moon’s low gravity. We got near enough, however, for our scintillation counters to determine that it was sending a powerful beam of modulated radiation toward some point in the sky. That modulation was changing constantly, which made me think that the thing had sensed our presence and was sending out information about us.”
“What did you do then?”
“I rushed back to my ship and, at earthrise, reported to my government in code. I was told to maintain radio silence. Several hours later I was advised to discuss the matter with the Russians. I did so against my better judgment, although”—he bowed grandly to his fellow pilot—“I found Captain Ivanovna both co-operative and charming.
“We returned to the tripod together to confirm my discovery and to take telephoto photographs of an inscription which ran around its base. Although worn by ages of exposure to intense sunlight, heat and cold, this inscription was still distinct. Here are some photographs of it. You will note that the top line resembles the cuniform imprints found on Sumerian clay tables. The second line, I am told, has a faint resemblance to even earlier Egyptian pictographs. The third line, a cursive script, is like nothing I have ever seen.”
Court and correspondents went into separate huddles over the prints.
“An extraterrestrial Rosetta Stone?” Gerry asked of nobody in particular. “What price cold war now’ ?”
“It’s some capitalist trick,” muttered the Tass correspondent. “Brown carried the prefabricated thing with him.”
“What about the radiation?” Reuters asked.
“Now I say!” thundered the Times. “The whole world’s being spied on. Quite a joke on you, Tass.”
“Has the inscription been deciphered?” Gavin finally asked.
“Not to my knowledge,” the colonel replied. “I’m told that cryptographers are working on it in Washington and Moscow.”
“Ha!” Gavin snorted. “This is no cryptogram. It is a message written as plainly as possible for the far future to read. Judge Sholem, you have some knowledge of Sanskrit and other ancient languages. What do you make of it?”
The judge picked up a photograph as though it were a snake, turned it in all directions, studied it through a pocket magnifying glass, then shook his lank ringlets.
“Ezekiel only knows,” he confessed. “The first two lines possibly may go back to the very dawn of terrestrial writing.
A few characters seem vaguely familiar. I get the sense of a warning or, it may even be, an invitation.
“There is one symbol here . . .”
He sketched briefly on a pad of paper and held it up for all to see. It was a circle with a short arrow pointing upward from its circumference toward the right.
“That,” the justice from Israel quavered, “is one of mankind’s oldest signs. It may mean male, iron, Tuesday, the god of war, or . . . the planet Mars. Take your pick.”
Gavin shuffled the photos together with shaking hands. The excitement of the past hour was taking its toll of his nerves and he licked his lips repeatedly.
“What about the U.S. claim to ownership, Colonel Brown?” he asked.
“Revoked, over my protest,” the big man said as though the words would choke him.
Gavin looked toward the table at the right and said in a voice that was scarcely audible:
“Herr Gottlieb, does the Lunar Corporation still lay claim to the Moon despite this proof of prior ownership?”
“Nein!” The German bounced up as though stung. “Nein, nein, nein! This problem is for the United Nations now.”
“And what a problem,” sighed the Chief Justice. “While it is being solved this court stands adjourned. All statements about what we have just heard must come through the Secretariat. Tapes, films and notes taken during the proceedings shall be impounded by the clerk. Guard your tongues.
“Just one thing more: I invite Captain Ivanovna, Colonel Kane and
Colonel Brown to be my dinner guests tonight at Schevenigen.”
“I’m sorry,” said Kane. “I am a semi-invalid and my doctor has ordered me to bed for a long rest. I thank you.”
“I must return to Washington at once to confer with my President,” said Brown. “We must scotch this menace . . . Uh . . . I also thank you.”
“I shall be happy to join you,” said Ivanovna. “Vodka seems called for at this juncture in human affairs.”
“Excellent!” Gavin showed signs of returning energy. “I shall ask a friend along. Gerry! Come here, confound you, and help me up!”
DEVIL CAR
Roger Zelazny
The machine was built for one deadly mission—a war against its own kind!
Murdock sped across the Great Western Road Plain.
High above him the sun was a fiery yo-yo as he took the innumerable hillocks and rises of the Plain at better than a hundred sixty miles an hour. He did not slow for anything, and Jenny’s hidden eyes spotted all the rocks and potholes before they came to them, and she carefully adjusted their course, sometimes without his even detecting the subtle movements of the steering column beneath his hands.
Even through the dark-tinted windshield and the thick goggles he wore, the glare from the fused Plain burnt into his eyes, so that at times it seemed as if he were steering a very fast boat through night, beneath a brilliant alien moon, and that he was cutting his way across a lake of silver fire. Tall dust waves rose in his wake, hung in the air, and after a time settled once more.
“You are wearing yourself out,” said the radio, “sitting there clutching the wheel that way, squinting ahead. Why don’t you try to get some rest? Let me fog the shields. Go to sleep and leave the driving to me.”
“No,” he said. “I want it this way.”
“All right,” said Jenny. “I just thought I would ask.”
“Thanks.”
About a minute later the radio began playing—it was a soft, stringy sort of music.
“Cut that out!”
“Sorry, boss. Thought it might relax you.”
“When I need relaxing, I’ll tell you!”
“Check, Sam. Sorry.”
The silence seemed oppressive after its brief interruption. She was a good car though, Murdock knew that. She was always concerned with his welfare, and she was anxious to get on with his quest.
She was made to look like a carefree Swinger sedan: bright red, gaudy, fast. But there were rockets under the bulges of her hood, and two fifty-caliber muzzles lurked just out of sight in the recesses beneath her headlamps; she wore a belt of five- and ten-second timed grenades across her belly; and in her trunk was a spray-tank containing a highly volatile naphthalic.
. . . For his Jenny was a specially designed deathcar, built for him by the Archengineer of the Geeyem Dynasty, far to the East, and all the cunning of that great artificer had gone into her construction.
“We’ll find it this time, Jenny,” he said, “and I didn’t mean to snap at you like I did.”
“That’s all right, Sam,” said the delicate voice, “I am programmed to understand you.”
They roared on across the Great Plain and the sun fell away to the west. All night and all day they had searched, and Murdock was tired. The last Fuel Stop/Rest Stop Fortress seemed so long ago, so far back . . .
Murdock leaned forward and his eyes closed.
The windows slowly darkened into complete opacity. The seat belt crept higher and drew him back away from the wheel. Then the seat gradually leaned backwards until he was reclining on a level plane. The heater came on as the night approached, later.
The seat shook him awake a little before five in the morning.
“Wake up, Sam! Wake up!”
“What is it?” he mumbled.
“I picked up a broadcast twenty minutes ago. There was a recent car-raid out this way. I changed course immediately, and we are almost there.”
“Why didn’t you get me up right away?”
“You needed the sleep, and there was nothing you could do but get tense and nervous.”
“Okay, you’re probably right. Tell me about the raid.”
“Six vehicles, proceeding westward, were apparently ambushed by an undetermined number of wild cars sometime last night. The Patrol Copter was reporting it from above the scene and I listened in. All the vehicles were stripped and drained and their brains were smashed, and their passengers were all apparently killed too. There were no signs of movement.”
“How far is it now?”
“Another two or three minutes.”
The windshields came clear once more, and Murdock stared as far ahead through the night as the powerful lamps could cut.
“I see something,” he said, after a few moments.
“This is the place,” said Jenny, and she began to slow down.
They drew up beside the ravaged cars. His seat belt unsnapped and the door sprang open on his side.
“Circle around, Jenny,” he said, “and look for heat tracks. I won’t be long.”
The door slammed and Jenny moved away from him. He snapped on his pocket torch and moved toward the wrecked vehicles.
The Plain was like a sand-strewn dance floor—hard and gritty—beneath his feet. There were many skid-marks, and a spaghetti-work of tire tracks lay all about the area.
A dead man sat behind the wheel of the first car. His neck was obviously broken. The smashed watch on his wrist said 2:24. There were three persons—two women and a young man—lying about forty feet away. They had been run down as they tried to flee from their assaulted vehicles.
Murdock moved on, inspected the others. All six cars were upright. Most of the damage was to their bodies. The tires and wheels had been removed from all of them, as well as essential portions of their engines; the gas tanks stood open, siphoned empty; the spare tires were gone from the sprung trunks. There were no living passengers.
Jenny pulled up beside him and her door opened.
“Sam,” she said, “pull the brain leads on that blue car, the third one back. It’s still drawing some energy from an auxiliary battery, and I can hear it broadcasting.”
“Okay.”
Murdock went back and tore the leads free. He returned to Jenny and climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Did you find anything?”
“Some traces, heading northwest.”
“Follow them.”
The door slammed and Jenny turned in that direction. They drove for about five minutes in silence. Then Jenny said: “There were eight cars in that convoy.”
“What?”
“I just heard it on the news. Apparently two of the cars communicated with the wild ones on an off-band. They threw in with them. They gave away their location and turned on the others at the time of the attack.”
“What about their passengers?”
“They probably monoed them before they joined the pack.”
Murdock lit a cigarette, his hands shaking.
“Jenny, what makes a car run wild?” he asked. “Never knowing where it will get its next fueling—or being sure of finding spare parts for its auto-repair unit? Why do they do it?”
“I do not know, Sam. I have never thought about it.”
“Ten years ago the Devil Car, their leader, killed my brother in a raid on his Gas Fortress,” said Murdock, “and I’ve hunted that black Caddy ever since. I’ve searched for it from the air and I’ve searched on foot. I’ve used other cars. Pve carried heat trackers and missiles. I even laid mines. But always it’s been too fast or too smart or too strong for me. Then I had you built.”
“I knew you hated it very much. I always wondered why,” Jenny said.
Murdock drew on his cigarette.
“I had you specially programmed and armored and armed to be the toughest, fastest, smartest thing on wheels, Jenny. You’re the Scarlet Lady. You’re the one car can take the Caddy and his whole pack. You’ve got fangs and claws of the kind they’ve never met
before. This time I’m going to get them.”
“You could have stayed home, Sam, and let me do the hunting.”
“No. I know I could have, but I want to be there. I want to give the orders, to press some of the buttons myself, to watch that Devil Car burn away to a metal skeleton. How many people, how many cars has it smashed? We’ve lost count. I’ve got to get it, Jenny!”
“I’ll find it for you, Sam.”
They sped on, at around two hundred miles an hour.
“How’s the fuel level, Jenny?”
“Plenty there, and I have not yet drawn upon the auxiliary tanks. Do not worry.
“—The track is getting stronger,” she added.
“Good. How’s the weapons system?”
“Red light, all around. Ready to go.”
Murdock snubbed out his cigarette and lit another.
Some of them carry dead people strapped inside,” said Murdock, “so they’ll look like decent cars with passengers. The black Caddy does it all the time, and it changes them pretty regularly. It keeps its interior refrigerated—so they’ll last.”
“You know a lot about it, Sam.”
“It fooled my brother with phoney passengers and phoney plates. Got him to open his Gas Fortress to it that way. Then the whole pack attacked. It’s painted itself red and green and blue and white, on different occasions, but it always goes back to black, sooner or later. It doesn’t like yellow or brown or two-tone. I’ve a list of almost every phoney plate it’s ever used. It’s even driven the big freeways right into towns and fueled up at regular gas stops. They often get its number as it tears away from them, just as the attendant goes up on the driver’s side for his money. It can fake dozens of human voices. They can never catch it afterwards though, because it’s souped itself up too well. It always makes it back here to the Plain and loses them. It’s even raided used car lots—”
Jenny turned sharply in her course.
“Sam! The trail is quite strong now. This way! It goes off in the direction of those mountains.”
“Follow!” said Murdock.
For a long time then Murdock was silent. The first inklings of morning began in the east. The pale morning star was a white thumbtack on a blue board behind them. They began to climb a gentle slope.