by Jerry
From time to time he wondered what was in the sandwich that came with each lesson. A wonder drug that unlocked hidden knowledge that lay “sleeping” within him? An intelligence accelerator? Whatever it was, it was essential to the process. The only time he’d tried studying without it, Claude had floundered among symbols that almost made sense.
He wondered, too, about the Guzz. The little he learned about their planet and culture (in the final lesson) whetted his appetite for more. He longed to know everything about them, almost to become one of them: They alone would understand what he was doing. It was becoming clear that his colleagues at the university considered him some kind of freak—he would not wear a suit, he could not converse about departmental politics and he was inhumanly intelligent.
Claude ordered all the information on the Guzz he could get. This proved to be a slim volume by a second-rate anthropologist who had interviewed a few of the aliens. Claude skimmed it and began a treatise of his own.
“Despite the advanced ‘democracy’ of the Guzz,” he wrote, “they retain a few oddly ‘primitive,’ even sacramental habits.”
There was a knock at the door. The standard face of a Guzz looked around the frame, saw that he was alone and walked its standard body into the office. Without saying anything, it came over and struck him on the forehead. Twitching, Claude slipped to the floor. The visitor busied itself with a set of plastic bags.
The fallen man was muttering. Bending lower, the man-shape heard: “. . . planarian worms? DNA or . . .?”
“Right you are!” boomed the Guzz. “Yes, we are analogous to your planarian worms—so, of course, are you—and we can transmit behavior genetically.”
He fished a long knife from one bag and tested its blade against a false thumb. “Of course our genes need help. Obviously our—I mean to include your—children do not learn much from their parents’ genes. But these same genes, properly assimilated—”
“I knew it!” Claude croaked, getting up on one elbow. The blow had stunned him, but still the machinery of his mind ground on. With an estatic expression he said, “The old taboos against eating the king, eating the old man, the sage, the father yes?”
“Check.” With a hearty chuckle the visitor kneeled by Claude’s side and felt for the carotid artery. “Those ridiculous taboos have kept your species back hundreds of thousands of years. We’re just now making up the lost time for you.”
“The sandwich meat—”
“Housewives, mechanics, professional people—all the people in that brochure you saw. Just think of it!” He waved the knife oratorically, and the plastic face turned up, as if gazing at a vista. “One genius provides three thousand sandwiches, each capable of providing—with no wastage—part of the education for one more genius! Thus learning will transform your whole species—you will become as gods!”
The Guzz returned his attention to the matter at hand. He poised the knife.
“Superman,” murmured the genius. “On white or rye.”
FALLEN SPACEMAN
Lee Harding
He was born to the stars and by the stars forgotten . . . .
MATTARO knew that it had been an accident—the ship would never have abandoned him intentionally. But knowing this was no way out of his predicament. By now the Star Wind would be many millions of miles away and he could not anticipate any rescue from that direction.
He was lucky to be alive. The ship had accelerated suddenly—and without any prior warning or due regard for his safety—and the spatial concussion had thrown him an enormous distance away from the rear Doppler turrets that had been the object of his routine inspection. He had tumbled through space for hundreds of miles before the miniature computer inside his cumbersome suit had managed to stabilize him in a safe orbit around the beautiful green world that turned underneath him, and when he recovered consciousness he felt sick and confused.
His initial reaction was one of intense fear and a horror of what might become of him; but eventually his rigid training and functional discipline reasserted themselves and he found that he could contemplate the future with a cooler eye.
He was surprised that his suit had survived the catastrophe. He fervently thanked the engineers who had designed and manufactured the monstrous and sometimes awkward exoskeleton and began to check out its functions. The small computer bank set immediately in front of his chest was operating smoothly enough—otherwise he would still be tumbling head over heels through space instead of drifting in a stable orbit around the bright young world below. He cautiously moved his arms and legs and felt the enormous limbs of the suit respond and duplicate his movements; there were no signs of strain or delay in the mechanical operations of the suit. A few judicious bursts from the maneuvering jets convinced him that they, too, were functioning smoothly. He eased off the manual controls and allowed the computer to edge him back into orbit. He listened to it cluck contentedly to itself and considered his predicament.
He disconnected most of the neural sensors from his body and tried to relax. There was ample room inside the suit for him to feel unencumbered; he could flex his limbs and move the upper half of his body quite freely within the restraining webs that cushioned his fragile body from external shocks and minor impacts. He had not yet begun to panic, but for some reason he could not pin down he felt cold. He shivered and felt afraid. There was no logical reason why he should feel such a physical chill: the insulation was working perfectly and his suit seemed to be in excellent shape. So far so good.
Perhaps it was the unaccustomed isolation that brought about this sudden flutter of his pale flesh. He had never before felt so much alone, so unspeakably deserted. Gone was the warmth and companionship of his unit. Now all he had for a friend was the forever wise and quietly clucking computer in his suit.
“AH right, then, little lady,” he sighed. “Let’s see if you can get me out of this mess—”
HE HAD enough air to last him for seven and a half hours, for several circuits of the world below. At the end of that time he would suffer a terrifying death; his suit would become a lonely coffin, orbiting until such time as it swung so low that the atmosphere claimed it and transformed it into fiery incandescence.
Mattaro’s suit was only a standard maintainance unit, a smaller version of the enormous locomotive machines that could carry a man across hostile alien landscapes at considerable speed and protect him from atmospheres that could soon corrupt his pallid human flesh; it had very little to offer in the way of sophisticated survival gear. It had never been meant to move very far away from the immediate vicinity of the ship.
A less intelligent spaceman would have remained in orbit until his small reserve of air gave out, hoping with his last breath that the Star Wind would arrive back in time to save him; but Mattaro knew that no ship could ever contemplate the expenditure of time and energy that would be required if it were to turn around and come back to locate a solitary, mislaid crewman. Mattaro belonged to Maintainance—he was a cog among cogs—and while no one could ever openly be considered expendable, the loss of one small unit could be readily absorbed. Whatever urgent business had spurred the Star Wind hastily to complete its survey of the colonial world below and move off without first making sure that her hull was clear of maintainance units, would also guarantee that the ship could hardly turn back and come looking for him, always assuming that his disappearance had been registered with the Master Control.
Equally, a less intelligent spaceman might have lacked sufficient courage to embark upon the desperate gamble which Mattarp, with his computer’s ready agreement, had decided to commit himself.
Mattaro was logical enough to realize that his only chance lay in trying to reach the world below. The computer had decided that, with a good measure of luck, he might make a safe landing on one of the wide continents that turned underneath his monstrous unmoving feet. Enough power was left in his suit batteries to permit a reasonably fast descent—no point in endangering his life any further by taking it leisurely
and using up more of his vital oxygen than was necessary. Once he was safely down he would need every ounce of reserve air that he could manage so that he might reach some habitation before it finally gave out.
The computer would brake his fall at the very last minute. It would send a powerful surge of energy from the batteries into the gray coils wrapped around his exowaist and quickly nullify the planet’s attraction. Mattaro knew that this entailed great risk, but he believed that with judicious conversation of his available power he just might make a safe landing and the computer endorsed his decision. So, if the suit nursed him down and saved most of its remaining energy for a single, powerful blast of repulsion at the very end of his fall—he just might come out of this alive.
The alternative was unthinkable. Better a quick, fiery death than a slow orbit into insanity. At least this way he could retain some semblence of dignity, up to and including the very end if he failed to accomplish the desired descent.
He had no idea how he would make out once he was on the ground. He knew that this world was inhabited, that the Star Wind had been locked in orbit for several days while its scientists studied the visible results of a seeding program which his people had instigated many centuries earlier; but beyond this he knew nothing. Mattaro was a specialist conversant with every facet of his trade—and with very little else. Such was the nature of his time and his people. What he knew of the people who had colonized the fresh young world below had only been ascertained from ship’s gossip. He knew that they existed on a relatively primitive scale: their society was agrarian and widely scattered and there had been, so far, no outside interference in their affairs. And this was the sum of his knowledge. But he felt confident that the biological sensors in his suit would enable the computer to set him down reasonably close to some sort of habitation—as to how he would make out afterward he had no idea. He would have to play it by ear. The important thing was first to get down.
Some day, years from now, a ship might pass close by this world and, if luck would have it, they would have been made aware of his disappearence and might even dispatch a small skiff to see if they could find some trace of him.
Some day. That could be ages from now. And in the meantime he had to survive.
It was with a growing sense of urgency that he instructed the computer to begin the descent.
HE FELL for what seemed like ages but in actuality amounted to a few short hours. The world underneath his enormous articulated legs became clearer. He entered the upper limits of the atmosphere and the dark night of space changed color abruptly. The nearby sun kindled the air around him until it glowed with a tantalizing blueness he found quite strange. He flexed his limbs inside the suit and felt the exoskeleton respond. He was confident that all would be well.
The air inside the suit became hot.
“Take it easy,” he warned. “I can’t take too much of this.”
The suit slowed slightly. Mattaro began to sweat. It was a process alien to his conditioning and it alarmed him to realize that his body cells were recalling such an archaic function. The grav coils continued to throw out a small measure of power and he grew alarmed when he saw how much this token resistance was draining his batteries. He concluded—and the computer quickly verified—that he hadn’t escaped the concussion of the Star Wind’s departure as, well as he had imagined: a small but continuous energy drain was going somewhere that might well prove disastrous.
Oh, my Mother, why hast thou forsaken me?
His normally placid pulse rate quickened. He began to panic.
An ocean yawned underneath him.
“Not there!” he screamed. “Find some habitation—quickly!”
The computer struggled to oblige but already the energy drain had reached dangerous proportions.
He was three miles up and falling rapidly, the computer jealously withholding as much power as it could safely risk for the last few seconds of the terrifying descent.
It was so hot inside the suit he could hardly breathe.
Now he was inland and falling at a steep angle toward a densely populated forest. The world below looked green, luxuriant and very frightening. There were no signs of human habitation.
Would he ever make it alive?
Two miles.
One.
Falling faster all the time, the wind tearing at his suit like a howling banshee.
Mother, help me! I’m going to die. I don’t want to die . . . out here . . . like this!
Where were the shining cities his people had spun between the stars, the magic wonderlands he had known as a child? Where was the beauty of all the things he had ever known and loved?
Gone.
There was only this crawling world at his feet with some offer of hope; this clumsy ball of mud and water lumbering around a parent sun like some bemused and indolent child; this virgin world fresh from the furnaces of space which man, in his curiosity, had sown with his own seed and stood back in the shadows of the centuries to observe.
For the first time in all his long and precisely ordered life Mattaro became conscious of what living really meant to him. For a moment his eyes widened with something close to horror, like the eyes of one who has seen a vision and is incapable of acting upon what he has seen; then his mind snapped cruelly back to the present.
He was now descending vertically and at a frightful rate toward a small clearing in the forest. The computer waited until his feet were only a few hundred feet away from the tops of the trees before it fed the full remaining power into the grav coils.
The suit shuddered and rocked like a thing gone mad as it fought to decelerate and repulse the gigantic mass of the world below. The sudden application of energy sent the monstrous suit dancing and jiggling across the sky; it shook Mattaro’s body so much that, in spite of the protective webbing that held his body in thrall, he thought it might crack open like an eggshell and spill his mortal insides all over the controls. The computer struggled to stabilize these wild gyrations and bring the suit safely down to the surface of the planet.
He almost made it. The repulsion field had evened itself out and he had begun to drop towards the clearing again. He could see the topmost branches of the tallest trees moving past his faceplate and he began to relax. His nightmare was over. And he had even begun to smile—a little hysterically—when the power finally gave out.
He fell like Icarus.
THE fishing had been bad all day, so Jarvis had withdrawn from this commitment and had sprawled out beside the stream, his arms behind his head, and had contented himself with a little doze and a modicum of thought. He had wedged his rod into a convenient tree stump by the water’s edge and left the line drifting casually downstream; if a fish proved foolish enough to go for his lure a small bell attached to the float would summon him from sleep. But the sun was warm and encouraged idleness and he had only caught two miserably small fish all morning.
A small pouch of wine lay beside him, some sliced rolls and some sausage in a wooden basket, and that was what fishing was really all about. He had eaten most of the food and drunk a goodly measure of the wine when he was roused from his slumber by something he could not understand.
Then he saw the dark speck high in the clear sky and heard the high-pitched, keening cry that seemed to accompany its fall. It grew from a dot the size of a bird into something gigantic and terrifying and out of place and-his mind—a little dulled by the amount of warm wine he had quaffed—was slow to react.
Jarvis was no longer young. The sun had tanned his wrinkled skin a deep shade of brown and his brow was heavy with the burden of years. He had lost count of the seasons he had walked through and his mind, like his limbs, had lost a good deal of vigor. But he had never before seen an object like this falling out of the heavens—and its probable point of impact would seem to be only a short distance away on the other side of the stream.
He sat up, startled, and scrambled to his feet as the object grew large in the sky and fell toward the ground at an in
credible pace. His fishing was forgotten while he stood, transfixed and spellbound. When the thing was almost at the point of crashing into the upper levels of the forest it shuddered suddenly and came to a halt in mid-air. Next it performed an insane jig across the sky, dancing about over the top of the trees like something gone mad. Jarvis took a step backward and nearly lost his balance. He could see it clearly now—and he did not like what he saw. Its general shape was that of a man and it flung its limbs about in a grotesque parody of a man possessed.
It stilled. Jarvis watched, openmouthed, as it glided across the tree tops—toward him.
He backed away. The creature looked like something fetched from a nightmare conjured up by the foulest home brew imaginable. He prepared his skinny legs to run and just as he was about to turn and thrust them into frantic motion—the thing fell.
It crashed down through the forest as though it weighed several tons. He could hear it tearing a pathway through the tightly packed branches: a terrible screeching sound such as a monster might make, fighting for its life. The sound of the impact was thunderous and the ground shook as the creature tumbled to it, unseen.
A flock of birds rose screaming from the scene of the impact. For a while they circled wildly around the great rent in the trees, calling to each other in agitation, then they flew off and dispersed. A lazy column of dust began to creep up into the sky where the creature had fallen.
JARVIS waited for something more to happen. But time went by and only the familiar warm silence of the woods reestablished itself. He fidgeted. He rubbed his eyes and wondered what it was he had really seen and what he should do about it. Perhaps he had drunk too much and scrambled awake with the vestiges of a bad dream still clinging to his thoughts.