by Anthology
Mac and I had almost reached him when a Jek with insignia on his coveralls suddenly jumped down from his lift and came forward to meet him. It was an odd thing to see--the stoker, and the Jek, who did not stand as tall. MacReidie and I stepped back.
The Jek was coal black, his scales glittering in the cold sunlight, his hatchet-face inscrutable. He stopped when the stoker was a few paces away. The stoker stopped, too. All the Jeks were watching him and paying no attention to anything else. The field might as well have been empty except for those two.
"They'll kill him. They'll kill him right now," MacReidie whispered.
They ought to have. If I'd been a Jek, I would have thought that uniform was a death warrant. But the Jek spoke to him:
"Are you entitled to wear that?"
"I was at this planet in '39. I was closer to your home world the year before that," the stoker said. "I was captain of a destroyer. If I'd had a cruiser's range, I would have reached it." He looked at the Jek. "Where were you?"
"I was here when you were."
"I want to speak to your ship's captain."
"All right. I'll drive you over."
The stoker nodded, and they walked over to his vehicle together. They drove away, toward the Jek ship.
"All right, let's get back to work," another Jek said to MacReidie and myself, and we went back to unloading cargo.
* * * * *
The stoker came back to our ship that night, without his duffelbag. He found me and said:
"I'm signing off the ship. Going with the Jeks."
MacReidie was with me. He said loudly: "What do you mean, you're going with the Jeks?"
"I signed on their ship," the stoker said. "Stoking. They've got a micro-nuclear drive. It's been a while since I worked with one, but I think I'll make out all right, even with the screwball way they've got it set up."
"Huh?"
The stoker shrugged. "Ships are ships, and physics is physics, no matter where you go. I'll make out."
"What kind of a deal did you make with them? What do you think you're up to?"
The stoker shook his head. "No deal. I signed on as a crewman. I'll do a crewman's work for a crewman's wages. I thought I'd wander around a while. It ought to be interesting," he said.
"On a Jek ship."
"Anybody's ship. When I get to their home world, I'll probably ship out with some people from farther on. Why not? It's honest work."
MacReidie had no answer to that.
"But--" I said.
"What?" He looked at me as if he couldn't understand what might be bothering me, but I think perhaps he could.
"Nothing," I said, and that was that, except MacReidie was always a sourer man from that time up to as long as I knew him afterwards. We took off in the morning. The stoker had already left on the Jek ship, and it turned out he'd trained an apprentice boy to take his place.
* * * * *
It was strange how things became different for us, little by little after that. It was never anything you could put your finger on, but the Jeks began taking more goods, and giving us things we needed when we told them we wanted them. After a while, Serenus was going a little deeper into Jek territory, and when she wore out, the two replacements let us trade with the Lud, too. Then it was the Nosurwey, and other people beyond them, and things just got better for us, somehow.
We heard about our stoker, occasionally. He shipped with the Lud, and the Nosurwey, and some people beyond them, getting along, going to all kinds of places. Pay no attention to the precise red lines you see on the star maps; nobody knows exactly what path he wandered from people to people. Nobody could. He just kept signing on with whatever ship was going deeper into the galaxy, going farther and farther. He messed with green shipmates and blue ones. One and two and three heads, tails, six legs--after all, ships are ships and they've all got to have something to push them along. If a man knows his business, why not? A man can live on all kinds of food, if he wants to get used to it. And any nontoxic atmosphere will do, as long as there's enough oxygen in it.
I don't know what he did, to make things so much better for us. I don't know if he did anything, but stoke their ships and, I suppose, fix them when they were in trouble. I wonder if he sang dirty songs in that bad voice of his, to people who couldn't possibly understand what the songs were about. All I know is, for some reason those people slowly began treating us with respect. We changed, too, I think--I'm not the same man I was ... I think--not altogether the same; I'm a captain now, with master's papers, and you won't find me in my cabin very often ... there's a kind of joy in standing on a bridge, looking out at the stars you're moving toward. I wonder if it mightn't have kept my old captain out of that place he died in, finally, if he'd tried it.
So, I don't know. The older I get, the less I know. The thing people remember the stoker for--the thing that makes him famous, and, I think, annoys him--I'm fairly sure is only incidental to what he really did. If he did anything. If he meant to. I wish I could be sure of the exact answer he found in the bottom of that last glass at the bar before he worked his passage to Mars and the Serenus, and began it all.
So, I can't say what he ought to be famous for. But I suppose it's enough to know for sure that he was the first living being ever to travel all the way around the galaxy.
* * *
Contents
LORDS OF THE STRATOSPHERE
by Arthur J. Burks
High into air are the great New York buildings lifted by a ray whose source no telescope can find
CHAPTER I
The Take-off
It seemed only fitting and proper that the greatest of all leaps into space should start from Roosevelt Field, where so many great flights had begun and ended. Fliers whose names had rung--for a space--around the world, had landed here and been received by New York with all the pomp of visiting kings. Fliers had departed here for the lands of kings, to be received by them when their journeys were ended.
Of course Lucian Jeter and Tema Eyer were disappointed that Franz Kress had beaten them out in the race to be first into the stratosphere above fifty-five thousand feet. There was a chance that Kress would fail, when it would be the turn of Jeter and Eyer. They didn't wish for his failure, of course. They were sports-men as well as scientists; but they were just human enough to anticipate the plaudits of the world which would be showered without stint upon the fliers who succeeded.
"At least, Tema," said Jeter quietly, "we can look his ship over and see if there is anything about it that will suggest something to us. Of course, whether he succeeds or fails, we shall make the attempt as soon as we are ready."
"Indeed, yes," replied Eyer. "For no man will ever fly so high that another may not fly even higher. Once planes are constructed of unlimited flying radius ... well, the universe is large and there should be no end of space fights for a long time."
Eyer, the elder of the two partner scientists, was given sometimes to quiet biting sarcasm that almost took the hide off. Jeter never minded greatly, for he knew Eyer thoroughly and liked him immensely. Besides they were complements to each other. The brain of each received from the other exactly that which he needed to supplement his own knowledge of science.
They had one other thing in common. They had been "child prodigies," but contrary to the usual rule, they had both fulfilled their early promise. Their early precocious wisdom had not vanished with the passing of childhood. Each possessed a name with which to conjure in the world of science. And each possessed that name by right of having made it famous. And yet--they were under forty.
Jeter was a slender athletic chap with deep blue eyes and brown hair. His forehead was high and unnaturally white. There was always a still sort of tenseness about him when his mind was working with some idea that set him apart from the rest of the world. You felt then that you couldn't have broken his preoccupation in any manner at all--but that if by some miracle you did, he would wither you with his wrath.
Tema Eyer was the good nature
of the partnership, with a brain no less agile and profound. He was a swart fellow, straight as an arrow, black of eyes--the sort which caused both men and women to turn and look after him on the street. Children took to both men on sight.
The crowd which had come out to watch the take-off of Franz Kress was a huge one--huge and restless. There had been much publicity attendant on this flight, none of it welcome to Kress. Oh, later, if he succeeded, he would welcome publicity, but publicity in advance rather nettled him.
Jeter and Eyer went across to him as he was saying his last words into the microphone before stepping into his sealed cabin for the flight. Kress saw them coming and his face lighted up.
"Lord," he said, "I'm glad to see you two. I've something I must ask you."
"Anything you ask will be answered," said Jeter, "if Tema and I can answer it. Or granted--if it's a favor you wish."
Kress motioned people back in order to speak more or less privately with his brother scientists. His face became unusually grave.
"You've probably wondered--everybody has--why I insist on making this flight alone," he said, speaking just loudly enough to be heard above the purring of the mighty, but almost silent motor behind him. "I'll tell you, partly. I've had a feeling for the last month that ... well, that things may not turn out exactly as everybody hopes. Of course I'll blaze the way to new discoveries; yes, and I'll climb to a height of around a hundred thousand feet ... and ... and...."
Jeter and Eyer looked at each other. It wasn't like Kress to be gloomy just before doing something that no man had ever done before. He should have been smiling and happy--at least for the movietone cameras--but he wasn't even that. Certainly it must be something unusual to so concern him.
"Tell us, Kress," said Eyer.
Kress looked at them both for several moments.
"Just this," he said at last: "work on your own high altitude plane with all possible speed. If I don't come back ... take off and follow me into the stratosphere at once."
Had Kress, possessor of one of the keenest scientific minds in the world, taken leave of his senses? "If I don't come back," he had said. What did he expect to do? Fly off the earth utterly? That was silly.
But when the partners looked again at Kress they both had the same feeling. It probably wasn't as silly as it sounded. Did Kress know something he wasn't telling them? Did he really think he might ... well, might fly off the earth entirely, away beyond her atmosphere, and never return? How utterly absurd! And yet....
"Of course we'll do it," said Jeter. "We'd do it anyway, without word from you. We haven't stopped our own work because of your swiftly approaching conquest of the greater heights. But why shouldn't you come back?"
* * * * *
For a moment there was a look of positive dread upon Kress' face.
Then he spoke again very quietly:
"You know all the stuff that's been written about my flight," he said. "Most of it has been nonsense. How could laymen newspaper reporters have any conception of what I may encounter aloft? They've tried to make something of the recent passage of the Earth through an area of so-called shooting stars. They've speculated until they're black in the face as to the true nature of the recent bombardment of meteorites. They've pictured me as a hero in advance, doomed to death by direct attack from what they are pleased to call--after having invented them--denizens of the stratosphere."
"Yes?" said Jeter, when Kress paused.
Kress took a deep breath.
"They've come nearer than they hoped for in some guesses," he said. "Of course I don't know it, but I've had a feeling for some time. You know what sometimes happens when a man gets a sudden revolutionary idea? He concentrates on it like all get-out. Then somebody else bursts into the newspapers with the same identical idea, which in turn brings out hordes of claims to the same idea by countless other people. It's no new thing to writers and such-like gentry. They know that when they get such an idea they must act on it at once or somebody else will, because their thoughts on the subject have gone forth and impinged upon the mental receiving sets of others. Well, that's a rough idea, anyway. This idea of denizens of the stratosphere has attacked the popular imagination. You'll remember it broke in the papers simultaneously, in thirty countries of the world!"
A cold chill ran down the spine of Tema Eyer. He saw, in a flash, whither Kress' thoughts were tending--and when he saw that, it thrilled him, too, for it seemed to be proof of the very thing Kress was saying.
"You mean," he said hoarsely, "that you too think there may be something up there, something ... well, sensate? Some great composite thought which inspires the general dread of stratosphere denizens?"
Kress shrugged. He wouldn't commit himself, being too careful a scientist, but he hadn't hesitated to plant the idea. Jeter and Eyer both understood the thoughts which were teeming in Kress' brain.
"We'll do our part Kress," said Eyer. Lucian Jeter nodded agreement. Kress gripped their hands tightly--almost desperately, Jeter thought. Jeter was usually the leader where Eyer and himself were concerned and he thought already that he foresaw cataclysmic events.
* * * * *
Kress climbed into his plane. The vast crowd murmured. They knew he was adjusting everything inside for the days-long endurance test ahead of him. Kress had forgotten nothing. There was even a specially made cylinder, comparable to the globe which Picard had used in his historic balloon ascensions in Europe. This was attached to a parachute which, if the emergency arose, could be dropped. Kress, in the ball, could pass through the sub-arctic cold of the stratosphere if necessity demanded. The ball, if it struck the ocean, would preserve him for a great length of time. It was even equipped with rockets.
This plane was revolutionary. It was, to begin with, carrying a vast load. Kress was taking every conceivable kind of instrument he fancied he might need. There was food as for a long siege.
Jeter shuddered. Why had he thought of the word "siege"?
The great load would be carried without difficulty, however, for this plane was little short of a miracle. Among other things, Kress would be able, in case of fatigue, to set his controls--as at sea a pilot may sometimes lash his wheel--and sleep while his plane mounted on up, and up, in great spirals.
Up beyond fifty-five thousand he hoped to attain a thousand miles an hour velocity. That meant, say, breakfast in New York, lunch in London, tea in Novo-Sibirsk, dinner in Yokohama--as soon as the myriad planes which would follow this one in design and capabilities took off on the trail Kress was blazing.
Jeter sighed at the thought. For several years he had explored little-known sections of the world. He had visited every country. He had entered every port that could be reached from the ocean--and all the time he had felt the Earth shrinking before the gods of speed. The time would soon come when everything on Earth would be commonplace. Then man's urge to go places he hadn't seen before would take him away from the Earth entirely--when he would begin the task of making even the universe shrink to appease the gods of speed. Somehow the thought was a melancholy one.
Now the crowd gave back as Kress speeded up his motor, indicating that he would soon take off. Jeter and Eyer studied the outward outline of Kress' craft. It looked exactly like a black beetle which has just alighted after flight, but has not yet quite hidden its wings. It was black, probably because it was believed a black object could be followed easier from the Earth.
There would be many anxious eyes watching that spiraling ship as it grew smaller and smaller, climbing upward.
With a rush, and a spinning of dust in the slipstream, the ship was away. It lifted as easily as a bird and mounted with great speed. It was capable of climbing in wide spirals at a hundred and fifty miles an hour.
A great sigh burst from the thousands who had come to watch history made. For solid hours now they would watch the plane climb, growing smaller, becoming a speck, vanishing. Many curious ones would stay right here until Kress returned, fearful of being cheated of a great thrill. For Kre
ss was to land right here when, and if, he had conquered the stratosphere.
* * * * *
Jeter and Eyer wormed their way through the crowd to the road and found their car in a jam of other cars. Without a word they climbed in and drove themselves to their dwelling--combined home and laboratory--in Mineola. There they fell to on their own ship, which was being built piece by piece in their laboratory.
Every half hour or so one or the other would go to the lawn and gaze aloft, seeking Kress.
"He's out of eyesight," said Eyer, the last to go. "Is the telescope set up?"
"Yes, and arranged to cover all the area of sky through which Kress is likely to climb."
At intervals through the night, long after they had ceased work, the partners rose from bed and sought their fellow scientist among the stars. They alternated at this task.
"According to my calculations," said Jeter, when the eastern sky was just paling into dawn, "Kress has now reached a point higher than man has ever flown before, higher than any living--"
Jeter stopped on the word. Both men remembered Kress' last words. Kress, upset or not, properly or improperly, had hinted of living things in the stratosphere--perhaps utterly malignant entities.
It was just here, in the dawning of the first day after Kress' departure, that the dread began to grow on Jeter and Eyer. And during the day they labored like Trojans at their work, as though to forget it.
The world had begun its grim wait for the return of Kress.
They waited all that day ... and the next ... and the next!
Then telegraph and radio, at the suggestion of Jeter, instructed the entire civilized world to turn its eyes skyward to watch for the return of Kress.
The world obeyed that day ... and the next ... and the next!
But Kress did not return; nor, so far as the world knew, did any or all of his great airplane.
The world itself began to have a feeling of dread--that grew.