Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  THe SENATOR looked at him speculatively, and with a growing respect. Not a bad speech, that. Not a bad speech at all. If this tomfoolery actually worked, and it might, that could be the approach in selling it to his constituents. By implication, he could take full credit, put over the impression that it was he who had stood over the scientists making sure they were as honest and simple as the mountain farmers. Many a man has gone into the White House with less.

  "Beep, five."

  Five more minutes. The sudden thought occurred to O'Noonan: what if he refused to press the dummy key? Refused to take part in this project he called tomfoolery? Perhaps they thought they were being clever in having him take part in the ship's launching, and were by that act committing him to something....

  "This is the final test, Senator. After this one, if it is right, man leaps to the stars!" It was Jennings' plea, his final attempt to catch the senator up in the fire and the dream.

  "And then more yapping colonists wanting statehood," the senator said dryly. "Upsetting the balance of power. Changing things."

  Jennings was silent.

  "Beep, four."

  "More imports trying to get into our country duty-free," O'Noonan went on. "Upsetting our economy."

  His vision was of lobbyists threatening to cut off contributions if their own industries were not kept in a favorable position. Of grim-jawed industrialists who could easily put a more tractable candidate up in his place to be elected by the free and thinking people of his state. All the best catch phrases, the semantically-loaded promises, the advertising appropriations being used by his opponent.

  It was a dilemma. Should he jump on the bandwagon of advancement to the stars, hoping to catch the imagination of the voters by it? Were the voters really in favor of progress? What could this space flight put in the dinner pails of the Smiths, the Browns, the Johnsons? It was all very well to talk about the progress of mankind, but that was the only measure to be considered. Any politician knew that. And apparently no scientist knew it. Man advances only when he sees how it will help him stuff his gut.

  "Beep, three." For a full minute, the senator had sat lost in speculation.

  And what could he personally gain? A plan, full-formed, sprang into his mind. This whole deal could be taken out of the hands of the military on charges of waste and corruption. It could be brought back into the control of private industry, where it belonged. He thought of vast tracts of land in his own state, tracts he could buy cheap, through dummy companies, places which could be made very suitable for the giant factories necessary to manufacture spaceships.

  As chairman of the appropriations committee, it wouldn't be difficult to sway the choice of site. And all that extra employment for the people of his own state. The voters couldn't forget plain, simple, honest O'Noonan after that!

  "Beep, two."

  JENNINGS FELT the sweat beads increase on his forehead. His collar was already soaking wet. He had been watching the senator through two long minutes, terrible eon-consuming minutes, the impassive face showing only what the senator wanted it to show. He saw the face now soften into something approaching benignity, nobility. The head came up, the silvery hair tossed back.

  "Son," he said with a ringing thrill in his voice. "Mankind must reach the stars! We must allow nothing to stop that! No personal consideration, no personal belief, nothing must stand in the way of mankind's greatest dream!"

  His eyes were shrewdly watching the effect upon Jennings' face, measuring through him the effect such a speech would have upon the voters. He saw the relief spread over Jennings' face, the glow. Yes, it might work.

  "Now, son," he said with kindly tolerance, "tell me what you want me to do about pressing this key when the time comes."

  "Beep, one."

  And then the continuous drone while the seconds were being counted off aloud.

  "Fifty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-seven—"

  The droning went on while Jennings showed the senator just how to press the dummy key down, explaining it in careful detail, and just when.

  "Thirty-seven, thirty-six, thirty-five—"

  "Major!" Jennings called questioningly.

  "Ready, sir."

  "Professor!"

  "Ready, sir."

  "Three, two, one, ZERO!"

  "Press it, Senator!" Jennings called frantically.

  Already the automatic firing stud had taken over. The bellowing, roaring flames reached down with giant strength, nudging the ship upward, seeming to hang suspended, waiting.

  "Press it!"

  The senator's hand pressed the dummy key. He was committed.

  As if the ship had really been waiting, it lifted, faster and faster.

  "Major?"

  "I have it, sir." The major's hands were flying over his bank of controls, correcting the slight unbalance of thrusts, holding the ship as steady as if he were in it.

  Already the ship was beyond visual sight, picking up speed. But the pip on the radar screens was strong and clear. The drone of the IFF returning signal was equally strong.

  The senator sat and waited. He had done his job. He felt it perhaps would have been better to have had the photographers on the spot, but realized the carefully directed and rehearsed pictures to be taken later would make better vote fodder.

  "It's already out in space now, Senator," Jennings found a second of time to call it to the senator.

  The pips and the signals were bright and clear, coming through the ionosphere, the Heaviside layer as they had been designed to do. Jennings wondered if the senator could ever be made to understand the simple honesty of scientists who had worked that out so well and true. Bright and strong and clear.

  And then there was nothing! The screens were blank. The sounds were gone.

  JENNINGS STOOD in stupefied silence.

  "It shut! It shut off!" Major Eddy's voice was shrill in amazement.

  "It cut right out, Colonel. No fade, no dying signal, just out!" It was the first time Jennings had ever heard a note of excitement in Professor Stein's voice.

  The phone began to ring, loud and shrill. That would be from the General's observation post, where he, too, must have lost the signal.

  The excitement penetrated the senator's rosy dream of vast acreages being sold at a huge profit, giant walls of factories going up under his remote-control ownership. "What's wrong?" he asked.

  Jennings did not answer him. "What was the altitude?" he asked. The phone continued to ring, but he was not yet ready to answer it.

  "Hundred fifty miles, maybe a little more," Major Eddy answered in a dull voice. "And then, nothing," he repeated incredulously. "Nothing."

  The phone was one long ring now, taken off of automatic signal and rung with a hand key pressed down and held there. In a daze, Jennings picked up the phone.

  "Yes, General," he answered as though he were no more than a robot. He hardly listened to the general's questions, did not need the report that every radarscope throughout the area had lost contact at the same instant. Somehow he had known that would be true, that it wasn't just his own mechanisms failing. One question did penetrate his stunned mind.

  "How is the senator taking it?" the general asked finally.

  "Uncomprehending, as yet," Jennings answered cryptically. "But even there it will penetrate sooner or later. We'll have to face it then."

  "Yes," the general sighed. "What about safety? What if it fell on a big city, for example?"

  "It had escape velocity," Jennings answered. "It would simply follow its trajectory indefinitely—which was away from Earth."

  "What's happening now?" the senator asked arrogantly. He had been out of the limelight long enough, longer than was usual or necessary. He didn't like it when people went about their business as if he were not present.

  "Quiet during the test, Senator," Jennings took his mouth from the phone long enough to reprove the man gently. Apparently he got away with it, for the senator put his finger to his lips knowingly and sat back again.
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  "The senator's starting to ask questions?" the general asked into the phone.

  "Yes, sir. It won't be long now."

  "I hate to contemplate it, Jim," the general said in apprehension. "There's only one way he'll translate it. Two billion dollars shot up into the air and lost." Then sharply. "There must be something you've done, Colonel. Some mistake you've made."

  THE IMPLIED accusation struck at Jennings' stomach, a heavy blow.

  "That's the way it's going to be?" he stated the question, knowing its answer.

  "For the good of the service," the general answered with a stock phrase. "If it is the fault of one officer and his men, we may be given another chance. If it is the failure of science itself, we won't."

  "I see," the colonel answered.

  "You won't be the first soldier, Colonel, to be unjustly punished to maintain public faith in the service."

  "Yes, sir," Jennings answered as formally as if he were already facing court martial.

  "It's back!" Major Eddy shouted in his excitement. "It's back, Colonel!"

  The pip, truly, showed startlingly clear and sharp on the radarscope, the correct signals were coming in sure and strong. As suddenly as the ship had cut out, it was back.

  "It's back, General," Colonel Jennings shouted into the phone, his eyes fixed upon his own radarscope. He dropped the phone without waiting for the general's answer.

  "Good," exclaimed the senator. "I was getting a little bored with nothing happening."

  "Have you got control?" Jennings called to the major.

  "Can't tell yet. It's coming in too fast. I'm trying to slow it. We'll know in a minute."

  "You have it now," Professor Stein spoke up quietly. "It's slowing. It will be in the atmosphere soon. Slow it as much as you can."

  As surely as if he were sitting in its control room, Eddy slowed the ship, easing it down into the atmosphere. The instruments recorded the results of his playing upon the bank of controls, as sound pouring from a musical instrument.

  "At the take-off point?" Jennings asked. "Can you land it there?"

  "Close to it," Major Eddy answered. "As close as I can."

  Now the ship was in visual sight again, and they watched its nose turn in the air, turn from a bullet hurtling earthward to a ship settling to the ground on its belly. Major Eddy was playing his instrument bank as if he were the soloist in a vast orchestra at the height of a crescendo forte.

  Jennings grabbed up the phone again.

  "Transportation!" he shouted.

  "Already dispatched, sir," the operator at the other end responded.

  Through the periscope slit, Jennings watched the ship settle lightly downward to the ground, as though it were a breezeborne feather instead of its tons of metal. It seemed to settle itself, still, and become inanimate again. Major Eddy dropped his hands away from his instrument bank, an exhausted virtuoso.

  "My congratulations!" the senator included all three men in his sweeping glance. "It was remarkable how you all had control at every instance. My progress report will certainly bear that notation."

  The three men looked at him, and realized there was no irony in his words, no sarcasm, no realization at all of what had truly happened.

  "I can see a va-a-ast fleet of no-o-ble ships...." the senator began to orate.

  But the roar of the arriving jeep outside took his audience away from him. They made a dash for the bunker door, no longer interested in the senator and his progress report. It was the progress report as revealed by the instruments on the ship which interested them more.

  The senator was close behind them as they piled out of the bunker door, and into the jeep, with Jennings unceremoniously pulling the driver from the wheel and taking his place.

  Over the rough dirt road toward the launching site where the ship had come to rest, their minds were bemused and feverish, as they projected ahead, trying to read in advance what the instruments would reveal of that blank period.

  The senator's mind projected even farther ahead to the fleet of space ships he would own and control. And he had been worried about some ignorant stupid voters! Stupid animals! How he despised them! What would he care about voters when he could be master of the spaceways to the stars?

  Jennings swerved the jeep off the dirt road and took out across the hummocks of sagebrush to the ship a few rods away. He hardly slacked speed, and in a swirl of dust pulled up to the side of the ship. Before it had even stopped, the men were piling out of the jeep, running toward the side of the ship.

  And stopped short.

  UNABLE TO BELIEVE their eyes, to absorb the incredible, they stared at the swinging open door in the side of the ship. Slowly they realized the iridescent purple glow around the doorframe, the rotted metal, disintegrating and falling to the dirt below. The implications of the tampering with the door held them unmoving. Only the senator had not caught it yet. Slower than they, now he was chugging up to where they had stopped, an elephantine amble.

  "Well, well, what's holding us up?" he panted irritably.

  Cautiously then, Jennings moved toward the open door. And as cautiously, Major Eddy and Professor Stein followed him. O'Noonan hung behind, sensing the caution, but not knowing the reason behind it.

  They entered the ship, wary of what might be lurking inside, what had burned open the door out there in space, what had been able to capture the ship, cut it off from its contact with controls, stop it in its headlong flight out into space, turn it, return it to their controls at precisely the same point and altitude. Wary, but they entered.

  At first glance, nothing seemed disturbed. The bulkhead leading to the power plant was still whole. But farther down the passage, the door leading to the control room where the instruments were housed also swung open. It, too, showed the iridescent purple disintegration of its metal frame.

  They hardly recognized the control room. They had known it intimately, had helped to build and fit it. They knew each weld, each nut and bolt.

  "The instruments are gone," the professor gasped in awe.

  It was true. As they crowded there in the doorway, they saw the gaping holes along the walls where the instruments had been inserted, one by one, each to tell its own story of conditions in space.

  The senator pushed himself into the room and looked about him. Even he could tell the room had been dismantled.

  "What kind of sabotage is this?" he exclaimed, and turned in anger toward Jennings. No one answered him. Jennings did not even bother to meet the accusing eyes.

  They walked down the narrow passage between the twisted frames where the instruments should have been. They came to the spot where the master integrator should have stood, the one which should have co-ordinated all the results of life-sustenance measurements, the one which was to give them their progress report.

  There, too, was a gaping hole—but not without its message. Etched in the metal frame, in the same iridescent purple glow, were two words. Two enigmatic words to reverberate throughout the world, burned in by some watcher—some keeper—some warden.

  "Not yet."

  * * *

  Contents

  SENSE FROM THOUGHT DIVIDE

  By Mark Clifton

  What is a "phony"? Someone who believes he can do X, when he can't, however sincerely he believes it? Or someone who can do X, believes he can't, and believes he is pretending he can?

  "Remembrance and reflection, how allied; What thin partitions sense from thought divide."

  Pope

  When I opened the door to my secretary's office, I could see her looking up from her desk at the Swami's face with an expression of fascinated skepticism. The Swami's back was toward me, and on it hung flowing folds of a black cloak. His turban was white, except where it had rubbed against the back of his neck.

  "A tall, dark, and handsome man will soon come into your life," he was intoning in that sepulchral voice men habitually use in their dealings with the absolute.

  Sara's green eyes focused beyond him,
on me, and began to twinkle.

  "And there he is right now," she commented dryly. "Mr. Kennedy, Personnel Director for Computer Research."

  The Swami whirled around, his heavy robe following the movement in a practiced swirl. His liquid black eyes looked me over shrewdly, and he bowed toward me as he vaguely touched his chest, lips and forehead. I expected him to murmur, "Effendi," or "Bwana Sahib," or something, but he must have felt silence was more impressive.

  I acknowledged his greeting by pulling down one corner of my mouth. Then I looked at his companion.

  The young lieutenant was standing very straight, very stiff, and a flush of pink was starting up from his collar and spreading around his clenched jaws to leave a semicircle of white in front of his red ears.

  "Who are you?" I asked the lieutenant.

  "Lieutenant Murphy," he answered shortly, and managed to open his teeth a bare quarter of an inch for the words to come out. "Pentagon!" His light gray eyes pierced me to see if I were impressed.

  I wasn't.

  "Division of Matériel and Supply," he continued in staccato, as if he were imitating a machine gun.

  I waited. It was obvious he wasn't through yet. He hesitated, and I could see his Adam's apple travel up above the knot of his tie and back down again as he swallowed. The pink flush deepened suddenly into brilliant red and spread all over his face.

  "Poltergeist Section," he said defiantly.

  "What?" The exclamation was out before I could catch it.

  He tried to glare at me, but his eyes were pleading instead.

  "General Sanfordwaithe said you'd understand." He intended to make it matter of fact in a sturdy, confident voice, but there was the undertone of a wail. It was time I lent a hand before his forces were routed and left him shattered in hopeless defeat.

  "You're West Point, aren't you?" I asked kindly.