Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "Summon all landing party," Captain Griswold commanded immediately.

  The signal bells rang throughout the ship. The bell in the supercargo cabin rang also. With the other scientists, Berkeley dressed in his protecting suit, fitted the clear glassite oxygen helmet over his head, fastened it. Together with the rest, he stood at the designated airlock to await the captain's coming.

  And the captain did not keep them waiting. At precisely the right moment, with only a flicker of a side glance at the photographic equipment, the captain strode ahead of his officers to the airlock. The sealing doors of the corridor behind them closed, shutting off the entire party, making the corridor itself into a great airlock.

  There was a long sigh, and the great beams of the locks moved ponderously against their weight. There was the rush of air from the corridor as the heavier pressure rushed out through the opening locks, to equalize with the thin air of Mars. With the air rushed outward fungus spores, virus, microbes; most of them to perish under the alien conditions, but some to survive—and thrive.

  The red light above the lock was blinking on-off-on-off. The officers, the scientists, the armed men, watched the light intently. It blinked off for the last time. The locks were open. The great ramp settled to the ground.

  In ordered, military file, the captain at their head, the landing party passed down the corridor, through the locks, out upon the ramp beneath the blue-black sky; and down to the red soil. Captain Griswold was the first man to set foot on Mars, June 14, 2018. The photographers were second.

  Now the Mars race was moving closer to the ship, but the ground was still too hot for their unprotected feet. The pressing need for removing the meteor possessed them. The movement of the men disembarking from the ship was to them no more than another unintelligible aspect of this incredible meteor.

  The sound of a bugle pierced the thin air, picked up by the loudspeaker from the ship, reverberating through their helmets. The landing party formed a semi-circle at the foot of the ramp.

  Captain Griswold, his face as rigidly set as the marble statuary of him to follow, reached out and took the flag from Lieutenant Atkinson. He planted it firmly, without false motion, in the framework one of the men had set upon the baked ground to receive it.

  He pointed to the north, the south, the east, the west. He brought his hands together, palms downward, arms fully out-stretched in front of him. He spread his arms wide open and down, then back together and up; completing a circle which encompassed all the planet. He held out his right hand and received the scroll from Lieutenant Atkinson.

  With a decisive gesture, not quite theatrical, he unfurled the scroll. He read in a voice firm enough to impress all posterity:

  "By virtue of authority invested in me from the Supreme Council of the Western Alliance, the only true representatives of Earth and Man, I take possession of all this planet in the name of our President, the Supreme Council, the Western Alliance, Earth, and in the name of God."

  The ground was cool enough now that their feet might bear it. The pain was great, but it was lost in the greater pain of feeling the killing obstruction the great meteor had brought to their canals. The Mars race began to press inward, inexorably.

  It was in the anticlimactic moment, following the possession ceremony, when men milled around in uncertainty, that Lt. Atkinson saw the Mars race had come closer and were still moving.

  "The monsters!" he exclaimed in horror. "They're attacking!"

  Berkeley looked, and from the little gestures of movement out of his long training he deduced their true motive.

  "Not against us!" he cried. "The ship."

  Perhaps his words were more unfortunate than his silence might have been; for the ship was of greater concern to Captain Griswold than his own person.

  "Halt!" Griswold shouted toward the approaching Mars race. "Halt or I'll fire!"

  The Mars race paid no heed. Slowly they came forward, each step on the hot ground a torture, but a pain which could be borne. The greater torture, the one they could not bear, was the ache to press against this meteor, push it away, that they might dig the juncture clean again. As a man whose breath is stopped fights frantically for air, concerned with nothing else, so they felt the desperation of drying sands.

  They came on.

  "For the last time," Griswold shouted, "halt!" He made a motion with his hands, as if to push them back, as if to convey his meaning by signs. Involuntarily, then, his eyes sought those of Berkeley. A look of pleading, helplessness. Berkeley met the glance and read the anxiety there, the tragic unwillingness of the man to arouse posterity's rage or contempt.

  It was a brief glance only from both men and it was over. Captain Griswold's head came up; his shoulders straightened in the face of the oncoming monsters. They were close now, and coming closer. As always, the experts were free with their advice when it was not needed. When the chips were down, they could do no more than smirk and shrug a helpless shoulder.

  He gave the command, and now there was no uncertainty.

  "Fire!"

  The celebration was being held in the Great Stadium, the largest, most costly structure that Man had ever built. It was a fitting structure for the more important football games; and used on occasion, if they could be fitted in without upsetting the schedule, for State affairs. Now the stadium was filled to capacity, its floor churned by the careless feet of the thousands upon thousands who had managed to obtain an entrance.

  From the quarter-mile-high tiers of seats, from the floor of the stadium, the shouts welled up, washing over the platform at the North end.

  "Griswold! Griswold!"

  It was not yet time for history to assess the justice of the massacre.

  The President raised his hand. The battery of video cameras picked up each move.

  "Our hopes, our fears, our hearts, our prayers rode through every space-dark, star-flecked mile with these glorious pioneers." He turned then to the captain. "For the people of Earth, Admiral Griswold, this medal. A new medal for a Guider of Destiny, Maker of Empire, Son of Man!"

  The voice faltered, stopped.

  The crowd on the floor of the stadium was pressing outward from the center, screaming in pain and terror. At the moment when the people should be quiet, rapt in reverence, they were emptying the floor of the stadium. But not willingly. They were being pressed back and out, as a great weight pushes its way through water. Those who could move outward no farther were crushed where they stood.

  And then the ship appeared.

  Hazy of outline, shimmering with impossible angles, seen by its glinting fire of light rather than by its solid form, as if its reality were in some other dimension and this only a projection, the ship appeared.

  The President's hand reached out and gripped Griswold's shoulder as he leaned back and back, trying to determine its vast height. A silence then clutched the crowd—a terrified silence.

  A full minute passed. Even on the platform, where all the pioneers of Mars were assembled with Earth's dignitaries, even there the people cowered back away from this unseeable, unknowable horror.

  But one man leaned forward instead, frantically studying the shimmering outline of the ship. One man—Berkeley.

  With the training of the ethnologist, a man who really can deduce an entire civilization from mystifying data, he recognized the tremendous import.

  At the end of that minute, without warning, a group of figures hovered in the air near the floor of the stadium.

  Quickly, Berkeley's eyes assessed their form, their color, the increasing solidity of the humanoids. There are some movements, some gestures, common to all things of intelligence—the pause, the resolution, the lift of pride.

  "No!" he screamed and started forward. "Oh, no! We're civilized. We're intelligent!" He was pulled back, as in his terror he tried to leap from the platform to get at the humanoids.

  Held there, unable to move, he read the meaning of the actions of the group hovering near the ship. One flashed a shining tent
acle around, as if to point to the stadium, the pitifully small spaceship on display, the crowds of people.

  The leader manifestly ignored him. He flowed forward a pace, his ovoid head held high in pride and arrogance. He pointed a tentacle toward the south end of the stadium, and a pillar of leaping flame arose; fed with no fuel, never to cease its fire, the symbol of possession.

  He pointed his tentacles to the north, the south, the east, the west. He motioned with his tentacles, as if to encircle all of Earth.

  He unfurled a scroll and began to read.

  * * *

  Contents

  SECURITY RISK

  By Ed M. Clinton, Jr.

  At moments like this, General David Walker always thought fleetingly of the good old days when he had hated the army. As usual, he smashed the thought out of his mind with a distinct sense of remorse.

  He looked up again at the seamed face of the Chief of Staff, General Marcus Meriwether. "This could be serious," he said slowly, with a sick sense of the statement's inadequacy. An old tic suddenly returned, tugging at the left corner of his mouth.

  The deadly, unsmiling expression on Meriwether's face did not change as he slid more tightly into his chair. "You know as well as I that it means the Interplanetary Confederation is ready to go to war with us."

  Walker stared at the typed statement on his desk. It was a decoded intelligence message from United Terra's prime agent in the Interplanetary Confederation, and it was very brief: the Confederation had developed a long-range neural weapon effectively cancelling out every armament development achieved by United Terra in fifteen years of a cold war that of late had become bitter cold. The all-but-autonomous colonies of Mars and Venus, united now for twenty years in an economic league, had been itching for independence for a quarter of a century. The itch had developed into a mighty burning.

  "You are fully aware," Meriwether continued, his face still set, "of our feeling that the Confederation has been eager to take on Terra. They've clearly been waiting for some positive advantage to offset our pure strength-in-numbers."

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  It was a touchable touching an untouchable. Both scientist and general were doing their own version of right....

  Walker forced his eyes upward and stared at his superior. "Your tone says that such a war might be—"

  "Unwelcome at this time. Unwelcome at this time." Meriwether shifted around in his chair, and scratched at its leather arms with the manicured tips of his gnarled fingers. "Walker, I don't have to tell you that this weapon, if it is what our agent infers—and there is no reason to believe otherwise—that this weapon makes it impossible for us to go to war with the Confederation—unless, as Chief of Weapons Development, you can tell me that we have something in our arsenal to combat it."

  Walker rubbed at the tic. "Nothing," he said quietly.

  Meriwether leaned forward, his hands crooked backward against the chair arms like catapult springs. "That answer is unacceptable. There are other questions you must answer, Walker, questions in some ways even more important than that basic one. Why haven't we developed this weapon ourselves? Why haven't we been aware of its potential existence? Where are the defensive devices which would naturally develop from such cognizance? These things are all your department, Walker." His voice pitched upward an hysterical fraction. "It just doesn't make sense, you know. We've a hundred times the personnel, ten times the facilities, unlimited funds—but they've beaten us to it." He stood up and pushed his chair back, eyes squinting out of a reddening face that seemed on the point of bursting. "Why, Walker?"

  Once again Walker thought about how he had hated the army when he was a bright young physics student. That was a long time ago—So much had happened. The doors had closed around him, one at a time, doors closing on the scientific mind. And so now, instead of a research scientist in white smock with textbook, he was a military administrator in smart greys with glittering stars of military rank.

  "I'll say this, Walker," Meriwether shouted, his voice breaking again. "We'd better catch up quick. Mighty quick. Let's put it this way. It might mean your rank and your job, Walker. But you won't give a damn. Because we'll have lost the war. We'll have lost the colonies. And you know what that would mean, Walker?" He bent forward across the desk, his face exploding into Walker's eyes. "Only a fool believes that United Terra can survive in an economy without tri-planetary hegemony.

  "Walker, you've all the authority within my power to grant. You'll have no trouble getting money. But—get the answer. Quick."

  Walker blinked after him as he strode to the door. "I'll try to hold off a federal investigation as long as I can," Meriwether added, turning from the half-opened door. "But I can't guarantee a thing."

  Walker sat alone in a cubicle of light in the darkened city and gulped down his twentieth cup of coffee. It had grown cold in the cup and with a grimace he pushed it aside.

  There was no doubt about it. He thumbed through the sheaf of scribbled notes he had transcribed from stacks of documents and racks of spools from Security files. Clearly, he had the answer to Meriwether's questions. But, having it, he did not quite know what to do with it.

  There was, however, no doubt at all: United Terra had been on the track of the neural weapon—ten years earlier. Could have had it—and had lost the chance.

  He rubbed his thumbs hard against his tired eyes and tried to remember back that ten years: at that time he had been Chief of Weapons Development for perhaps three years. His own name, though, had appeared in none of the files he had examined, so apparently he had not been directly involved in the security hearings. But he should remember.

  Dr. Otto Millet. Otto Millet. He let the name roll around his brain, until shortly an image began to form—an image of a smiling man, greying at the temples, wearing a flamboyant sports shirt and affecting a very close haircut. A man perhaps forty. In the image, he was a laughing man.

  He remembered now. Dr. Otto Millet: into government service on the inertia of a fantastic reputation as a research physicist specializing in magnetic field studies. A man he had instantly disliked.

  He bent forward and reread what he had scrawled in his last notes, a verbatim extract from the report of the security committee.

  "It is clear that Dr. Millet's conversations and letters with Professor Greyman, together with his unrepentant attitude, render him a security risk. His various security clearances are therefore revoked, and he is hereafter prohibited access to all classified files and to any government research and development laboratory."

  Since virtually all laboratories were government supported, that was to all intents and purposes the end of Millet's career as an experimental physicist.

  Where had Millet gone? What had he done since? Walker scraped a cigarette out of the half-empty pack in his pocket. More important: what was he doing now?

  He inhaled deeply and sent clouds of smoke skewing across the room. Had the man really been a traitor? Walker tried to place himself in the time of Millet's hearing. He'd been not too many years out of school then, with the bitterness of his frustrated ambition to be a research physicist still rankling him; perhaps this had colored his view of Millet. He stared at his desk, almost shocked that this thought should have occurred to him. It shook him, for it told him something about himself which he did not particularly care to know.

  Nowhere had he been able to find any evidence as to what had happened to Millet since. Banished, the government seemed to forget him. But one thing was clear to Walker, and he pondered it deeply as he sucked on the last quarter-inch of his cigarette and poured himself another cup of cold black coffee. One big thing: Millet had been directing development along lines that would have led to the neural weapon; he had even signed a report, early in his project effort, which had referred to the possibility of "a neural device."

  Had he gone over to the Confederation? It would account for their possession of the weapon now. But surely—surely, this fact would have been observed and reported by Te
rran intelligence agents.

  Walker, infinitely tired, forgot his coffee and began to tidy up the desk, filing everything he wanted to keep in an electronically locked cabinet, shoving everything else into the destruction of the vibrator. He pondered for a moment the powdered secrets that were heaped like black dust in the bottom of the canister: a symbol of safety to a terrified world.

  Step one: find Millet. Find Millet.

  It took the Secret Service exactly twenty-nine hours to locate Dr. Otto Millet. Thirty minutes later, Walker was climbing out of a government helicopter and staring at Millet's small house through squinted eyes which he shielded with both hands against the blazing desert sun. The house was fronted by a neat lawn and a white fence entwined with red roses; there appeared to be a rather large garden in the rear. The style of the house bothered him a little: it had passed out of popularity thirty years before. Its lack of a conventional roofport had forced them to land the 'copter on the desert itself.

  He straightened and pushed through the creaking gate. Flagstone steps curved toward the porch, and he minced along them, uncertain, now that he had arrived, of what he would say to Millet. The damned house, he thought—so different from what he had expected; it had thrown his whole thinking out of order.

  He hated himself for feeling uneasy.

  There was neither vodor nor contact system of any kind at the door, and he brushed his hand against his forehead in a gesture of frustration. He stared at his palm—it had come away wet with sweat, and he wondered if it were all because of the desert sun.

  Tentatively, he banged on the door with his fist. There was no answer.

  Damn Millet, he thought, wiping his forehead again. Why couldn't the man have a videophone like any normal person so you could find out if he were home without taking a trip halfway across the country?

  He turned, stamping angrily as he did so, and was startled to see a man, wearing work clothes and holding a pair of heavy soiled gloves in his left hand, standing on the ground by the end of the porch. He was nearly bald, intensely bronzed, and he was smiling.