Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  Meanwhile, at the plant, Procedure One continued in full wild tumultuous swing.

  * * * * *

  M-75 did not immediately follow Gaines and Sokolski out of the room. Fascinated by the multitude of new things surrounding him on every side, he held back. He glided over to the master control panel, puzzled by its similarity to the board before which he had slaved so long, and lingered before it for a few seconds, wondering and comparing. When he had recorded it completely on his tapes, he swung away and rolled out of the room in the direction the two men had gone.

  He found himself in a long, empty corridor, lined by open doors that flickered by, shutterlike, as he flashed past. Ahead he heard new sounds, sounds like the meaningless cacophony the men had shouted at him before rushing off, superimposed over the incessant background sounds--the shrilling, the clanging, the one particular repetitive pattern. Some of the sounds touched and tugged at him, but he shook them off easily.

  The corridor led into the foyer of the building, jammed with plant personnel. Their excitement and noise-making rose sharply as he entered. The crowd drew tighter and the men began fighting one another, struggling to get through a door that was never meant to handle more than two at a time.

  M-75 skidded to a halt and watched, unmoving. He sensed their fright, even though he could not understand it. Although he was without human emotion, he could evaluate their inherent rejection of him in their action pattern. The realization of it made him hesitate; it was something for which he had no frame of reference whatsoever.

  His chest hummed and clicked. Here, again, in this room, was another new universe. Through the door streamed a light of a brilliance beyond anything in his experience; his photocells cringed before its very intensity.

  The light cast the shadows of the men fighting to get out, long black wavering silhouettes that splashed across the floor almost to where M-75 rested. He studied them, lost in uncertain analysis.

  He remained so, poised, alert, filing, observing, all the while completely unmoving, until long after the last of the shouting men had left the room. Only then did he move, hesitantly, toward the infernally fierce light.

  He hung at the brink of the three stone steps that fell away to the grounds outside. Vainly he sought in his memory tapes for a record of a brightness as intense as that which he faced now; sought for a color recording similar to the vast swash of blue that filled the world overhead; or for one of the spreading green that swelled to all sides. He found none.

  The vastness of the outside was utterly stunning.

  He felt a vague uneasiness, a sensation akin to the horrible frenzy he had felt earlier in the pile.

  He rotated from side to side, his receptors sweeping the whole field of view before him. With infinite accuracy his perfect lenses recorded the data in all its minuteness, despite the dazzling sunlight.

  There was so much new that it was becoming difficult to make decisions. The vast rolling green, the crowds of men grouped far away and staring at him, above all the searing light. Abruptly he rejected it all. He swung back into the foyer of the plant and faced a dark corner, bringing instant, essential relief to his pulsating photocells.

  Staring into the semi-darkness, he re-ran the memory tape of his escape from the pile. The farther he had moved from the pile, it seemed, the less adjusted he had become, the less able he was to judge and correlate.

  Silently, lost in his computations, he rolled around and around the foyer for a long, long time. He became aware, finally, that the brilliance outside had paled. He went again to the door and watched the fading sunlight, caught the rainbow splendor that streaked the evening sky.

  He waited there, fighting the reluctance inside himself. The driving curiosity that had brought him this far overcame that curious, perplexing reticence, and he looked down at the steps and measured their width and depth so that he might set up a feedback pattern. This done, he bounced, almost jauntily, down them.

  He had rolled perhaps fifty feet down the smooth pathway curving across the grounds when he made out, clearly discernible in the gathering dusk, the three men and the machine that were moving toward him. It was the last bit of datum he ever filed.

  The demolition squad had finished with the hot remains of M-75, and their big truck was coughing away into the night. One by one, the floodlights that had lighted their work flickered out.

  "Pretty delicate machines, after all," commented Sokolski. "One jolt from that flame thrower...."

  Gaines was silent as they walked back toward the plant. "Bert," he said slowly, "what the hell do you suppose got into him?"

  Sokolski shrugged. "You were the one who spotted the trouble with him, Joe. Just think, if you could have checked him out completely--"

  Gaines could not help looking up at the stars and saying what he had really been thinking all along, "It's a small world, Bert, a small world."

  * * *

  Contents

  UNTECHNOLOGICAL EMPLOYMENT

  by E. M. Clinton, Jr.

  TWX WHITE HOUSE TO COL. K. A. BROWN COMMANDER PACIFIC SPACEPORT: CONGRESS PRESSURE HIGH INVESTIGATION IMMINENT MUST HAVE FULL INFORMATION WHY MOON LAUNCHES BEHIND SCHEDULE

  TWX COL. K. A. BROWN TO WHITE HOUSE: UNSEASONABLY CONSTANT BAD WEATHER PREVENTS LAUNCHING FOR PAST THREE WEEKS

  TWX WHITE HOUSE TO BROWN PSP: WHAT KIND OF BAD WEATHER

  TWX COL. K. A. BROWN TO WHITE HOUSE: FOG

  TWX WHITE HOUSE TO BROWN PSP: CONGRESS PRESSURE GREATER BAD PUBLICITY INVOLVED RUSSIANS ARE LAUNCHING ON SCHEDULE WHY CAN'T WE SOMETHING MUST BE DONE

  TWX COL. K. A. BROWN TO WHITE HOUSE: STILL FOGGED IN

  TWX WHITE HOUSE TO BROWN PSP: CHAIRMAN SENATE SPACE COMMITTEE SAYS FLY THIS WEEK OR HE WILL INVESTIGATE

  TWX COL. K. A. BROWN TO WHITE HOUSE: SIR INVESTIGATE

  TWX WHITE HOUSE TO COL. A. A. NEUMAN COMMANDER PACIFIC SPACEPORT: EXPECT YOU TO ACT IMMEDIATELY SOLVING PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATION PROBLEMS RE LAUNCHINGS

  TWX COL. A. A. NEUMAN TO WHITE HOUSE: WISH TO ADVISE FOG REMAINS WAS CLEAR FOR THIRTEEN MINUTES THIS A.M. PLEASE INSTRUCT

  TWX WHITE HOUSE TO NEUMAN PSP: SENATE SPACE COMMITTEE UNDER SENATOR HARRY WASHWATER ARIZONA DUE PACIFIC SPACEPORT THIS FRIDAY

  TWX COL. A. A. NEUMAN TO WHITE HOUSE: ADVISE YOU THIS OFFICE REGARDS WASHWATER SUGGESTION AS NOT ACCEPTABLE

  TWX WHITE HOUSE TO NEUMAN PSP: IN CONFIDENCE ADVISE ANCILLARY POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS MAKE IT DESIRABLE YOU RE-EVALUATE WASHWATER RECOMMENDATION

  TWX COL. A. A. NEUMAN TO WHITE HOUSE: IN CONFIDENCE ASK WHAT POSSIBLE POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS CAN APPLY HERE

  TWX WHITE HOUSE TO NEUMAN PSP: IN CONFIDENCE HIGH UNEMPLOYMENT RATE NATIVE AMERICANS IN WASHWATER CONSTITUENCY

  TWX COL. B. M. DEWAR ACTING COMMANDER PACIFIC SPACEPORT TO WHITE HOUSE: ADVISE YOU COL. NEUMAN'S DEATH ESTABLISHED AS SUICIDE

  TWX WHITE HOUSE TO DEWAR PSP: REGRETS OFFICIALLY FROM THIS OFFICE NOW SUGGEST RE-EVALUATION OF WASHWATER RECOMMENDATION HOW IS THE WEATHER

  TWX COL. B. M. DEWAR TO WHITE HOUSE: RE-EVALUATING WEATHER STILL UNSPEAKABLY BAD WAS THIS PLACE EVALUATED FOR WEATHER BEFORE SPACEPORT FACILITIES BUILT

  TWX WHITE HOUSE TO DEWAR PSP: OFFICIAL POSITION IS CHANGE IN JAPANESE CURRENT ANXIOUS FOR YOUR DECISION ON WASHWATER RECOMMENDATION

  TWX COL. B. M. DEWAR TO WHITE HOUSE: RESPECTFULLY DEFER DECISION TO YOUR OFFICE

  TWX WHITE HOUSE TO DEWAR PSP: EMERGENCY FORCES ON WAY FROM ARIZONA THIS A.M. PER THIS OFFICE DECISION TO FOLLOW WASHWATER RECOMMENDATION PLEASE KEEP HOURLY INFORMATION COMING TO THIS OFFICE

  TWX COL. B. M. DEWAR TO WHITE HOUSE: DANCING BEGAN AT OH FOUR TWENTY PST EVERY ASSISTANCE BEING EXTENDED BY THIS BASE

  TWX COL. B. M. DEWAR TO WHITE HOUSE: DANCING STILL IN PROGRESS CHIEF BLUE SKY DECLARES REPERTOIRE OF SUN DANCES FAR FROM EXHAUSTED

  TWX COL. B. M. DEWAR TO WHITE HOUSE: COUNTDOWN COMPLETED LAUNCHING SUCCESSFUL VISIBILITY UNLIMITED WEATHER CONTROL PERSONNEL ASKING FOR OVERTIME PLEASE ADVISE AND ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION

  * * *

  Conte
nts

  FLIGHT THROUGH TOMORROW

  By Stanton A. Coblentz

  Super warfare has destroyed the old race of man, but elsewhere a new civilization is dawning....

  Nothing was further from my mind, when I discovered the "Release Drug" Relin, than the realization that it would lead me through as strange and ghastly and revealing a series of adventures as any man has ever experienced. I encountered it, in a way, as a mere by-product of my experiments; I am a chemist by profession, and as one of the staff of the Morganstern Foundation have access to some of the best equipped laboratories in America. The startling new invention--I must call it that, though I did not create it deliberately--came to me in the course of my investigations into the obscure depths of the human personality.

  It has long been my theory that there is in man a psychic entity which can exist for at least brief periods apart from the body, and have perceptions which are not those of the physical senses. In accordance with these views, I had been developing various drugs, compounded of morphine and adrenalin, whose object was to shock the psychic entity loose for limited periods and so to widen the range and powers of the personality. I shall not go into the details of my researches, nor tell by what accident I succeeded better than I had hoped; the all-important fact--a fact so overwhelming that I shudder and gasp and marvel even as I tell of it--is that I did obtain a minute quantity of a drug which, by putting the body virtually in a state of suspended animation, could release the mind to travel almost at will across time and space.

  Yes, across time and space!--for the drag of the physical having been stricken off, I could enter literally into infinity and eternity. But let me tell precisely what happened that night when at precisely 10:08 in the solitude of my apartment room, I swallowed half an ounce of Relin and stretched myself out on the bed, well knowing that I was taking incalculable risks, and that insanity and even death were by no means remote possibilities of the road ahead. But let that be as it may! In my opinion, there is no coward more despicable than he who will not face danger for the sake of knowledge.

  My head reeled, and something seemed to buzz inside it as soon as the bitter half ounce of fluid slipped down my throat. I was barely able to reach the bed and throw myself upon it when there came a snapping as of something inside my brain ... then, for a period, blankness ... then a gradual awakening with that feeling of exhilaration one experiences only after the most blissful sleep. I opened my eyes, feeling strong and light of limb and charged with a marvelous vital energy--but, as I peered about me, my lips drew far apart in astonishment, and I am sure that I gaped like one who has seen a ghost.

  Where were the familiar walls of my two-by-four room, the bureau, the book-rack, the ancient portrait of Pasteur that hung in its glass frame just above the foot of the bed? Gone! vanished as utterly as though they had never been! I was standing on a wide and windy plain, with the gale beating in my ears, and with rapid sunset-colored clouds scudding across the blood-stained west. Mingled with the wailing of the blast, there was a deep sobbing sound that struck me in successive waves, like the ululations of great multitudes of far-off mourners. And while I was wondering what this might mean and felt a prickling of horror along my spine, the first of the portents swept across the sky. I say "portents," for I do not know by what other term to describe the apparitions; high in the heavens, certainly at an altitude of many miles, the flaming thing swept across my view, comet-shaped and stretching over at least ten degrees of arc, swift as a meteor, brilliantly flesh-red, sputtering sparks like an anvil, and leaving behind it a long ruddy trail that only slowly faded out amid the darkening skies.

  It must have been a full minute after its disappearance before the hissing of its flight came to my ears--a hissing so sharp, so nastily insistent that it reached me even above the noise of the wind. And more than another minute had passed before the earth beneath me was wrenched and jarred as if by an earthquake and the most thunderous detonations I had ever heard burst over me in a prolonged series.

  Let me emphasize that none of this had the quality of a dream; it was clear-cut, as vivid as anything I had ever experienced; my mind worked with an unusual precision and clarity, and not even a fleeting doubt came to me of the reality of my observations. "This is some sort of bombing attack," I remember reflecting, "some assault of super-monsters of the skies, perfected by a super science." And I did not have to be told the fact; I knew, as by an all-illuminating inner knowledge, that I had voyaged into the future.

  Even as this realization came to me, I made another flight--and one that was in space more than in time. It did not surprise me, but I took it as the most natural thing in the world when I seemed to rise and go floating away through the air. It was still sunset-time, but I could see clearly enough as I went drifting at a height of several hundred yards above a vast desolated space near the junction of two rivers. Perhaps, however, "desolated" is not the word I should use; I should say, rather, "shattered, pulverized, obliterated," for a scene of more utter and hopeless ruin I have never seen nor imagined. Over an area of many square miles, there was nothing but heaps and mounds of broken stone, charred and crumbling brick, fire-scarred timbers, and huge contorted masses of rusting steel like the decaying bones of superhuman monsters. From the great height and extent of the piles of debris, and from the occasional sight of the splintered cornice of a roof or of some battered window-frame or door, I knew that this had once been a city, one of the world's greatest; but no other recognizable feature remained amid the gray masses of ruins, and the very streets and avenues had been erased. But here and there a tremendous crater, three hundred feet across and a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet deep, indicated the source of the destruction.

  As if to reinforce the dread idea that had taken possession of my brain, one of the comet-like red prodigies went streaking across the sky even as I gazed down at the dead city; and I knew--as clearly as if I had seen the whole spectacle with my own eyes--that the missile had sprung from a source hundreds or thousands of miles away, possibly across the ocean; and that, laden with scores of tons of explosives, it had been hurled with unerring mechanical accuracy upon its mission of annihilation.

  Then I seemed to float over vast distances of that sunset-tinted land, and saw great craters in the fields, and villages shot to ribbons, and farms abandoned; and the wild dogs fought for the wild cattle; and thistles grew deep on acres where wheat had been planted, and weeds sprouted thickly in the orchards, and blight and mildew competed for the crops. But though here and there I could see a dugout, with traces of fire and abandoned tools flung about at random, nowhere in all that dismal world did I observe a living man.

  After a time I returned to a place near the ruined city by the two rivers; and in the rocky palisades above one of the streams, I made out some small circular holes barely large enough to admit a man. And, borne onward by some impulse of curiosity and despair, I entered one of these holes, and went downward, far downward into the dim recesses. And now for the first time, at a depth of hundreds of yards, I did at last encounter living men. My first thought was that I had gone back to the day of the cave-man, for a cave-like hollow had been scooped out in the solid rock. It was true that the few hundreds of people huddled together there had the dress and looks of moderns; it was true, also, that the gloom was lighted for them by electric bulbs, and that electric radiators kept them warm; yet Dante himself, in painting the ninth circle of his Inferno, could not have imagined a drearier and more despondent group than these that slouched and drooped and muttered in that cavernous recess, seated with their heads fallen low upon their knees, or moodily pacing back and forth like captives who can hope for no escape. "Here at least we will be safe from the sky marauders," I heard one of them muttering. Yet I could not help wondering what the mere safety of the body could mean when all the glories of man's civilization were annihilated.

  II

  There came a whirring in my head, and another blank interval; and when I regained my senses I knew th
at another period of time had passed, possibly months or even years. I stood on the palisade above the river, near the entrance of the caves; and the sun was bright above me; but there was no brightness in the men and women that trailed out of a small circular hole in the ground. Drab as dock-rats, and pasty pale of countenance as hospital inmates, and with bent backs and dirty, tattered clothes and a mouse-like nosing manner, they emerged with the wariness of hunted refugees; and they flung up their hands with low cries to shield them from the brilliance of the sun, to which they were evidently unaccustomed. From the packs on their backs and the bundles in their hands, I knew that they were emerging from their subterranean refuge, to try to begin a new life in the ravaged world above; and my heart went out to them, for I saw that, few as they were--not more than fifty in all--they were the sole survivors of a once-populous region, and would have a bitter fight to wage in the man-made wilderness that had been a world metropolis.

  But as they roamed above through the waste of ash and rubble, and as they wandered abroad where the fields had been and saw how every brush and tree had been seared from the earth or poisoned by chemical brews, I knew that their fight was not merely a bitter one--it was hopeless. And I heard them muttering among themselves, "We have not even any tools!", and again, "We have no fuel left for the great machines!" ... For they had lived in a highly mechanical world, and the technicians who alone understood the workings of that world had all been destroyed, and the sources of power had all been cut off--and power was the food without which they could not long survive.

  Unable to endure their haggard, hangdog looks and grim, despondent eyes, I went wandering far away, over the length and breadth of many lands. And nowhere did I see a factory that had not been hammered to dust, nor a village that had not been unroofed or burnt, nor a farm where the workers went humming on their merry, toilsome way. Yet here and there I did observe little knots of survivors. Sometimes they were half-clad groups, lean and ferocious as famished wolves, who roamed the houseless countryside with stones and clubs, hunting the wild birds and hares, or making meager meals from bark and roots. Sometimes three or four men, with the frenzied eyes and hysterical shrieks and shouts of maniacs, would emerge from a brush hut by a river flat. Sometimes little bands of men and women, in a dazed aimless way, would go wandering about a huge jagged hole in the ground, where their homes and their loved ones lay buried. I came upon solitary refugees high up on the scarred mountain slopes, with nothing but a staff to lean upon and a deer-skin to keep them warm. I saw more than one twisted form lying motionless at the foot of a precipice. I witnessed a battle between two half-crazed, ravenous bands, with murder, and cannibalism, and horrors too grisly to report. I observed brave men resolutely trying to till the soil, whose productive powers had been ruined by a poison spray from the sky; and I noted some who, though the fields remained fertile enough, had not the seed to plant; and others who had not the tools with which to plow and reap. And some who, with great labor, managed to produce enough for three or four mouths, had twenty or thirty to feed; and where the three or four might have lived, the twenty or thirty perished.