Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "Or, they could do something else. I was watching Elwar while I was checking that tape. Did you notice anything peculiar?"

  "He seemed disturbed."

  "As though he were sensing my thoughts?"

  "Something like that. But--"

  Kweiros nodded. "But I had a shield up. You could detect no trace of mental action. Right?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "That's what I thought." Kweiros shook his head and looked closely at Jaeger.

  "Can you imagine," he added, "a primitive race with the power to detect a galactic by his thoughts? And can you imagine that power developing until that detection is possible at interstellar ranges, with members of that race being able to pick up faint impressions from received thoughts--distorted impressions? And can you imagine that same race, ignorant of the humanic equations, devoid of a stable ethic, superstitious, distrustful and fearful of advanced entities? They would be undetectable by normal telepathic means, you know. And suppose they were disposed to destroy what they could not understand." He frowned.

  Jaeger looked back at him, his eyes becoming wide. Suddenly, his gaze defocused and he looked aside, to stare unseeingly at the floor.

  "Something's got to be done, sir," he said reluctantly.

  Kweiros nodded. "Something's got to be done," he agreed. "Of course, there's another side to the picture. If this race develops and learns, they'll be just as valuable to the galaxy as they would otherwise be dangerous." He looked toward the door.

  "And our boy out there is one of the few who can help in this situation. He's going to have to work out counter stories--amusing stories--about all those magical creatures his people tell about. He's going to have to hint at the possibilities of close co-ordination and co-operation between members of his own species. And he's going to have to suggest the possibility of friendly co-operation between his species and others." He drew a deep breath.

  "And he's going to have to do all this without taking any risk of exposing the existence of other, more advanced species in the galaxy." He brushed a hand across his head, then pressed the back of his neck, kneading the skin.

  "These stories of his, he'll have to publish. He'll have to get them circulated all over his planet, if he can. Possibly we can give him some indirect help, but he's going to have to carry a good share of the load.

  "He knows his own people as we could never hope to. And he'll have to be thoroughly educated, so he can say what he wants to. And he'll have to be fully aware of the humanic equations and all their connotations. If he's to have any direct help, he'll have to choose his helpers from among his own people, and he'll have to choose carefully." Kweiros thrust at his temple with the heel of a hand, then shook his head violently.

  "Somehow, he's going to have to accentuate any legends he may be able to find which present a favorable light on co-ordination and co-operation, and he'll have to invent more. And all those other legends--the ones which treat of superstition and destructive force--will have to be reduced to the realm of the storybook, submerged under a layer of amused condemnation, and kept there. All these things, that youngster is going to have to do.

  "It's your job to help teach him."

  * * * * *

  Forell watched his friend closely as the critic laid aside the last page.

  Andorra sat for a moment, his head cocked in thought. Then, he picked up the last page and looked at it again. Finally, he laid the sheet aside. He looked at his friend with a wry smile, then picked up his wineglass, looking at it quizzically.

  "Do you always give your own name to one of your characters?"

  Forell's grip tightened on the small object in his hand.

  "Oh, sure," he said. "Gives me a better identification. If I can get into the story, it's easier to draw the reader in." He forced a casual smile. "I'll change that name later, of course."

  "I see what you mean." Andorra sipped from his glass.

  "You know," he added, "a couple of hours ago, I was almost ready to get excited about the idea of a cosmos full of super beings. And I even might have dreamed up something like this myself--and more than half believed it." He shook his head.

  "But when a fantasist like yourself comes up with it, and makes it look so nicely possible, the idea almost looks foolish. After all, Elwar, if you actually were the guy in that little sketch of yours, you'd hardly be asking me to read it, now would you?" He looked down at the papers, then raised his head again, frowning.

  "'He'll have to choose his helpers from among his own people,'" he quoted. "'All these things, that youngster is going to have to do.'" He sipped again from his glass, keeping a searching gaze on his friend.

  "And on the other hand, if your story here should be true, you just might be asking me to read it, for one reason or another." He raised his glass, examining the bright liquid within it.

  Elwar tensed, his hand coming part way out of his pocket.

  Suddenly, Andorra set the glass down and leaned forward, hands gripping his knees.

  "Tell me, Elwar," he begged, "this isn't a hoax, is it? Surely, no one could be so warped as to present a friend with something like this and then to laugh it off?"

  Forell drew a deep breath and examined his companion closely. At last, his left hand relaxed a little.

  "It's no hoax," he admitted.

  Andorra sighed and leaned back.

  "And you can use help? You're asking me?"

  He paused, waiting as Forell nodded, then spread his hands.

  "You know," he said, "it shouldn't take me too long to fix it so I would not be missed too much for a few years." He looked at the wall.

  "It must be quite a training course."

  * * *

  Contents

  MILLENNIUM

  By Everett B. Cole

  There are devices a high-level culture could produce that simply don't belong in the hands of incompetents of lower cultural evolution. The finest, and most civilized of tools can be made a menace ...

  Liewen Konar smiled wryly as he put a battered object on the bench. "Well, here's another piece recovered. Not worth much, I'd say, but here it is."

  Obviously, it had once been a precisely fabricated piece of equipment. But its identity was almost lost. A hole was torn in the side of the metal box. Knobs were broken away from their shafts. The engraved legends were scored and worn to illegibility, and the meter was merely a black void in the panel. Whatever had been mounted at the top had been broken away, to leave ragged shards. Inside the gaping hole in the case, tiny, blackened components hung at odd angles.

  Klion Meinora looked at the wreckage and shook his head.

  "I know it's supposed to be what's left of a medium range communicator," he said, "but I'd never believe it." He poked a finger inside the hole in the case, pushing a few components aside. Beyond them, a corroded wheel hung loosely in what had once been precision bearings.

  "Where's the power unit?"

  Konar shook his head. "No trace. Not much left of the viewsphere, either."

  "Well." Meinora shook his head resignedly. "It's salvage. But we got it back." He stood back to look at the communicator. "Someone's been keeping the outside clean, I see."

  Konar nodded. "It was a religious relic," he said. "Found it in an abbey." He reached into the bag he had placed on the floor.

  "And here's a mental amplifier-communicator, personnel, heavy duty. Slightly used and somewhat out of adjustment, but complete and repairable." He withdrew a golden circlet, held it up for a moment, and carefully laid it on the bench beside the wrecked communicator. Its metal was dented, but untarnished.

  "Don't want to get rough with it," he explained. "Something might be loose inside."

  He reached again into the bag. "And a body shield, protector type, model GS/NO-10C. Again, somewhat used, but repairable. Even has its nomenclature label."

  "Good enough." Meinora held a hand out and accepted the heavy belt. He turned it about in his hands, examining the workmanship. Finally, he looked closely at th
e long, narrow case mounted on the leather.

  "See they counted this unit fairly well. Must have been using it."

  "Yes, sir. It's operative. The Earl wore it all the time. Guess he kept up his reputation as a fighter that way. Be pretty hard to nick anyone with a sword if he had one of these running. And almost any clumsy leatherhead could slash the other guy up if he didn't have to worry about self-protection."

  "I know." Meinora nodded quickly. "Seen it done. Anything more turned up?"

  "One more thing. This hand weapon came from the same abbey I got the communicator from. I'd say it was pretty hopeless, too." Konar picked a flame-scarred frame from his bag, then reached in again, to scoop up a few odd bits of metal.

  "It was in pieces when we picked it up," he explained. "They kept it clean, but they couldn't get the flame pits out and reassembly was a little beyond them."

  "Beyond us too, by now." Meinora looked curiously at the object. "Looks as though a couple of the boys shot it out."

  "Guess they did, sir. Not once, but several times." Konar shrugged. "Malendes tells me he picked up several like this." He cocked his head to one side.

  "Say, chief, how many of these things were kicking around on this unlucky planet?"

  Meinora grimaced. "As far as we can determine, there were ninety-two operative sets originally issued. Each of the original native operatives was equipped with a mentacom and a body shield. Each of the eight operating teams had a communicator and three hand weapons, and the headquarters group had a flier, three communicators, a field detector set, and six hand weapons. Makes quite an equipment list."

  "Any tools or maintenance equipment?"

  Meinora shook his head. "Just operator manuals. And those will have deteriorated long ago. An inspection team was supposed to visit once a cycle for about fifty cycles, then once each five cycles after that. They would have taken care of maintenance. This operation was set up quite a while ago, you know. Operatives get a lot more training now--and we don't use so many of them."

  "So, something went wrong." Konar looked at the equipment on the bench. "How?" he asked. "How could it have happened?"

  "Oh, we've got the sequence of events pretty well figured out by now." Meinora got to his feet. "Of course, it's a virtually impossible situation--something no one would believe could happen. But it did." He looked thoughtfully at the ruined communicator.

  "You know the history of the original operation on this planet?"

  "Yes, sir. I looked it over. Planet was checked out by Exploration. They found a couple of civilizations in stasis and another that was about to go that way. Left alone, the natives'd have reverted to a primitive hunter stage--if they didn't go clear back to the caves. And when they did come up again, they'd have been savage terrors."

  "Right. So a corps of native operatives was set up by Philosophical, to upset the stasis and hold a core of knowledge till the barbaric period following the collapse of one of the old empires was over. One civilization on one continent was chosen, because it was felt that its impact on the rest of the planet would be adequate to insure progress, and that any more extensive operation would tend to mold the planetary culture."

  Konar nodded. "The old, standard procedure. It usually worked better than this, though. What happened this time?"

  "The Merokian Confederation happened."

  "But their penetration was nowhere near here."

  "No, it wasn't. But they did attack Sector Nine. And they did destroy the headquarters. You remember that?"

  "Yes, sir. I read about it in school. We lost a lot of people on that one." Konar frowned. "Long before my time in the Corps, of course, but I studied up on it. They used some sort of screen that scrambled the detectors, didn't they?"

  "Something like that. Might have been coupled with someone's inattention, too. But that's unimportant now. The important thing is that the sector records were destroyed during the attack."

  "Sure. But how about the permanent files that were forwarded to Aldebaran depository?"

  Meinora smiled grimly. "Something else that couldn't happen. We're still looking for traces of that courier ship. I suppose they ran afoul of a Merokian task force, but there's nothing to go on. They just disappeared." He picked up the mental communicator, examining the signs of aging.

  "One by one," he continued, "the case files and property records of Sector Nine are being reconstructed. Every guardsman even remotely associated with the Sector before the attack is being interviewed, and a lot of them are working on the reconstruction. It's been a long job, but we're nearly done now. This is one of the last planets to be located and rechecked, and it's been over a period since the last visit they've had from any of our teams. On this planet, that's some fifty-odd generations. Evidently the original operatives didn't demolish their equipment, and fifty some generations of descendants have messed things up pretty thoroughly."

  Konar looked at the bench. Besides the equipment he had just brought in, there were other items, all in varying stages of disrepair and ruin.

  "Yes, sir," he agreed. "If this is a sample, and if the social conditions I've seen since I joined the team are typical, they have. Now what?"

  "We've been picking up equipment. Piece by piece, we've been accounting for every one of those items issued. Some of 'em were lost. Some of 'em probably wore out and were discarded, or were burned--like this, only more so." Meinora pointed at the wrecked communicator.

  "Local legends tell us about violent explosions, so we know a few actually discharged. And we've tracked down the place where the flier cracked up and bit out a hole the size of a barony. Those items are gone without trace." He sighed.

  "That introduces an uncertainty factor, of course, but the equipment in the hands of natives, and the stuff just lying around in deserted areas has to be tracked down. This planet will develop a technology some day, and we don't want anything about to raise questions and doubts when it does. The folklore running around now is bad enough. When we get the equipment back, we've got to clean up the social mess left by the descendants of those original operatives."

  "Nice job."

  "Very nice. We'll be busy for a long time." Meinora picked up a small tape reel. "Just got this," he explained. "That's why I was waiting for you here. It's an account of a mentacom and shield that got away. Probably stolen about twenty years ago, planetary. We're assigned to track it down and pick it up."

  He turned to speak to a technician, who was working at another bench.

  "You can have this stuff now. Bring in some more pretty soon."

  * * * * *

  Flor, the beater, was bone weary. The shadows were lengthening, hiding the details in the thickets, and all the hot day, he had been thrusting his way through thicket after thicket, in obedience to the instructions of the foresters. He had struck trees with his short club and had grunted and squealed, to startle the khada into flight. A few of the ugly beasts had come out, charging into the open, to be run down and speared by the nobles.

  And Flor had tired of this hunt, as he had tired of many other hunts in the past. Hunting the savage khada, he thought resentfully, might be an amusing sport for the nobles. But to a serf, it was hard, lung-bursting work at best. At worst, it meant agonizing death beneath trampling hoofs and rending teeth.

  To be sure, there would be meat at the hunting lodge tonight, in plenty, and after the hunt dinner, he and the other serfs might take bits of the flesh home to their families. But that would be after the chores in the scullery were over. It would be many hours before Flor would be able to stumble homeward.

  He relaxed, to enjoy the short respite he had gained by evading the forester. Sitting with his back to a small tree, he closed his eyes and folded his thick arms over his head. Of course, he would soon be found, and he would have to go back to the hunt. But this forester was a dull, soft fellow. He could be made to believe Flor's excuse that he had become lost for a time, and had been searching the woods for the other beaters.

  The underbrus
h rustled and Flor heard the sound of disturbed leaves and heavy footfalls. A hunting charger was approaching, bearing one of the hunters. Quickly, Flor rose to his feet, sidling farther back into the thicket. Possibly, he might remain unseen. He peered out through the leaves.

  The mounted man was old and evidently tired from the long day's hunt. He swayed a little in his saddle, then recovered and looked about him, fumbling at his side for his horn. His mount raised its head and beat a forefoot against the ground. The heavy foot made a deep, thumping noise and leaves rustled and rose in a small cloud.

  Flor sighed and started forward reluctantly. It was the Earl, himself. It might be possible to hide from another, but Flor knew better than to try to conceal his presence from the old nobleman. The Earl could detect any person in his vicinity, merely by their thoughts, as Flor well knew from past experience. He also knew how severe the punishment would be if he failed to present himself immediately. He pushed a branch aside with a loud rustle.

  Startled by the noise, a husa, which had been hiding beneath a nearby bush, raced into the open. The small animal dashed madly toward the Earl, slid wildly almost under the charger's feet, and put on a fresh burst of speed, to disappear into the underbrush. The huge beast flinched away, then reared wildly, dashing his rider's head against a tree limb.

  The elderly man slipped in his saddle, reached shakily for his belt, missed, and lost his seat, to crash heavily to the ground.

  Flor rushed from his thicket. With the shock of the fall, the Earl's coronet had become dislodged from his head and lay a short distance from the inert form. Flor picked it up, turning it in his hands and looking at it.

  * * * * *

  Curiously, he examined the golden circlet, noting the tiny bosses inset in the band. Many times, he had watched from a dark corner at the hunting lodge, neglecting his scullery duties, while the Earl showed the powers of this coronet to his elder son. Sometimes, he had been caught by the very powers the circlet gave to the old nobleman, and he winced as he remembered the strong arm of the kitchen master, and the skill with which he wielded a strap. But on other occasions, the Earl had been so engrossed in explaining the device as to neglect the presence of the eavesdropper.