Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "The treasure hunt is over," our captain told us, "And those who wish may withdraw now. Take your women and the space-boats and return to Mars. You have your shares, and you can live in comfort wherever you may choose. If you wish it, go now."

  Some few did go, but most remained. I watched Merril's face, and saw one last plan maturing there. Then he spoke again and we all understood. One last raid ... to take Luna and command the world!

  * * * * *

  "Still the unity of Mankind was not secure, and Merril, filled with impatience for his great dream, decided on one final stroke. He would descend on Luna Base itself with his fleet, and commanding all Earth, he would drive men together--even though it might mean his own death. With this plan of self-immolation in his heart, the Peacemaker ordered his hosts and sought the pumice soil of the mother planet's moon...."

  This is the way Quintus Bland, historian and scholar, puts it down for posterity. I, one of "his hosts," would say it another way.

  We had gutted the Solar System of its treasure and at last men were uniting against us. Our "fleet" was reduced to two small ships and a bare handful of men and women to fight them. Jaq Merril could see the handwriting on the wall and he knew that all must be gambled on one last throw of the dice. Only with Terra herself under our guns could we hope to continue sucking the juice of the worlds into our mouths. It was all or nothing, for we had grown used to our life and we could no longer change it to meet the demands of the dawning age of Soviet-American amity.

  * * * * *

  Side by side the Arrow and the Hound slanted sunward. Mars behind us, ahead lay the Earth-Moon system. Ten years had passed since any of us aboard the Compact ships had seen the home world, and though we no longer felt a part of it, the sight of the silvery cloud-flecked globe touched our hearts. Touched them as the sapphires of Mimas or the gold of Corfu touched them. We saw the planet that gave us birth and we were filled with hunger for it. To own it, command it, make it our own.

  Luna's mountains were white and stark under our keels as Merril led us across the curve of the southern horizon, seeking to put us into position to attack the UN Moon Base in Clavius from the direction of the Moon's hidden face.

  We swung low across unnamed mountain ranges and deep sheer valleys steeped in shadow. The voice of the ranger in the Arrow came softly through the open intercom into the tiny control room of the Hound. A woman's voice, tense with excitement, but disciplined and controlled.

  "Range five hundred miles, four seventy five, four fifty--"

  And then Merril's voice, calm and reassuring, giving heart to all the untried ones aboard with his steady conning commands.

  "Four o'clock jet, easy, hold her. Drivers up one half standard. Steady goes. Meet her. Steady--"

  Line astern now, the two ships flashing low across the jagged lunar landscape, and a world in the balance--

  An alarm bell ringing suddenly, and my screen showing the fleeting outline of a Russian monitor above, running across our stern. My own voice, sharp with command:

  "Gun pointer!"

  "Here, sir!"

  "Get me that gunboat."

  The Hound's turret wound about with agonizing slowness as the monitor reached for the sky, clawing for altitude and safety. And then there came a searing blast of fire and the fragments of the Russian gunboat raining down lazily, seeking their eternal rest in the pumice of Luna's hidden face.

  But they had been warned at the UN Base. The monitor had left one dying shriek in the ether, and the waiting garrison had heard. Merril knew it, and so did I. We moved forward calmly, into the jaws of hell.

  * * * * *

  The Arrow attacked from ten o'clock, low on the horizon, the Hound from twelve o'clock high. We swept in over the batteries of pulsating projectors, raining down our bombs. The ground shuddered and shook with the fury of exploding uranium and the sky was laced with a net of fiery death. The Hound shrieked her protest as I swung her about for another attack.

  There was a sickening swerve and the smell of ozone in my ship. Somewhere, deep within her, a woman screamed and I felt the deck under me give as one of the questing beams from the fortress below cut into the hull. Airtight doors slammed throughout the wounded vessel, and I drove her to the attack again, hard. The last of the bombs clattered out of the vents, sending mushrooms of pumice miles into the black sky. One battery of guns below fell silent.

  The Arrow vanished into the night above and as suddenly reappeared, her forward tubes spewing red fire onto the Base below. Then Merril pulled her up again and disappeared among the pale stars.

  The Hound's hurt was mortal, I could feel her dying under my hands, and tears streaked my face. Below decks, she was a shambles where the cutting beam from the ground had torn part of her heart out. Still I fought her. There was no retreat from this last raid, nor did I wish any. There was a madness in us--a blood-lust as hot and demanding as ever our lust for gold and treasure might have been.

  I lashed the face of the fortress with the Hound's forward tubes, frantically, filled with a hateful anguish. I felt my ship losing way, twisting and seeking rest on the jagged ground below, and thinking he had deserted us, I cursed Merril in an ecstasy of blind fury.

  Again and again the Hound was hit. I knew then that Merril's plan had been madness, a last gesture of defiance to the new age of unity among men. The Hound fell at last, spitting fire and gall in a futile dance of death.

  She struck on a high plateau, grinding into the pumice, rolling with macabre abandon across the face of the high tableland. Then at last she was still, hissing and groaning fitfully as she died, her buccaneering days gone forever.

  I donned a suit and staggered, half dazed, out into the lunar night. A half-dozen men and women from the crew had survived the impact and they stood by the wreckage, faces under the plastic helmets turned skyward. They were one and all stunned and bleeding from the violence of the Hound's end, but they looked neither back nor around them. Their eyes were filled with the insane glory of the drama being enacted in the sky.

  The Arrow had returned. She lanced down out of the night like a spear of flame, vengeful and deadly. Straight into the mouth of the screaming guns she dove, death spilling from her tubes. She bathed the Moon Base in fire, searing the men within--Russian and American alike--into the brotherhood of death.

  Miraculously, she pulled up out of her encircling net of flame. We watched in openmouthed wonder as she reached with sobbing heart for the sky just once again--and then, failing, crippled and dying, she hung above the crater's rim, framed with deadly beams from below, but radiant in her own right--gleaming in the light of the sun.

  This was defeat. We knew it as we stood by the tangled pile of steelite that had been the Hound and watched the Arrow die. But nothing in this life that I have lived ever told me so grandly that the Wall Decade was ended--and our life of buccaneering with it--as the thing that happened next.

  The Arrow's valve opened and a tiny figure stepped out--into space. I did not need to be told that Jaq Merril was coming to meet the men he had welded together against him.

  Lazily, unreally, the tiny shape twisted over and over as it fell, until at last it vanished amid the raw welter of craters and ridges beyond the razor wall of Clavius....

  * * * * *

  I have told a true tale, though one that will not be believed. I have taken the Peacemaker of the histories and painted him as he was.

  But men are ashamed, and the chronicles of history must be rewritten to hide their weaknesses, Jaq Merril has become a legend, and the man that I knew is forgotten.

  Merril--pirate, fighter, grandiose dreamer. That was my captain. Not the colorless do-good creature of the legend. Merril fought for lust and greed, and these are the things that will one day take men to the stars. He knew this truth, of course, and that was the substance of his great dream. Because of it, there are no longer walls in space, and the men who united to fight the Peacemaker will one day rule the universe.

  Meanwhile, c
hroniclers will write lies about him, and Jaq Merril's laughter will echo in some ghostly Valhalla beyond the farthest star.

  * * *

  Contents

  TURNING POINT

  By Alfred Coppel

  The man is rare who will give his life for what is merely the lesser of two evils. Merrick's decision was even tougher: to save human beings at the expense of humanity, or vice versa?

  This, then, was the Creche, Anno Domini 2500. A great, mile-square blind cube topping a ragged mountain; bare escarpments falling away to a turbulent sea. For five centuries the Creche had stood so, and the Androids had come forth in an unending stream to labor for Man, the Master....

  --Quintus Bland, The Romance of Genus Homo.

  Director Han Merrick paced the floor nervously. His thin, almost ascetic face was pale and drawn.

  "We can't allow it, Virginia," he said, "Prying of this sort can only precipitate a pogrom or worse. Erikson is a bigot of the worst kind. The danger--" He broke off helplessly.

  His wife shook her head slowly. "It cannot be prevented, Han. Someone was bound to start asking questions sooner or later. History should have taught us that. And five hundred years of secrecy was more than anyone had a right to expect. Nothing lasts forever."

  The trouble is, Merrick told himself, simply that I am the wrong man for this job. I should never have taken it. There's a wrongness in what we are doing here that colors my every reaction and makes me incapable of acting on my own. Always the doubts and secret questioning. If the social structure of our world weren't moribund, I wouldn't be here at all....

  "History, Virginia," he said, "can't explain what there is no precedent for. The Creche is unique in human experience."

  "The Creche may be, Han, but Sweyn Erikson is not. Consider his background and tell me if there hasn't been an Erikson in every era of recorded history. He is merely another obstacle in the path of progress that must be overcome. The job is yours, Han."

  "A pleasant prospect," Merrick replied bleakly. "I am an organizer, not a psychotechnician. How am I supposed to protect the Creche from the likes of Erikson? What insanity bore this fruit, Virginia? The Prophet, the number one Fanatic, coming here as an investigator in the name of the Council of Ten! I realize the Council turns pale at the thought of the vote the Fanatics control, but surely something could have been done! Have those idiots forgotten what we do here? Is that possible?"

  Virginia Merrick shook her head. "The stone got too hot for them to handle, so they've thrown it to you."

  "But Erikson, himself! The very man who organized the Human Supremacy Party and the Antirobot League! If he sets foot within the Creche it will mean an end to everything!"

  The woman lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. "We can't keep him out and you know it. There's an army of Fanatics gathering out there in the hills this very minute. Armed with cortical-stimulant projectors, Han. That isn't a pleasant way to die--"

  Merrick studied his wife carefully. There was fear under her iron control. She was thinking of the shattering pain of death under the projectors. Nothing else, really. The Creche didn't matter to her. The Creche didn't really matter to any of the staff. Three hundred years ago it would have been different. The custodians of the Creche would have gladly died to preserve their trust in those times....

  What irony, Merrick thought, that it should come like this. He knew what the projectors did to men. He also knew what they did to robots.

  "If they dare to use their weapons on us it will wipe out every vestige of control work done here since the beginning," he said softly.

  "They have no way of knowing that."

  "Nor would they believe it if we told them."

  "And that brings us right back to where we started. You can't keep Erikson out, and the Council of Ten has left us on our own. They don't dare oppose the Fanatics. But there's an old political maxim you would do well to consider very carefully since it's our only hope, Han," Virginia Merrick said, "'If you can't beat someone--join him.'"

  * * * * *

  She dragged deeply on her cigarette, blue smoke curling from her gold-tinted lips. "This has been coming on for ten years. I tried to warn you then, but you wouldn't listen. Remember?"

  How like a woman, Merrick thought bitterly, to be saying I told you so.

  "What would you have me do, Virginia?" he asked, "Help the bigot peddle his robot-hate? That can't be the way. Don't you feel anything at all when the reports of pogroms come in?"

  Virginia Merrick shrugged. "Better they than we, Han."

  "Has it occurred to you that our whole culture might collapse if Erikson has his way?"

  "Antirobotism is natural to human beings. Compromise is the only answer. Precautions have to be taken--"

  "Precautions!" exploded Merrick. "What sort of precautions can be taken against pure idiocy?"

  "The founding board of Psychotechnicians--"

  "No help from that source. You know that I've always felt the whole premise was questionable. On the grounds of common fairness, if nothing else."

  "Really, Han," Virginia snapped, "It was the only thing to do and you know it. The Creche is the only safeguard the race has."

  "Now you sound like the Prophet. In reverse."

  "We needn't argue the point."

  "No, I suppose not," the Director muttered.

  "Then what are you going to do when he gets here?" She ground out her cigarette anxiously. "The procession is in the ravine now. You had better decide quickly."

  "I don't know, Virginia. I just don't know." Merrick sank down behind his desk, hands toying with the telescreen controls. "I was never intended to make this sort of decisions. I feel helpless. Look here--"

  The image of the ravine glowed across the screen in brilliant relief. The densely timbered slopes were spotted with tiny purposeful figures in the grey robes that all Fanatics affected. Here and there the morning sun caught a glint of metal as the Fanatics labored to set up their projectors. Along the floor of the ravine that was the only land approach to the Creche moved the twisting, writhing snake of the procession. The enraptured Fanatics were chanting their hate-songs as they came. In the first rank walked the leonine Erikson, his long hair whipping in the moisture-laden wind from the sea.

  With a muttered curse, Merrick flipped a toggle and the scene dimmed. The face of a secretary appeared superimposed on it. It was the expressionless face of an android, a fine example of the Creche's production line. "Get Graves up here," he ordered, "You may find him at Hypno-Central or in Semantic Evaluation."

  "Very good, sir," intoned the android, fading from the screen.

  Merrick looked at his wife. "Maybe Graves and I can think of something."

  "Don't plan anything rash, Han."

  Merrick shrugged and turned back to watch the steady approach of the procession of grey-frocked zealots in the ravine.

  Graves appeared as the doorway dilated. He looked fearful and pale. "You wanted to see me, Han?"

  "Come in, Jon. Sit down."

  "Have you seen the projectors those crackpots have set up in the hills?" Graves demanded.

  "I have, Jon. That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

  "My God, Han! Do you have any idea of what it must feel like to die from cortical stimulation?" Graves' voice was tense and strained. "Can't we get out of here by 'copter?"

  "No. The 'copters are both in Francisco picking up supplies. I ordered them out yesterday. Besides, that wouldn't settle anything. There are almost a thousand androids in the Creche as of this morning. What about them?"

  Graves made a gesture of impatience. "It's the humans I'm thinking about."

  Merrick forced down the bitter taste of disgust that welled into his throat and forced himself to go on. "We have to take some sort of action to protect the Creche, Jon. I've held off until the last moment, thinking the Council would never allow a Fanatic to investigate the Creche, but the Ten are more afraid of the HSP rubber stamp vote than they are of letting a thousand androids
be slaughtered. But we can't leave it at that. If we don't prevent it, Erikson will precipitate a pogrom that will make the Canalopolis massacre look like a tea-party." For some reason he held back the information about the effect of the Fanatic weapon on robot tissue. The vague notion that knowing, Jon Graves might cast his lot with Erikson, restrained him.

  "Of course, Erikson will come in wearing an energy shield," Graves said.

  "He will. And we have none," Virginia Merrick said softly.

  "Can we compromise with him?" Graves asked.

  There it was again, Merrick thought, the weasel-word 'compromise.' There was a moral decay setting in everywhere--the founders of the Creche would never have spoken so. "No," he said flatly, "We cannot. Erikson has conceived a robot-menace. All the old hate-patterns are being dusted off and used on the rabble. People are actually asking one another if they would like their daughters to marry robots. That sort of thing, as old as homo sapiens. And one cannot compromise with prejudice. It seduces the emotions and dulls the mind. No, there will be no appeasing of Sweyn Erikson or his grey-shirted nightriders!"

  "You're talking like a starry-eyed fool, Han," Virginia Merrick said sharply.

  "Can't we take him in and give him the works?" Graves asked hopefully. "Primary Conditioning could handle the job. Give him a fill-in with false memory?"

  Merrick shook his head. "We can't risk narcosynthesis and that's essential. He'll surely be tested for blood purity when he leaves, and scopolamine traces would be a dead give-away that we had been trying to hide something here."

  "Then it looks as though compromise is the only way, Han. They've got us up against the wall. See here, Han, I know you don't agree, but what else is there? After all, we all believe in human supremacy. Erikson calls it a robot-menace, we look at it from another angle, but our common goal is the betterment of the human culture we've established. People are on an emotional jag now. There has been no war for five centuries. No emotional release. And there have been regulations and conventions set up since the Atom War that only a very few officials have been allowed to understand. Erikson is no savage, Han, after all. True he's set off a rash of robot-baiting, but he can be dealt with on an intelligent plane, I'm sure."