Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  The man I chose was a nobody. A homeless, friendless non-entity, picked up off the street. He had once been an educated man. But now he was only a bum, and when he died he'd never be missed. A perfect man for my experiment.

  I'm a rich man because I have a system. The system is simple: I never make a move until I know exactly where that move will lead me. My field of operations is the stock market. I spend money unstintingly to secure the information I need before I take each step. I hire the best investigators, bribe employees and persons in position to give me the information I want, and only when I am as certain as humanly possible that I cannot be wrong do I move. And the system never fails. Seven million dollars in the bank is proof of that.

  Now, knowing that I could not live, I intended to make the system work for me one last time before I died. I'm a firm believer in the adage that any situation can be whipped, given prior knowledge of its coming--and, of course, its attendant circumstances.

  * * * * *

  For a moment he did not answer and I began to fear that my experiment had failed. "Where are you?" I repeated, louder and sharper this time.

  The small muscles about his eyes puckered with an unnormal tension while the rest of his face held its death frost. Slowly, slowly, unnaturally--as though energized by some hyper-rational power--his lips and tongue moved. The words he spoke were clear. "I am in a ... a ... tunnel," he said. "It is lighted, dimly, but there is nothing for me to see." Blue veins showed through the flesh of his cheeks like watermarks on translucent paper.

  He paused and I urged, "Go on."

  "I am alone," he said. "The realities I knew no longer exist, and I am damp and cold. All about me is a sense of gloom and dejection. It is an apprehension--an emanation--so deep and real as to be almost a tangible thing. The walls to either side of me seem to be formed, not of substance, but rather of the soundless cries of melancholy of spirits I cannot see.

  "I am waiting, waiting in the gloom for something which will come to me. That need to wait is an innate part of my being and I have no thought of questioning it." His voice died again.

  "What are you waiting for?" I asked.

  "I do not know," he said, his voice dreary with the despair of centuries of hopelessness. "I only know that I must wait--that compulsion is greater than my strength to combat."

  The tone of his voice changed slightly. "The tunnel about me is widening and now the walls have receded into invisibility. The tunnel has become a plain, but the plain is as desolate, as forlorn and dreary as was the tunnel, and still I stand and wait. How long must this go on?"

  He fell silent again, and I was about to prompt him with another question--I could not afford to let the time run out in long silences--but abruptly the muscles about his eyes tightened and subtly a new aspect replaced their hopeless dejection. Now they expressed a black, bottomless terror. For a moment I marveled that so small a portion of a facial anatomy could express such horror.

  "There is something coming toward me," he said. "A--beast--of brutish foulness! Beast is too inadequate a term to describe it, but I know no words to tell its form. It is an intangible and evasive--thing--but very real. And it is coming closer! It has no organs of sight as I know them, but I feel that it can see me. Or rather that it is aware of me with a sense sharper than vision itself. It is very near now. Oh God, the malevolence, the hate--the potentiality of awful, fearsome destructiveness that is its very essence! And still I cannot move!"

  The expression of terrified anticipation, centered in his eyes, lessened slightly, and was replaced, instantly, by its former deep, deep despair. "I am no longer afraid," he said.

  "Why?" I interjected. "Why?" I was impatient to learn all that I could before the end came.

  "Because ..." He paused. "Because it holds no threat for me. Somehow, someday, I understand--I know--that it too is seeking that for which I wait."

  "What is it doing now?" I asked.

  "It has stopped beside me and we stand together, gazing across the stark, empty plain. Now a second awful entity, with the same leashed virulence about it, moves up and stands at my other side. We all three wait, myself with a dark fear of this dismal universe, my unnatural companions with patient, malicious menace.

  "Bits of ..." He faltered. "Of ... I can name it only aura, go out from the beasts like an acid stream, and touch me, and the hate, and the venom chill my body like a wave of intense cold.

  "Now there are others of the awful breed behind me. We stand, waiting, waiting for that which will come. What it is I do not know."

  I could see the pallor of death creeping steadily into the last corners of his lips, and I knew that the end was not far away. Suddenly a black frustration built up within me. "What are you waiting for?" I screamed, the tenseness, and the importance of this moment forcing me to lose the iron self-control upon which I have always prided myself. I knew that the answer held the secret of what I must know. If I could learn that, my experiment would not be in vain, and I could make whatever preparations were necessary for my own death. I had to know that answer.

  "Think! Think!" I pleaded. "What are you waiting for?"

  "I do not know!" The dreary despair in his eyes, sightless as they met mine, chilled me with a coldness that I felt in the marrow of my being. "I do not know," he repeated. "I ... Yes, I do know!"

  Abruptly the plasmatic film cleared from his eyes and I knew that for the first time, since the poison struck, he was seeing me, clearly. I sensed that this was the last moment before he left--for good. It had to be now!

  "Tell me. I command you," I cried. "What are you waiting for?"

  His voice was quiet as he murmured, softly, implacably, before he was gone.

  "We are waiting," he said, "for you."

  * * *

  Contents

  VITAL INGREDIENT

  By Charles V. De Vet

  It is man's most precious possession--no living thing can exist without it. But when they gave it to Orville, it killed him. For the answer, read 1/M.

  "Now watch," Remm said, indicating the native. Macker had been absent, exploring the countryside in the immediate vicinity of their landing place, and had not witnessed the capture of the native, or the tests his two companions made on it.

  Macker followed Remm's gaze to where the biped native sat hunched. The creature was bent into an ungainly position, its body crooked at incongruous angles, in such a way as to allow most of its weight to rest on a packing-box at the base of a middle angle. Its stubby feet, on the ends of thin, pipelike legs, rested against the floor of the space ship. Its body was covered, almost entirely, with an artificial skin material of various colors. Some of the colors hurt Macker's eyes. In the few places where the flesh showed through the skin was an unhealthy, pallid white.

  Slowly the creature's head swiveled on its short neck until it faced them.

  "Those orifices in the upper portion of its skull are evidently organs of sight," Remm said. "It sees that we are quite a distance away. It will probably attempt to escape again."

  Slowly--slowly--the native's head rotated away from them in a half-circle until it faced Toolls, working over his instruments on the far side of the room. Then it turned its head back until it faced the door of the ship.

  "It is setting itself for flight now," Remm said. "Notice the evidence of strain on its face."

  The creature leaned forward and the appendages on the ends of its upper limbs clutched the sides of the box as it propelled its body forward.

  It raised its right foot in a slow arc, employing a double-jointed, breaking action of its leg. For a long moment it rested its entire weight on its lumpy right foot, while its momentum carried its body sluggishly forward. Then it repeated the motion with its left leg; then again its right. All the while evidencing great exertion and concentration of effort.

  "It is making what it considers a mad dash for freedom," Remm said. "Probably at the ultimate speed of which it is capable. That would be ridiculous except that it's normal for its own e
nvironment. This is definitely a slow-motion world."

  The creature was a third-way to the door now. Once again its head turned in its slow quarter-circle, to look at them. As it saw that Remm and Macker had not moved it altered the expression on its face.

  "It seems to express its emotions through facial contortions," Remm said. "Though I suspect that the sounds it makes with the upper part of its trachea during moments of agitation are also outlets of emotional stress, rather than efforts at communication." He called across the room to Toolls. "What did you find out about its speech?"

  "Extremely primitive," Toolls replied. "Incredible as it may appear to us it uses combinations of sounds to form word-symbols. Each word indicates some action, or object; or denotes degree, time, or shades of meaning. Other words are merely connectives. It seems to make little use of inflections, the basis of a rational language. Thoughts which we can project with a few sounds would take it dozens of words to express."

  "Just how intelligent is it?" Macker asked.

  "Only as intelligent as a high degree of self-preservation instinct would make it."

  "Are you certain that it is a member of the dominant species of life on the planet?"

  "There's no doubt about it," Toolls replied. "I've made very careful observations."

  "This attempt at escape is a pretty good example of its intelligence," Remm said. "This is the sixth time it has tried to escape--in exactly the same way. As soon as it sees that we are farther away from it than it is from the door, it makes its dash."

  * * * * *

  The creature was one step away from the space ship's open portal now and bringing its foot up to cross the threshold. Remm walked over and lifted it off the floor.

  "Its legs are still moving in a running motion," Macker said. "Doesn't it realize yet that you've picked it up?"

  "Its nervous system and reflexes are evidently as slow as its motor muscles," Remm replied. "There has not been time for the sensation of my picking it up to reach the brain, and for the brain to send back its message to the legs to stop their running motion."

  "How heavy is it?" Macker asked.

  "Only a few ounces," Remm replied. "But that's logical considering that this is a 'light' planet. If we took it back to our own 'heavy' world, gravity would crush it to a light film of the liquid which comprises the greater part of its substance."

  Remm set the creature down on the box in its former queerly contorted position. Toolls had left his instruments and strolled over beside them to observe the native.

  "One of its appendages seems bent at a peculiar angle," Macker said.

  "I noticed that," Remm answered. "I think that I may have broken the bone in several places when I first captured it. I was not aware then of how fragile it was. But now that you mention it, I should be able to use that injury to give you a good illustration of the interplay of emotional expressions on its face. Observe now as I touch it."

  Remm reached over and touched--very lightly--the broken portion of the native's appendage. The muscles of the creature's face pulled its flaccid flesh into distorted positions, bunching some and stretching others. "It is very probably registering pain," Remm said.

  Suddenly the starch seemed to leave the native's body and it slowly slumped across the packing-box.

  "Why is it doing that, Toolls?" Remm asked.

  Toolls concentrated for a minute, absorbing the feelings and thought pulsations emanating from the creature. "The conscious plane of its mind has blanked out," he said. "I presume the pain you caused by touching its wounded member resulted in a breakdown of its nervous system. The only thought waves I receive now are disjointed impressions and pictures following no rational series. However, I'm certain that it will be only temporary."

  "Don't you think that in justice to the creature we should repair its wound before we free it?" Macker asked.

  "I had intended to have it done," Remm replied. "You shouldn't have any trouble fixing it, should you, Toolls?"

  "No," Toolls answered. "I may as well attend to it right now." He rolled the portable converter over beside the creature and carefully laid its arm in the "pan." The converter automatically set its gauges and instruments of calculation, and gave its click of "ready."

  Toolls fed a short length of basic into the machine and it began its work. The native was still unconscious.

  The bone of the wounded arm slowly evaporated, beginning with the wrist joint. The evaporated portion was instantly replaced by the manufactured bone of the converter. At the same time it repaired all ruptured blood vessels and damaged ligaments and muscles.

  "It was not possible, of course, for me to replace the bone with another of the same composition as its own," Toolls said, after the machine had completed its work. "But I gave it one of our 'heavy' ones. There will be no force on this planet powerful enough to break it again."

  * * * * *

  The native's first evidence of a return to consciousness was a faint fluttering of the lids that covered its organs of vision. The lids opened and it looked up at them.

  "Its eyesight is as slow as its muscular reactions," Remm said. "Watch." Remm raised his hand and waved it slowly in front of the native's face. The eyes of the native, moving in odd, jerking movements, followed the hand's progress. Remm raised the hand--speeding its action slightly--and the eyesight faltered and lost it. The native's eyes rolled wildly until once again they located the hand.

  Remm took three steps forward. The native's eyes were unable to follow his change of position. Its gaze wandered about the room, until again its settled on Remm's waiting figure.

  "Can you imagine anything being so slow," Remm said, "and still ..." Suddenly Macker interrupted. "Something is wrong. It is trying to get up, but it can't." The native was registering signs of distress, kicking its legs and twisting its body into new positions of contortion.

  "I see what the trouble is," Toolls said. "It's unable to lift the appendage with the new bone in. I never thought of that before but its 'light' muscles aren't strong enough to lift the limb. We've got the poor creature pinned to the box by the weight of its own arm."

  "We can't do that to it," Remm said. "Isn't there any way you can give it a lighter bone?"

  "None that wouldn't take a retooling of the converter," Toolls said. "I'm not certain that I could do it, and even if I could, we don't have the time to spare. I could give it stronger muscles in the arm, but that may throw off the metabolism of the whole body. If it did, the result would be fatal. I'd hate to chance it."

  "I have an idea," Macker said. By the inflections of his tones the others knew that some incongruity of the situation had aroused Macker's sense of humor. "Why don't we give the creature an entirely new body? We could replace the flesh and viscera, as well as the cartilaginous structure, with our own type substance. It would probably be an indestructible being as far as its own world is concerned. And it would be as powerful as their mightiest machines. We'd leave behind us a superman that could change the course of this world's history. You could do it, couldn't you, Toolls?"

  "Quite simply."

  "Our policy has always been not to interfere in anyway with the races we study," Remm protested.

  "But our policy has also been never to harm any of them, if at all possible to avoid it," Macker insisted. "In common justice you have to complete the job Toolls began on the arm, or you're condemning this poor thing to death."

  "But do we have the right to loose such an unpredictable factor as it would be among them?" Remm asked. "After all, our purpose is exploration and observation, not playing the parts of gods to the primitives we encounter."

  "True, that is the rule which we have always followed in the past," Macker agreed, "but it is in no way a requirement. We are empowered to use our judgment in all circumstances. And in this particular instance I believe I can convince you that the course I suggest is the more just one." He turned to Toolls. "Just what stage of cultural development would you say this creature's race has attained?"
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  "It still retains more of an animal-like adaptation to its surroundings than an intellectual one," Toolls replied. "Its civilization is divided into various sized units of cooperation which it calls governments. Each unit vies with the others for a greater share of its world's goods. That same rivalry is carried down to the individual within the unit. Each strives for acquisition against his neighbor.

  "Further they retain many of their tribal instincts, such as gregariousness, emotional rather than intellectual propagation, and worship of the mightiest fighter. This last, however, is manifested by reverence for individuals attaining position of authority, or acquiring large amounts of their medium of exchange, rather than by physical superiority."

  "That's what I mean," Macker said. "Our policy in the past has been to avoid tampering, only because of the fear of bringing harm. If we created a super being among them, to act as a controlling and harmonizing force, we'd hasten their development by thousands of years. We'd be granting them the greatest possible boon!"

  "I don't know," Remm said, obviously swayed by Macker's logic. "I'm still hesitant about introducing a being into their midst whose thought processes would be so subtle and superior to their own. How do you feel about it, Toolls?"

  "What would they have to lose?" Toolls asked with his penchant for striking the core of an argument.

  "The right or wrong of such moral and philosophical considerations has always been a delicate thing to decide," Remm acquiesced reluctantly. "Go ahead if you think it is the right thing to do."

  * * * * *

  "All finished?" Macker asked.

  "That depends on how much you want me to do," Toolls replied. "I've substituted our 'heavy' substances for his entire body structure, including the brain--at the same time transferring his former memory and habit impressions. That was necessary if he is to be able to care for himself. Also I brought his muscular reaction time up to our norm, and speeded his reflexes."

  "Have you implanted any techniques which he did not possess before, such as far-seeing, or mental insight?" Macker asked.