Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  He dropped to his knees and cried: "Wait! Wait! I confess that I blasphemed your god, but without realizing that I did!"

  "You mean," pressed the priestess-judge, "you acknowledge that you yourself are the only being dear to you?"

  "No, not that, either. Until now, I have never known love. But now it has come upon me like a nova and I must speak the truth." He paused, still on his knees, and looked piteously at the priestess-judge. "Are--are you bound by your law to--to believe me and to kill, instead of me, this--this being I adore?"

  "We are so bound," she stated.

  "Then," said The Eel, smiling and confident again, rising to his feet, "before all the Galaxy, I must declare the object of my sudden but everlasting passion. Great lady, it is you!"

  * * * * *

  The Eel is still in his pit, which has been made most comfortable by his sympathizers, while the Council of the Galactic Federation seeks feverishly and vainly, year after year, to find some legal way out of the impasse.

  Agsk, however, requests all Federation citizens to submit solutions, the grand prize for a workable answer being a lifetime term as president of the planet. A secondary contest (prize: lifetime ambassadorship to the Galactic Federation) is offered for a legal way around the statute barring criminals (specifically The Eel) from entering the primary contest.

  * * *

  Contents

  THE ULTIMATE EXPERIMENT

  By Thornton DeKy

  "THEY were all gone now, The Masters, all dead and their atoms scattered to the never ceasing winds that swept the great crysolite city towers in ever increasing fury. That had been the last wish of each as he had passed away, dying from sheer old age. True they had fought on as long as they could to save their kind from utter extinction but the comet that had trailed its poisoning wake across space to leave behind it, upon Earth, a noxious, lethal gas vapor, had done its work too well."

  No living soul breathed upon the Earth. No one lived here now, but Kiron and his kind.

  "And," so thought Kiron to himself, "he might as well be a great unthinking robot able to do only one thing instead of the mental giant he was, so obsessed had he become with the task he had set himself to do."

  Yet, in spite of a great loneliness and a strong fear of a final frustration, he worked on with the others of his people, hardly stopping for anything except the very necessities needed to keep his big body working in perfect coordination.

  Tirelessly he worked, for The Masters had bred, if that is the word to use, fatigue and the need for restoration out of his race long decades ago.

  Sometimes, though, he would stop his work when the great red dying sun began to fade into the west and his round eyes would grow wistful as he looked out over the great city that stretched in towering minarets and lofty spires of purest crystal blue for miles on every side. A fairy city of rarest hue and beauty. A city for the Gods and the Gods were dead. Kiron felt, at such times, the great loneliness that the last Master must have known.

  They had been kind, The Masters, and Kiron knew that his people, as they went about their eternal tasks of keeping the great city in perfect shape for The Masters who no longer needed it, must miss them as he did.

  Never to hear their voices ringing, never to see them again gathered in groups to witness some game or to play amid the silver fountains and flowery gardens of the wondrous city, made him infinitely saddened. It would always be like this, unless....

  But thinking, dreaming, reminiscing would not bring it all back for there was only one answer to still the longing: work. The others worked and did not dream, but instead kept busy tending to the thousand and one tasks The Masters had set them to do—had left them doing when the last Master perished. He too must remember the trust they had placed in his hands and fulfill it as best he could.

  From the time the great red eye of the sun opened itself in the East until it disappeared in the blue haze beyond the crysolite city, Kiron labored with his fellows. Then, at the appointed hour, the musical signals would peal forth their sweet, sad chimes, whispering goodnight to ears that would hear them no more and all operations would halt for the night, just as it had done when The Masters were here to supervise it.

  Then when morning came he would start once more trying, testing, experimenting with his chemicals and plastics, forever following labyrinth of knowledge, seeking for the great triumph that would make the work of the others of some real use.

  His hands molded the materials carefully, lovingly to a pattern that was set in his mind as a thing to cherish. Day by day his experiments in their liquid baths took form under his careful modeling. He mixed his chemicals with the same loving touch, the same careful concentration and painstaking thoroughness, studying often his notes and analysis charts.

  Everything must be just so lest his experiment not turn out perfectly. He never became exasperated at a failure or a defect that proved to be the only reward for his faithful endeavors but worked patiently on toward a goal that he knew would ultimately be his.

  Then one day, as the great red sun glowed like an immense red eye overhead, Kiron stepped back to admire his handiwork. In that instant the entire wondrous city seemed to breathe a silent prayer as he stood transfixed by the sight before him. Then it went on as usual, hurrying noiselessly about its business. The surface cars, empty though they were, fled swiftly about supported only by the rings of magnetic force that held them to their designated paths. The gravoships raised from the tower-dromes to speed silently into the eye of the red sun that was dying.

  "No one now," Kiron thought to himself as he studied his handiwork. Then he walked unhurriedly to the cabinet in the laboratory corner and took from it a pair of earphones resembling those of a long forgotten radio set. Just as unhurriedly, though his mind was filled with turmoil and his being with excitement, he walked back and connected the earphones to the box upon his bench. The phones dangled into the liquid bath before him as he adjusted them to suit his requirements.

  Slowly he checked over every step of his experiments before he went farther. Then, as he proved them for the last time, his hand went slowly to the small knife switch upon the box at his elbow. Next he threw into connection the larger switch upon his laboratory wall bringing into his laboratory the broadcast power of the crysolite city.

  The laboratory generators hummed softly, drowning out the quiet hum of the city outside. As they built up, sending tiny living electrical impulses over the wires like minute currents that come from the brain, Kiron sat breathless; his eyes intent.

  Closer to his work he bent, watching lovingly, fearful least all might not be quite right. Then his eyes took on a brighter light as he began to see the reaction. He knew the messages that he had sent out were being received and coordinated into a unit that would stir and grow into intellect.

  Suddenly the machine flashed its little warning red light and automatically snapped off. Kiron twisted quickly in his seat and threw home the final switch. This, he knew, was the ultimate test. On the results of the flood of energy impulses that he had set in motion rested the fulfillment of his success—or failure.

  He watched with slight misgivings. This had never been accomplished before. How could it possibly be a success now? Even The Masters had never quite succeeded at this final test, how could he, only a servant? Yet it must work for he had no desire in life but to make it work.

  Then, suddenly, he was on his feet, eyes wide. From the two long, coffin-like liquid baths, there arose two perfect specimens of the Homo sapiens. Man and woman, they were, and they blinked their eyes in the light of the noonday sun, raised themselves dripping from the baths of their creation and stepped to the floor before Kiron.

  The man spoke, the woman remained silent.

  "I am Adam Two," he said. "Created, by you Kiron from a formula they left, in their image. I was created to be a Master and she whom you also have created is to be my wife. We shall mate and the race of Man shall be reborn through us and others whom I shall help you create."


  The Man halted at the last declaration he intoned and walked smilingly toward the woman who stepped into his open arms returning his smile.

  Kiron smiled too within his pumping heart. The words the Man had intoned had been placed in his still pregnable mind by the tele-teach phones and record that the last Master had prepared before death had halted his experiments. The actions of the Man toward the Woman, Kiron knew, was caused by the natural constituents that went to form his chemical body and govern his humanness.

  He, Kiron, had created a living man and woman. The Masters lived again because of him. They would sing and play and again people the magnificent crysolite city because he loved them and had kept on until success had been his. But then why not such a turnabout? Hadn't they, The Masters, created him a superb, thinking robot?

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  Contents

  DEAD RINGER

  by Lester del Rey

  There was nothing, especially on Earth, which could set him free--the truth least of all!

  Dane Phillips slouched in the window seat, watching the morning crowds on their way to work and carefully avoiding any attempt to read Jordan's old face as the editor skimmed through the notes. He had learned to make his tall, bony body seem all loose-jointed relaxation, no matter what he felt. But the oversized hands in his pockets were clenched so tightly that the nails were cutting into his palms.

  Every tick of the old-fashioned clock sent a throb racing through his brain. Every rustle of the pages seemed to release a fresh shot of adrenalin into his blood stream. This time, his mind was pleading. It has to be right this time....

  Jordan finished his reading and shoved the folder back. He reached for his pipe, sighed, and then nodded slowly. "A nice job of researching, Phillips. And it might make a good feature for the Sunday section, at that."

  It took a second to realize that the words meant acceptance, for Phillips had prepared himself too thoroughly against another failure. Now he felt the tautened muscles release, so quickly that he would have fallen if he hadn't been braced against the seat.

  He groped in his mind, hunting for words, and finding none. There was only the hot, sudden flame of unbelieving hope. And then an almost blinding exultation.

  * * * * *

  Jordan didn't seem to notice his silence. The editor made a neat pile of the notes, nodding again. "Sure. I like it. We've been short of shock stuff lately and the readers go for it when we can get a fresh angle. But naturally you'd have to leave out all that nonsense on Blanding. Hell, the man's just buried, and his relatives and friends--"

  "But that's the proof!" Phillips stared at the editor, trying to penetrate through the haze of hope that had somehow grown chilled and unreal. His thoughts were abruptly disorganized and out of his control. Only the urgency remained. "It's the key evidence. And we've got to move fast! I don't know how long it takes, but even one more day may be too late!"

  Jordan nearly dropped the pipe from his lips as he jerked upright to peer sharply at the younger man. "Are you crazy? Do you seriously expect me to get an order to exhume him now? What would it get us, other than lawsuits? Even if we could get the order without cause--which we can't!"

  Then the pipe did fall as he gaped open-mouthed. "My God, you believe all that stuff. You expected us to publish it straight!"

  "No," Dane said thickly. The hope was gone now, as if it had never existed, leaving a numb emptiness where nothing mattered. "No, I guess I didn't really expect anything. But I believe the facts. Why shouldn't I?"

  He reached for the papers with hands he could hardly control and began stuffing them back into the folder. All the careful documentation, the fingerprints--smudged, perhaps, in some cases, but still evidence enough for anyone but a fool--

  "Phillips?" Jordan said questioningly to himself, and then his voice was taking on a new edge. "Phillips! Wait a minute, I've got it now! Dane Phillips, not Arthur! Two years on the Trib. Then you turned up on the Register in Seattle? Phillip Dean, or some such name there."

  "Yeah," Dane agreed. There was no use in denying anything now. "Yeah, Dane Arthur Phillips. So I suppose I'm through here?"

  Jordan nodded again and there was a faint look of fear in his expression. "You can pick up your pay on the way out. And make it quick, before I change my mind and call the boys in white!"

  * * * * *

  It could have been worse. It had been worse before. And there was enough in the pay envelope to buy what he needed--a flash camera, a little folding shovel from one of the surplus houses, and a bottle of good scotch. It would be dark enough for him to taxi out to Oakhaven Cemetery, where Blanding had been buried.

  It wouldn't change the minds of the fools, of course. Even if he could drag back what he might find, without the change being completed, they wouldn't accept the evidence. He'd been crazy to think anything could change their minds. And they called him a fanatic! If the facts he'd dug up in ten years of hunting wouldn't convince them, nothing would. And yet he had to see for himself, before it was too late!

  He picked a cheap hotel at random and checked in under an assumed name. He couldn't go back to his room while there was a chance that Jordan still might try to turn him in. There wouldn't be time for Sylvia's detectives to bother him, probably, but there was the ever-present danger that one of the aliens might intercept the message.

  He shivered. He'd been risking that for ten years, yet the likelihood was still a horror to him. The uncertainty made it harder to take than any human-devised torture could be. There was no way of guessing what an alien might do to anyone who discovered that all men were not human--that some were ... zombies.

  There was the classic syllogism: All men are mortal; I am a man; therefore, I am mortal. But not Blanding--or Corporal Harding.

  It was Harding's "death" that had started it all during the fighting on Guadalcanal. A grenade had come flying into the foxhole where Dane and Harding had felt reasonably safe. The concussion had knocked Dane out, possibly saving his life when the enemy thought he was dead. He'd come to in the daylight to see Harding lying there, mangled and twisted, with his throat torn. There was blood on Dane's uniform, obviously spattered from the dead man. It hadn't been a mistake or delusion; Harding had been dead.

  It had taken Dane two days of crawling and hiding to get back to his group, too exhausted to report Harding's death. He'd slept for twenty hours. And when he awoke, Harding had been standing beside him, with a whole throat and a fresh uniform, grinning and kidding him for running off and leaving a stunned friend behind.

  It was no ringer, but Harding himself, complete to the smallest personal memories and personality traits.

  * * * * *

  The pressures of war probably saved Dane's sanity while he learned to face the facts. All men are mortal; Harding is not mortal; therefore, Harding is not a man! Nor was Harding alone--Dane found enough evidence to know there were others.

  The Tribune morgue yielded even more data. A man had faced seven firing squads and walked away. Another survived over a dozen attacks by professional killers. Fingerprints turned up mysteriously "copied" from those of men long dead. Some of the aliens seemed to heal almost instantly; others took days. Some operated completely alone; some seemed to have joined with others. But they were legion.

  Lack of a clearer pattern of attack made him consider the possibility of human mutation, but such tissue was too wildly different, and the invasion had begun long before atomics or X-rays. He gave up trying to understand their alien motivations. It was enough that they existed in secret, slowly growing in numbers while mankind was unaware of them.

  When his proof was complete and irrefutable, he took it to his editor--to be fired, politely but coldly. Other editors were less polite. But he went on doggedly trying and failing. What else could he do? Somehow, he had to find the few people who could recognize facts and warn them. The aliens would get him, of course, when the story broke, but a warned humanity could cope with them. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free.

  Then he met Sylvia by accident after losing his fifth job--a girl who had inherited a fortune big enough to spread his message in paid ads across the country. They were married before he found she was hard-headed about her money. She demanded a full explanation for every cent beyond his allowance. In the end, she got the explanation. And while he was trying to cash the check she gave him, she visited Dr. Buehl, to come back with a squad of quiet, refined strong-arm boys who made sure Dane reached Buehl's "rest home" safely.

  Hydrotherapy ... Buehl as the kindly firm father image ... analysis ... hypnosis that stripped every secret from him, including his worst childhood nightmare.

  His father had committed a violent, bloody suicide after one of the many quarrels with Dane's mother. Dane had found the body.

  Two nights after the funeral, he had dreamed of his father's face, horror-filled, at the window. He knew now that it was a normal nightmare, caused by being forced to look at the face in the coffin, but the shock had lasted for years. It had bothered him again, after his discovery of the aliens, until a thorough check had proved without doubt that his father had been fully human, with a human, if tempestuous, childhood behind him.

  * * * * *

  Dr. Buehl was delighted. "You see, Dane? You know it was a nightmare, but you don't really believe it even now. Your father was an alien monster to you--no adult is quite human to a child. And that literal-minded self, your subconscious, saw him after he died. So there are alien monsters who return from death. Then you come to from a concussion. Harding is sprawled out unconscious, covered with blood--probably your blood, since you say he wasn't wounded, later.

  "But after seeing your father, you can't associate blood with yourself--you see it as a horrible wound on Harding. When he turns out to be alive, you're still in partial shock, with your subconscious dominant. And that has the answer already. There are monsters who come back from the dead! An exaggerated reaction, but nothing really abnormal. We'll have you out of here in no time."