Before the Universe

by Frederik Pohl

  The second wave had come up now, and, sizing up the situation (no doubt through the help of the idiot) quickly spread out, so as to offer the poorest possible target and dove for their attackers. There were no flashes from the great guns—they operated on springs. But their fire was deadly none the less; for all the maneuvering of the slender ships, black arrow after black arrow burst into shattered fragments.

  By the time the third wave came up, the first two had been utterly disorganized, a few individual ships, diving toward the batteries and being blown out of the atmosphere. So far, not one hit by the fleet had been made, although several concerted dives had been attempted.

  The third wave, it seemed would not be taken off guard. But Jocelyn, looking on and trying to outguess the command, had forgotten the lovely possibilities of misdirection. The third wave did not attack the batteries at all; it hovered high above the citadel then dropped like hawks upon the ascending fourth wave of ships. As if, at a signal, all seven batteries directed their fire toward the citadel itself, raining devastating fire upon the vital sections.

  Jocelyn tuned in upon the thought-waves to hear a veritable fury of hysterical commands and countercommands vibrating back and forth. At a sudden hunch, she sought out the room where the central command hung out with the idiot. She was amazed to find a heavy cordon of guards around the room, constantly being reinforced. She looked into the room itself, and rocked with laughter at the sight of Clair, sitting on a stool, drooling, a blank look upon his face. There was a faint bulge in his vest pocket—that would be Ionic Intersection.

  The room was apparently soundproof to the nth degree. The central command sat around, a confident smirk upon their faces, watching maps, making marks upon them and nodding approvingly. Jocelyn took a closeup on the map and was amazed to discover that, according to it, the enemy air fleet was now approaching its objectives having smashed through the spheres of Luke’s people. For a moment she stared disbelieving, then laughed again as the answer came to her. Of course! These sublime dopes weren’t being let in on what was actually happening.

  She flashed back to the scene of battle. The entire armada of black ships was now engaged in terrific battle with itself. Each squadron, she observed, had its own particular symbol, which helped. Because each squadron was attacking any and every other squadron.

  Meanwhile, mechanized infantry was moving rapidly inward, upon itself. Paying little heed to the struggle in the sky, the infantry from the north side advanced upon, met, and locked in titanic combat with the infantry from the south. Land cruisers riddled each other with deadly fire while the soldiery on foot brought into play the “new weapon,” the corroding mist. From little containers they squirted it far ahead of them and waited for the “enemy” to come on. It was the southern infantry that waited; the northern soldiery came forward.

  Jocelyn stared for a moment in fascinated horror as the infantry moved into the terrain filled with the deadly corrosive mist, sat with her fists tightly clenched as the mist settled about them and slowly ate them away. There was no escape. The ghastly stuff was all-devouring. One drop upon any part of the clothing was sufficient, unless that bit could be taken off and flung away before it penetrated to the skin. She sat transfixed with the horror of it, then suddenly, switched to another scene. There was death and destruction in the skies, too, but it was swift and comparatively clear and painless.

  The final scene came when the door of the central command’s office was rudely shoved open, and a squad of soldiers came in. Before the amazed mucky-mucks could protest, they raised pistols and riddled them.

  “Stop it!” Jocelyn’s thoughts screamed out. “Their power’s broken; put an end to the battle!”

  “We’ve done just that,” came back Luke’s thoughts in answer. But Jocelyn didn’t hear him; for the first time since adolescence, she was out cold in a genuine faint.

  VIII.

  “Do you people have any mass-decreasing stuff?” asked Gaynor, via telepathic helmet.

  “No,” sadly admitted Luke. “I fear you will have to go back to your universe as you are. Though I don’t see what’s wrong with Clair’s size. I think it’s a very distinguished size.”

  “Yeah,” said Jocelyn in disgust. “You would.”

  The war was definitely over. They’d just finished a conference with emissaries from the former bad guys and a general session whereby arrangements would be made to help the former enemy reconstruct in return for certain processes which could be put to peacetime use was in the offing. Clair and Ionic Intersection had made their exit after the revolution, signalized by the shooting of the central command.

  “But what,” demanded Io, “caused Arthur to bloat up to his terrific size? I don’t understand it.”

  “Perhaps,” mused Clair, “it was because I took a different route to this plane. It’s a marvel that the same thing didn’t happen to you.”

  “So help me, partner,” said Gaynor, “this is going to be awkward. Awkward as a bandersnatchgoing around the good old USA with a colleague the size of a big house. I don’t know what to do about it. And how we can get you back into the Prototype is also beyond me.”

  “What happened to Proto Jr?” asked Jocelyn. “That went big, too. And unfortunately, I’m afraid it was blown up during the battle because it was right in the former bad guy’s city. The counter lost focus when it swelled up, I guess.

  “But this is what is known as a spot! Clair big and us normal— ”

  “Hold on a minute,” interrupted Ionic Intersection. “Maybe that’s not just so.”

  “Meaning what?” asked her husband. “Meaning, my dearest, that maybe you’re normal and we’re small. Ever think of that?”

  “Holy smokes!” gargled Gaynor. “You could be right at that.” He clipped on his helmet and concentrated heavily.

  “Yep,” he said at length, “you seem to be right. And what does that dope Oley say but that they have mass-increasing stuff. And why didn’t I ask him in the first place?”

  “When do we bloat, then?” asked Jocelyn.

  “Shortly, Oley says he’ll have to get a special power line for the machinery. He can assemble that out of some stuff he has—hold on—what’s— ”

  He felt a weirdly powerful grinding in his every cell, fiber, tendon, thread, and atom. Gaynor was growing. So, he saw, were to and Jocelyn. Finally he stretched. “There, that’s better. Much better. Lemme look at you, Jos— ” His colossal mate smiled sweetly. “You giant,” she said amiably, “I hope lo didn’t guess wrong.”

  “Now,” said Gaynor, “all we have to do is give the treatment to the Prototype, then we can scoot.” “Oh, you want to go?”

  “Of course,” said Jocelyn, “you don’t think we want to stay here, do you?”

  Clair and to exchanged glances. “Io and I are staying,” declared Clair, “but there’s nothing to keep you two from making it back. Io’s hasn’t had any real mental exercise between the time we got back to Earth last and when you three landed here. And I must confess that I want to learn a lot more about these people, too.

  “So, why not go back and leave us here—we’ll call it a honeymoon.”

  “Come, my pet,” said Gaynor gently, taking Jocelyn’s arm. “I think they mean they want to be alone.”

  “You’ll come back some day, Art?” asked Gaynor anxiously as the last batch of supplies were stowed away in the Prototype.

  Clair nodded. “Sure.” He took a familiar device out of his pocket. “Here’s a duplicate of the counter. I don’t want you and Jos stuck for my debts—you ought to be able to take care of them and yours, and have enough left over for the next few years’ ice cream cones on what you get from this. Here are the plans.” He tended Gaynor a small, thick envelope.

  “Your analyser,” he went on, “is set on me and mine on you. I’ve made a few improvements, on this pair. You can signal me with it, or vice versa. Nothing very complex, but enough so that I’ll know if you want to come after me and vice versa.

 
; “So remember, if you’re in a tight spot and need me, just send out an SOS on this. I’ll do the same if I need you. And if you’re just coming my way, but there’s no emergency, just send out the work CLAIR in regular morse on the dingus. I’ll call GAYNOR in a similar situation for you.”

  “Good enough,” murmured his partner. “So it’s cheerio.”

  “Right. Bye, Paul.”

  Handshakes and osculations, then the door closed and the Prototype lifted up into the air.

  “With the charts that Luke gave them, they ought to manage,” mused Clair. “It’s too bad in a way—I rather liked Pavlik.”

  “So did I,” agreed lo. “Perhaps his wife will grow up some day. Then I’ll be glad to see Jocelyn again.”

  “Oh—oh,” muttered Gaynor at the controls of the Prototype, “there’s something familiar about this section of space.”

  “Yer derv’ tootin’ they is!” snapped a familiar voice. “Jumpin’ Jehosophat, but caint an’ old man hav any peace a tall? Hey! What happened ter the pretty gal with the brown hair?”

  “She found her husband,” explained Gaynor. “Honest, Mr. Canter, we weren’t aiming to intrude. We’re on our way home now.”

  “Weeel, reckon as haow yer might as well be sociable sence yer here.’ C’mon over ‘n’ see the new city I built after ye left the last time.”

  Gaynor followed the hermit’s instructions and shot the Prototype in the directions stated. “Paul!” gasped Jocelyn suddenly, pointing a shaking finger, “Look!”

  “Ulp!”

  Before them stretched a city, but what a city! Huge buildings in the shapes of cones with needle-tips, balanced upon each other, cubes, hexagons, spheres, and every impossible and possible geometric shape. A riot of angles and slopes.

  “Take it away,” gasped Jocelyn weakly.

  “Up here,” came the hermit’s voice. They looked to see Davy perched on a large sphere rolling along a zigzaggy road atop a tremendously high wall. Beside him sat the yellow-haired girl in the gingham dress they’d seen before.

  “Gawd,” muttered Gaynor, “I think I need some of that corn likker—without a hose.”

  “You and me both,” agreed his wife. “Mr. Canter,” she called, “I thought you were all alone?”

  “So’d I,” came back the response. “But this consarn phantasm here jest won’t stay a’vanished—an’ I reckon as haow I don’t perticulerly want it ter, anyhaow.” He cackled lustily.

  “Ye kin tell me all abaout yer trip after we look araound a bit. Haow d’yer like my city. Built it after a pitcher thet thet feller Billikin had with him. Non ob-jec-tive he called it.”

  “But we object!” gasped Jocelyn. She dashed to the controls and applied full power to the Prototype. “Consarn!” muttered the ex-hermit of Razorback Crag to his yellow-haired consort as the Prototype vanished, “some people jest don’t have no manners nohow!”

  AFTERWORD

  In 1941 the Japanese creamed Pearl Harbor, and by the early part of 1942, it became clear to all of us that our interesting and developing world was being derailed onto a quite different track. Cyril found work as a war-industry machinist in Connecticut. He moved there with his new wife (a young femmefan called Mary G. Byers, by whom in time he had two children), and we lost touch for a while.

  Around March of 1943 Cyril turned up in New York again. He had enlisted in the Army, in a special program for machinists which made him the envy of all draft-bait. It would give him sergeant’s stripes as soon as he finished basic framing, and keep him busy repairing artillery well behind the lines instead of firing it, and being fired at, closer up. I had also volunteered, and was waiting for my orders. So the two of us stepped out for a drink to celebrate, which led to another drink, which led to one of the two drunkest nights I have ever spent in my life. (The other, six or seven years later, was also with Cyril.) When we woke in the morning, we shook hands tremblingly, not with emotion but with triple-distilled essence of terminal hangover. And Cyril went off to war, and so, a couple weeks later, did I.

  We exchanged a little V-mail from time to time, but we didn’t see each other again, or of course collaborate on anything, until the war was well over; but that belongs in Critical Mass.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  FREDERIK POHL is a double-threat science fictioneer, being the only person to have won this field’s top award, the Hugo, as both a writer and an editor. As a writer, he’s published more Man 30 novels and short story collections; as an editor, he published Me first series of anthologies of original stories in the field of science fiction, Star Science Fiction. He was, for a number of years, the editor of two leading magazines, Galaxy and If. His awards include four Hugos and the Edward E. Smith Award. His interests extend to politics, history (he’s the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s authority on the Roman Emperor Tiberius), and almost the entire range of human affairs. His latest novel is JEM.

  CYRIL M. KORNBLUTH began writing science fiction for publication at the age of fifteen, and continued to do so until his early death in his mid-thirties. In his own right, he was the author of four science fiction novels, including The Syndic, a number of works outside the science fiction field and several score of the brightest and most innovative shorter science fiction pieces ever written. Some of his short stories and novelettes have been mainstays for Me anthologists and have also been adapted for television production. His collaboration with Frederik Pohl has been described as “the finest science fiction collaborating team in history.” Together, they wrote seven novels and more than thirty short stories. Among their works are such classics as Wolfbane, Gladiator-at-Law, The Space Merchants and Before the Universe.