The Best From Fantasy and Science Fiction Fifth Series

by Edited by Anthony Boucher

  “Now what do you want of me?”

  “Proof that he was on the Moon sometime in August. It’s got to be done quickly. I can’t hold him on suspicion much longer. And if news of the murder gets out, the world press will blow up like an asteroid striking Jupiter’s atmosphere. A glamorous crime, you know—first murder on the Moon.”

  “Exactly when was the murder committed?” asked Urth, in a sudden transition to brisk cross-examination.

  “August twenty-seventh.”

  “And the arrest was made when?”

  “Yesterday, August thirtieth.”

  “Then if Peyton were the murderer, he would have had time to return to Earth.”

  “Barely. Just barely.” Davenport’s lips thinned. “If I had been a day sooner— If I had found his place empty—”

  “And how long do you suppose the two, the murdered man and the mur­derer, were on the Moon altogether?”

  “Judging by the ground covered by the footprints, a number of days. A week, at the minimum.”

  “Has the ship they used been located?”

  “No, and it probably never will. About ten hours ago, the University of Denver reported a rise in background radioactivity beginning day before yesterday at 6 P.M. and persisting for a number of hours. It’s an easy thing, Dr. Urth, to set a ship’s controls so as to allow it to blast off without crew and blow up, fifty miles high, in a micropile short.”

  “If I had been Peyton,” said Dr. Urth thoughtfully, “I would have killed the man on board ship and blown up corpse and ship together.”

  “You don’t know Peyton,” said Davenport grimly. “He enjoys his victories over the law. He values them. Leaving the corpse on the Moon is his chal­lenge to us.”

  “I see.” Dr. Urth patted his stomach with a rotary motion and said, “Well, there is a chance.”

  “That you’ll be able to prove he was on the Moon?”

  “That I’ll be able to give you my opinion.”

  “Now?”

  “The sooner the better. If, of course, I get a chance to interview Mr. Peyton.”

  “That can be arranged. I have a non-grav jet waiting. We can be in Washington in twenty minutes.”

  But a look of the deepest alarm passed over the plump extraterrologist’s face. He rose to his feet and pattered away from the T.B.I, agent toward the duskiest corner of the cluttered room.

  “No!”

  “What’s wrong, Dr. Urth?”

  “I won’t use a non-grav jet. I don’t believe in them.”

  Davenport stared confusedly at Dr. Urth. He stammered, “Would you prefer a monorail?”

  Dr. Urth snapped, “I mistrust all forms of transportation. I don’t believe in them. Except walking. I don’t mind walking.” He was suddenly eager. “Couldn’t you bring Mr. Peyton to this city, somewhere within walking distance? To City Hall, perhaps? I’ve often walked to City Hall.”

  Davenport looked helplessly about the room. He looked at the myriad volumes of lore about the light-years. He could see through the open door into the room beyond, with its tokens of the worlds beyond the sky. And he looked at Dr. Urth, pale at the thought of non-grav jet, and shrugged his shoulders.

  “I’ll bring Peyton here. Right to this room. Will that satisfy you?”

  Dr. Urth puffed out his breath in a deep sigh. “Quite.”

  “I hope you can deliver, Dr. Urth.”

  “I will do my best, Mr. Davenport.”

  ~ * ~

  Louis Peyton stared with distaste at his surroundings and with contempt at the fat man who bobbed his head in greeting. He glanced at the seat offered him and brushed it with his hand before sitting down. Davenport took a seat next to him, with his blaster holster in clear view.

  The fat man was smiling as he sat down and patted his round abdomen as though he had just finished a good meal and were intent on letting the world know about it.

  He said, “Good evening, Mr. Peyton. I am Dr. Wendell Urth, extraterrologist.”

  Peyton looked at him again. “And what do you want with me?”

  “I want to know if you were on the Moon at any time in the month of August.”

  “I was not.”

  “Yet no man saw you on Earth between the days of August first and August thirtieth.”

  “I lived my normal life in August. I am never seen during that month. Let him tell you.” And he jerked his head in the direction of Davenport.

  Dr. Urth chuckled. “How nice if we could test this matter. If there were only some physical manner in which we could differentiate Moon from Earth. If, for instance, we could analyze the dust in your hair and say, ‘Aha, Moon rock.’ Unfortunately we can’t. Moon rock is much the same as Earth rock. Even if it weren’t, there wouldn’t be any in your hair unless you stepped onto the lunar surface without a spacesuit, which is unlikely.”

  Peyton remained impassive.

  Dr. Urth went on, smiling benevolently, and lifting a hand to steady the glasses perched precariously on the bulb of his nose. “A man traveling in space or on the Moon breathes Earth air, eats Earth food. He carries Earth environment next to his skin whether he’s in his ship or in his spacesuit. We are looking for a man who spent two days in space going to the Moon, at least a week on the Moon, and two days coming back from the Moon. In all that time he carried Earth next to his skin, which makes it difficult.”

  “I’d suggest,” said Peyton, “that you can make it less difficult by releasing me and looking for the real murderer.”

  “It may come to that,” said Dr. Urth. “Have you ever seen anything like this?” His hand pushed its pudgy way to the ground beside his chair and came up with a gray sphere that sent back subdued highlights.

  Peyton smiled. “It looks like a Singing Bell to me.”

  “It is a Singing Bell. The murder was committed for the sake of Singing Bells. What do you think of this one?”

  “I think it is badly flawed.”

  “Ah, but inspect it,” said Dr. Urth, and with a quick motion of his hand, he tossed it through six feet of air to Peyton.

  Davenport cried out and half-rose from his chair. Peyton brought up his arms with an effort, but so quickly that he managed to catch the Bell.

  Peyton said, “You damned fool. Don’t throw it around that way.”

  “You respect Singing Bells, do you?”

  “Too much to break one. That’s no crime, at least.” Peyton stroked the Bell gently, then lifted it to his ear and shook it slowly, listening to the soft clicks of the Lunoliths, those small pumice particles, as they rattled in vac­uum.

  Then, holding the Bell up by the length of steel wire still attached to it, he ran a thumbnail over its surface with an expert, curving motion. It twanged! The note was very mellow, very flutelike, holding with a slight vibrato that faded lingeringly and conjured up pictures of a summer twilight.

  For a short moment, all three men were lost in the sound.

  And then Dr. Urth said, “Throw it back, Mr. Peyton. Toss it here!” and held out his hand in peremptory gesture.

  Automatically Louis Peyton tossed the Bell. It traveled its short arc one-third of the way to Dr. Urth’s waiting hand, curved downward and shattered with a heartbroken, sighing discord on the floor.

  Davenport and Peyton stared at the gray slivers with equal wordlessness and Dr. Urth’s calm voice went almost unheard as he said, “When the criminal’s cache of crude Bells is located, I’ll ask that a flawless one, properly polished, be given to me, as replacement and fee.”

  “A fee? For what?” demanded Davenport irritably.

  “Surely the matter is now obvious. Despite my little speech of a moment ago, there is one piece of Earth’s environment that no space traveler carries with him and that is Earth’s surface gravity. The fact that Mr. Peyton could so egregiously misjudge the toss of an object he obviously valued so highly could mean only that his muscles are not yet readjusted to the pull of Earthly gravity. It is my professional opinion, Mr. Davenport, that your prisoner h
as, in the last few days, been away from Earth. He has either been in space or on some planetary object considerably smaller in size than the Earth—as, for example, the Moon.”

  Davenport rose triumphantly to his feet. “Let me have your opinion in writing,” he said, hand on blaster, “and that will be good enough to get me permission to use a psychoprobe.”

  Louis Peyton, dazed and unresisting, had only the numb realization that any testament he could now leave would have to include the fact of ultimate failure.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  CHAD OLIVER & CHARLES BEAUMONT

  As a special service to scholars of the future, two of the leading young authors of science fiction, have prepared this time capsule: a succinct presentation, in under 5,000 words, of every theme and situation characteristic of routine conventional s.f. This short story is guaranteed to contain material equivalent to three anthologies . . . and to be much more fun to read.

  THE LAST WORD

  Claude Adams stood in the collapsed ruins of the city and sifted sand through his fingers, noting with approval that his hands were steady. He cocked his head and listened.

  There was nothing.

  A sluggish breeze pushed sand through the piles of junk that had once housed a mighty civilization.

  Claude called out; he called not in desperation but with a scientific aloofness that he found singularly admirable, under the circumstances. “Hello! Can anyone hear me? Am I alone?”

  There was only the wind, and the sand.

  “I am alone,” Claude concluded, not displeased. “Well.”

  He had known it for some little time now. He, Claude Adams, was the Last Man in the World. He thought of it in appropriate capitals, and the symbolism appealed to him.

  He walked over to the machine he had built and regarded it with a critical eye. A bit sloppy about the edges, he would have to admit that. A trifle foggy about the dials, perhaps. Still, a not unworthy piece of construction.

  He would have to use it; his inflexible logic told him that much.

  It was not, of course, that he was fond of crowds, or anything of that sort. Actually, he had always tended toward a rather solitary type of existence. However, he was a believer in moderation. It was good to be thrown on one’s own resources and all that, but there were limits.

  He frowned at his machine.

  The problem was easily stated: he was the Last Man in the World, alone in a desert of sand, shrubs, and ruins. He was, so to speak, at the end of time’s tether. To resolve this dilemma, he would have to step into his machine and travel backward through time until he found somebody.

  Not just anybody, of course.

  But somebody.

  “He who hesitates,” Claude observed, “is lost.”

  He squared his shoulders and climbed into his rectangular machine. His sensitive fingers set the dials. He seated himself and took out a pocket edition of Shoogly’s Advanced Theoretical Physics, with which he hoped to amuse himself en route through time.

  He waved farewell.

  He pushed the red button.

  ~ * ~

  The machine stopped.

  Claude put down the book, stood up and yawned. He glanced at the temporal indicator, wondering when he was.

  “Two million B.C.,”, he read.

  He did not panic. He sat down, filled his pipe and lit it. He smoked until he was quite calm.

  “Shoddy postwar materials,” Claude said. “Must have overshot the mark.”

  He activated the portal and stepped outside. A warm sun and soft, pleasant breezes greeted him. He stood in an immense green field, dotted with flowers. He took a deep breath and smiled.

  “A lot of years,” he mused. He tapped his pipe on his boot. “I am now, beyond a doubt, the First Man in the World.”

  He sat in the fragrant grass and stretched. How did one go about being the First Man in the World? He was not altogether sure. The symbolism of the moment did not escape him. Still, apart from skipping about in the sunbeams and feeling significant, what was there for him to do?

  His reverie was disturbed by a rasping clank from the other side of his machine. Claude stood up with unaccustomed alacrity.

  “Good heavens,” he said.

  A being confronted him. Piteously, it clasped its hands together in supplication, It moved again, its gears grinding horribly.

  Claude examined the object with interest. It was humanoid in appearance.

  “I am still the First Man in the World,” he said.

  The clanking humanoid was indubitably intended to be female. She was pitiably rusted and several of her plates were sprung. Her skin hung slackly on her metallic frame. Her eyes were dull and her hair a matted disaster.

  “Robot?” he wondered. “Or android? Clearly, it has a mechanical basis, but it faintly resembles a woman.”

  The thing creaked to her feet. “Brrrkl?” she wheezed.

  Claude did not permit himself to be trapped by emotionalism. He rapped the creature smartly on the forehead and analyzed the hollow bong which followed.

  “Oil,” he said, snapping his fingers.

  He stepped into his time machine and produced a tube of oil from the supply closet. He had intended it for his own machine, but then oil was oil, he reasoned, and he could not abandon a lady in distress.

  Besides, his curiosity was piqued.

  Maintaining an air of clinical detachment, he located a small hole in the back of her neck, hidden by her stringy hair. While she whimpered gratefully, he squeezed a generous portion of oil into her interior.

  The result was instantaneous.

  The thing drew herself up with some grace and became a woman. She smiled and produced a comb, running it through her tangled hair. Her skin tautened on its frame and her eyes sparkled.

  “Brrkl,” she purred, trying to snuggle against him.

  He pushed her away. “The transformation is not yet complete,” he said judiciously, eying her with some distaste. “Try to control yourself, my dear.”

  She seemed disappointed, but rallied quickly. She pointed to the west, jumped up and down eagerly on her newly oiled limbs, and gestured for him to accompany her.

  “What next?” Claude asked of the sunshine and the silence.

  He followed her gamboling form across the grasslands. He noticed that she was becoming better-looking as the oil worked itself into her vitals.

  “The Dawn of Man,” Claude mused.

  Unexpectedly, he heard music. His trained ears positively recognized the soft strains of lutes, infinitely sad, infinitely melancholy.

  They topped a slight rise and there they were. Musicians, no doubt of that. But what kind of musicians? Ahead, in a slight clearing by the side of a still lake, was the most singular assemblage of beings he had ever seen. They lay in various supine positions in the pleasant grass, models of relaxation. “What’s this?” Claude whispered. “Who are these people?”

  “Brrkl.” The android’s arm moved up (still with a trace of stiffness at the shoulder joint) and a finger whirred, pointing.

  Claude looked and came quite close to losing his composure. There, leaning precariously, was a ship; its naked metal was acned with great splotches of rust and decay, its glass fogged, its once bright paint faded from the sun.

  The elegiac music seemed to quaver slightly: the notes trembled loose from the heart-shaped lutes and hung briefly on the air.

  Claude moved toward the lissome group of musicians. Aside from flesh-tones which suggested seaweed, these people were little different from humans. They had arms and legs, in the proper number. But never had Claude seen such palpable fragility; they were like porcelain figurines.

  He watched his step.

  A silent voice spoke to him: “Greetings!”

  Claude nodded. Telepaths, eh?

  The figures did not stir, apart from the movement of their graceful fingers over the silver strings.

  The voice murmured in Claude’s mind. “We are from the planet wh
ich you call Mars.”