Modern Masterpieces of Science Fiction

by Sam Moskowitz

  "Richard was a fine man," said the voice, talking on. "We shall see no finer in our time."

  "My name, again!"

  Richard began to move about uneasily in the coffin. Why didn't Rogers come?

  It was hardly a mistake, using that name twice. Richard Braling. Richard Braling. We are gathered here. We shall miss. We are grieved. No finer man. No finer in our time. We are gathered here. The deceased. Richard Braling. Richard Braling.

  Whirrr! Spunng!

  Flowers! Six dozen bright blue, red, yellow, sun-brilliant flowers leaped up from behind the coffin on concealed springs!

  The sweet odor of fresh-cut flowers filled the coffin. The flowers swayed gently before his amazed vision, tapping silently on the glass lid. Others sprang up, and up, until the coffin was banked with petals and color and sweet odors. Gardenias and dahlias and petunias and daffodils, trembling and shining.

  "Rogers!"

  The sermon continued.

  “. . . Richard Braling, in his life, was a connoisseur of great and good things. . . ." The music sighed, rose and fell, distantly.

  ". . Richard Braling savored of life as one savors of a rare wine, holding it upon the lips..."

  A small panel in the side of the box flipped open. A swift bright metal arm snatched out. A needle stabbed Richard in the thorax, not very deeply. He screamed. The needle shot him full of a colored liquid before he could seize it. Then it popped back into a receptacle and the panel snapped shut.

  "Rogers!"

  A growing numbness. Suddenly he could not move his fingers or his arms or turn his head. His legs were cold and limp.

  "Richard Braling loved beautiful things. Music. Flowers," said the voice.

  "Rogers!"

  This time he did not scream it. He could only think it. His tongue was motionless in his anaesthetized mouth.

  Another panel opened. Metal forceps issued forth on steel arms. His left wrist was pierced by a huge sucking needle. His blood was being drained from his body. He heard a little pump working somewhere.

  ". . . Richard Braling will be missed among us. . . . " The organ sobbed and murmured.

  The flowers looked down upon him, nodding their bright-petaled heads. Six candles, black and slender, rose up out of hidden receptacles and stood behind the flowers, flickering and glowing.

  Another pump started to work. While his blood drained out one side of his body, his right wrist was punctured, held, a needle shoved into it, and the second pump began to force formaldehyde into him.

  Pump, pause, pump, pause, pump, pause, pump, pause. The coffin moved.

  A small motor popped and chugged. The room drifted by on either side of him. Little wheels revolved. No pallbearers were necessary. The flowers swayed as the casket moved gently out upon the terrace under a blue clear sky. Pump, pause. Pump, pause.

  "Richard Braling will be missed by all his. . . ."

  Sweet soft music.

  Pump, pause.

  "Ah, sweet mystery of life, at last . . ." Singing.

  "Braling, the gourmet ..."

  "Ah, I know at last the secret of it all . . ."

  Staring, staring, his eyes egg-blind, at the little card out of the corners of his eyes: THE BRALING ECONOMY CASKET.

  Directions: Simply place body in coffin—and music will start. A tree swung by overhead. The coffin rolled gently through the garden, behind some bushes, carrying the voice and the music with it.

  "Now it is the time when we must consign this part of this man to the earth...

  Little shining spades leaped out of the sides of the casket. They began to dig. He saw the spades toss up dirt. The coffin settled. Bumped, settled, dug, bumped, and settled, dug, bumped and settled again.

  Pump, pause, pump, pause, pump, pause, pump, pause. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. ."

  The flowers glistened and waved. The box was deep. The music played. The last thing Richard Braling saw was the spading arms of the Braling Economy Casket reaching up and pulling the hole in after it.

  "Richard Braling, Richard Braling, Richard Braling, Richard Braling, Richard Braling. . .

  The record was stuck.

  Nobody minded. Nobody was listening.

  BEFORE EDEN

  by

  Arthur C. Clarke

  "I guess," said Jerry Garfield, cutting the engines, "that this is the end of the line." With a gentle sigh, the underjets faded out; deprived of its air-cushion, the scout-car Rambling Wreck settled down upon the twisted rocks of the Hesperian Plateau.

  There was no way forward; neither on its jets nor its tractors could S.5—to give the Wreck its official name—scale the escarpment that lay ahead. The South Pole of Venus was only thirty miles away, but it might have been on another planet. They would have to turn back, and retrace their four- hundred mile journey through this nightmare landscape.

  The weather was fantastically clear, with visibility of almost a thousand yards. There was no need of radar to show the cliffs ahead; for once, the naked eye was good enough. The green auroral light, filtering down through clouds that had rolled unbroken for a million years, gave the scene an underwater appearance, and the way in which all distant objects blurred into the haze added to the impression. Sometimes it was easy to believe that they were driving across a shallow seabed, and more than once Jerry had imagined that he had seen fish floating overhead.

  "Shall I call the ship, and say we're turning back?" he asked.

  "No yet," said Dr. Hutchins. "I want to think."

  Jerry shot an appealing glance at the third member of the crew, but found no moral support there. Coleman was just as bad; although the two men argued furiously half the time, they were both scientists and therefore, in the opinion of a hard-headed engineer-navigator, not wholly responsible citizens. If Cole and Hutch had bright ideas about going forward, there was nothing he could do except register a protest.

  Hutchins was pacing back and forth in the tiny cabin, studying charts and instruments. Presently he swung the car's searchlight towards the cliffs, and began to examine them carefully with binoculars. Surely, thought Jerry, he doesn't expect me to drive up there! S.5 was a hover-track, not a mountain goat... .

  Abruptly, Hutchins found something. He released his breath in a sudden explosive gasp, then turned to Coleman.

  "Look!" he said, his voice full of excitement. "Just to the left of that black mark! Tell me what you see."

  He handed over the glasses, and it was Coleman's turn to stare.

  "Well I'm damned," he said at length. "You were right. There are rivers on Venus. That's a dried-up waterfall."

  "So you owe me one dinner at the Bel Gourmet when we get back to Cambridge. With champagne."

  "No need to remind me. Anyway, it's cheap at the price. But this still leaves your other theories strictly on the crackpot level."

  "Just a minute," interjected Jerry. "What's all this about rivers and waterfalls? Everyone knows they can't exist on Venus. It never gets cold enough on this steam-bath of a planet for the clouds to condense."

  "Have you looked at the thermometer lately?" asked Hutchins with deceptive mildness.

  "I've been slightly too busy driving."

  "Then I've news for you. It's down to 230, and still falling. Don't forget—we're almost at the Pole, it's wintertime, and we're sixty thousand feet above the lowlands. All this adds up to a distinct nip in the air. If the temperature drops a few more degrees, well have rain. The water will be boiling, of course—but it will be water. And though George won't admit it yet, this puts Venus in a completely different light."

  "Why?" asked Jerry, though he had already guessed.

  "Where there's water, there may be life. We've been in too much of a hurry to assume that Venus is sterile, merely because the average temperature's over five hundred degrees. It's a lot colder here, and that's why I've been so anxious to get to the Pole. There are lakes up here in the highlands, and I want to look at them."

  "But boiling water!" protested Coleman. "Noth
ing could live in that!"

  "There are algae that manage it on Earth. And if we've learned one thing since we started exploring the planets, it's this—wherever Life has the slightest chance of surviving, you'll find it. This is the only chance it's ever had on Venus."

  "I wish we could test your theory. But you can see for yourself—we can't go up that cliff."

  "Perhaps not in the car. But it won't be too difficult to climb those rocks, even wearing thermosuits. All we need do is walk a few miles toward the Pole; according to the radar maps, it's fairly level once you're over the rim. We could manage in—oh, twelve hours at the most. Each of us has been out for longer than that, in much worse conditions."

  That was perfectly true. Protective clothing that had been designed to keep men alive in the Venusian lowlands would have an easy job here, where it was only a hundred degrees hotter than Death Valley in midsummer.

  "Well," said Coleman. "You know the regulations. You can't go by yourself, and someone has to stay here to keep contact with the ship. How do we settle it this time--chess or cards?"

  "Chess takes too long," said Hutchins, "especially when you two play it." He reached into the chart table and produced a well-worn pack. "Cut them, Jerry."

  "Ten of spades. Hope you can beat it, George."

  "So do I. Damn—only five of clubs. Well, give my regards to the Venusians."

  Despite Hutchins' assurance, it was hard work climbing the escarpment. The slope was not too steep, but the weight of oxygen gear, refrigerated thermosuit and scientific equipment came to more than a hundred pounds per man. The lower gravity—thirteen percent weaker than Earth's —gave a little help, but not much, as they toiled up screes, rested on ledges to regain breath, and then clambered on again through the submarine twilight. The emerald glow that washed around them was brighter than that of the full moon on Earth. A moon would have been wasted on Venus, Jerry told himself; It could never have been seen from the surface, there were no oceans for it to rule—and the incessant aurora was a far more constant source of light.

  They had climbed over two thousand feet before the ground levelled out into a gentle slope, scarred here and there by channels that had clearly been cut by running water. After a little searching, they came across a gully wide and deep enough to merit the name of riverbed, and started to walk along it.

  "I've just thought of something," said Jerry after they had travelled a few hundred yards. "Suppose there's a storm up ahead of us? I don't feel like facing a tidal wave of boiling water."

  "If there's a storm," replied Hutchins a little impatiently, "we'll hear it. There'll be plenty of time to reach high ground."

  He was undoubtedly right, but Jerry felt no happier as they continued to climb the gently-shelving watercourse. His uneasiness had been growing ever since they had passed over the brow of the cliff and had lost radio contact with the scout-car. In this day and age, to be out of touch with one's fellowmen was a unique and unsettling experience. It had never happened to Jerry before in all his life; even aboard the Morning Star, when they were a hundred million miles from Earth, he could always send a message to his family and get a reply back within minutes. But now, a few yards of rock had cut him off from the rest of mankind; if anything happened to them here, no one would ever know, unless some later expedition found their bodies. George would wait for the agreed number of hours; then he would head back to the ship—alone. I guess I'm not really the pioneering type, Jerry told himself. I like running complicated machines, and that's how I got involved in spaceflight. But I never stopped to think where it would lead, and now it's too late to change my mind.

  They had travelled perhaps three miles towards the Pole, following the meanders of the riverbed, when Hutchins stopped to make observations and collect specimens. "Still getting colder!" he said. "The temperature's down to 199. That's far and away the lowest ever recorded on Venus. I wish we could call George and let him know."

  Jerry tried all the wavebands; he even attempted to raise the ship—the unpredictable ups and downs of the planet's ionosphere sometimes made such long-distance reception possible—but there was not a whisper of a carrier-wave above the roar and crackle of the Venusian thunderstorms.

  "This is even better," said Hutchins, and now there was real excitement in his voice. "The oxygen concentration's way up—fifteen parts in a million. It was only five back at the car, and down in the lowlands you can scarcely detect it."

  "But fifteen in a million!” protested Jerry. "Nothing could breathe that!"

  "You've got hold of the wrong end of the stick," Hutchins explained. "Nothing does breathe it. Something makes it. Where do you think Earth's oxygen comes from? It's all produced by life—by growing plants. Before there were plants on Earth, our atmosphere was just like this one—a mess of carbon dioxide and ammonia and methane. Then vegetation evolved, and slowly converted the atmosphere into something that animals could breathe."

  "I see," said Jerry, "and you think that the same process has just started here?"

  "It looks like it. Something not far. from here is producing oxygen—and plant life is the simplest explanation."

  "And where there are plants," mused Jerry, "I suppose you'll have animals, sooner or later."

  "Yes," said Hutchins, packing his gear and starting up the gully, "though it takes a few hundred million years. We may be too soon—but I hope not."

  "That's all very well," Jerry answered. "But suppose we meet something that doesn't like us? We've no weapons."

  "And we don't need them. Have you stopped to think what we look like? Obviously any animal would run a mile at the sight of us."

  There was some truth in that. The reflecting metal foil of their thermosuits covered them from head to foot like flexible, glittering armor. No insects had more elaborate antennae than those mounted on their helmets and backpacks, and the wide lenses through which they stared out at the world looked like blank yet monstrous eyes. Yes, there were few animals on Earth that would stop to argue with such ap-paritions; but any Venusians might have different ideas.

  Jerry was still mulling this over when they came upon the lake. Even at that first glimpse, it made him think not of the life they were seeking, but of death. Like a black mirror, it lay amid a fold of the hills; its far edge was hidden in the eternal mist, and ghostly columns of vapor swirled and danced upon its surface. All it needed, Jerry told himself, was Charon's ferry waiting to take them to the other side —or the Swan of Tuonela swimming majestically back and forth as it guarded the entrance to the Underworld... .

  Yet for all this, it was a miracle—the first free water that men had ever found on Venus. Hutchins was already on his knees, almost in an attitude of prayer. But he was only col-lecting drops of the precious liquid to examine through his pocket microscopes.

  "Anything there?" asked Jerry anxiously.

  Hutchins shook his head.

  "If there is, it's too small to see with this instrument. I'll tell you more when we're back at the ship." He sealed a test-tube and placed it in his collecting-bag, as tenderly as any prospector who had just found a nugget laced with gold. It might be—it probably was—nothing more than plain water. But it might also be a universe of unknown, living creatures on the first stage of their billion-year journey to intelligence.

  Hutchins had walked no more than a dozen yards along the edge of the lake when he stopped again, so suddenly that Garfield nearly collided with him.

  "What's the matter?" Jerry asked. "Seen something?"

  "That dark patch of rock over there. I noticed it before we stopped at the lake."

  "What about it? It looks ordinary enough to me."

  "I think it’s grown bigger."

  All his life, Jerry was to remember this moment. Somehow he never doubted Hutchins' statement; by this time he could believe anything, even that rocks could grow. The sense of isolation and mystery, the presence of that dark and brooding lake, the never-ceasing rumble of distant storms and the green flickering of the
aurora—all these had done something to his mind, had prepared it to face the incredible. Yet he felt no fear; that would come later.

  He looked at the rock. It was about five hundred feet away, as far as he could estimate. In this dim, emerald light it was hard to judge distances or dimensions. The rock—or whatever it was—seemed to be a horizontal slab of almost black material, lying near the crest of a low ridge. There was a second, much smaller, patch of similar material near it; Jerry tried to measure and memorize the gap between them, so that he would have some yardstick to detect any change.

  Even when he saw that the gap was slowly shrinking, he still felt no alarm—only a puzzled excitement. Not until it had vanished completely, and he realized how his eyes had tricked him, did that awful feeling of helpless terror strike into his heart.

  Here were no growing or moving rocks. What they were watching was a dark tide, a crawling carpet, sweeping slowly but inexorably towards them over the top of the ridge.

  The moment of sheer, unreasoning panic lasted, mercifully, no more than a few seconds. Garfield's first terror began to fade as soon as he recognized its cause. For that advancing tide had reminded him, all too vividly, of a story he had read many years ago about the army ants of the Amazon, and the way in which they destroyed everything in their path....

  But whatever this tide might be, it was moving too slowly to be a real danger, unless it cut off their line of retreat. Hutchins was staring at it intently through their only pair of binoculars; he was the biologist, and he was holding his ground. No point in making a fool of myself, thought Jerry, by running like a scalded cat, if it isn't necessary.

  "For heaven's sake," he said at last, when the moving carpet was only a hundred yards away and Hutchins had not uttered a word or stirred a muscle. "What is it?"

  Hutchins slowly unfroze, like a statue coming to life. "Sorry," he said. "I'd forgotten all about you. It's a plant, of course. At least I suppose we'd better call it that."

  "But it's moving!

  "Why should that surprise you? So do terrestrial plants. Ever seen speeded-up movies of ivy in action?"