The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 01

by Anthology

  "And what about the men outside? Did you put it that way to them?"

  "They do what I say!" Manning snapped. "They don’t give a damn who they kill. There’s going to be fighting here whether it’s against the Hirlaji or between the townsmen. As governor, I’d rather they took it all out on the horses here. Domestic tranquillity, shall we say?" He was smiling now; he had everything in control.

  "So that’s your purpose?" Rynason said. There was anger in his voice, feigned or real—perhaps both. But his voice rose still higher. "Is butchery your only goal in life, Manning?"

  Manning stepped toward him again, his eyes narrowing. "Butchery? It’s better than no purpose at all, Lee! It’ll get me off of these damned outworlds eventually, if I’m a good enough butcher. And I mean to be, Lee … I mean to be."

  Rynason turned his back on the man in contempt, and walked past Horng to the base of the ancient altar. He looked up at the Eye of Kor, dim now when not in use. He turned.

  "Is it better, Manning?" he shouted. "Does it give you a right to live, while you slaughter the Hirlaji?"

  Manning cursed under his breath, and took a quick step toward Rynason; his hard, black shadow leaped up the wall.

  "Yes! It gives me any right I can take!"

  It happened quickly. Manning was now beside the massive figure of the alien, Horng; in his anger he had loosened his grip on Mara. He raised the disintegrator toward Rynason.

  And Horng’s huge fist smashed it from his hand.

  Manning never knew what hit him. Before he had even realized that the disintegrator was gone Horng had him. One heavy hand circled his throat; the other gripped his shoulder. The alien lifted him viciously and broke him like a stick; Rynason could almost hear the man’s neck break, so final was that twist of the alien’s hands.

  Horng lifted the lifeless body above his head and hurled it to the floor with such force that the man’s head was stoved in and his body lay twisted and motionless where it fell.

  Afterwards there was silence in the room, save for the distant sound of the wind against the building outside. Horng stood looking down at the broken body at his feet, his expression as unfathomable as it had ever been. Mara stared in shocked silence at the alien.

  Rynason walked slowly to the mike lying beside the interpreter. He raised it.

  "You can move quickly, old leather, when there’s a reason for it," he said.

  Horng turned his head to him and silently dipped it to one side.

  Rynason lifted the broken form of Manning’s body and carried it out to the top of the steps leading down from the temple. Mara went with him, carrying the handlight; it fell harshly on Manning’s crushed features as Rynason waited atop the huge, steep stairway. The wind tore at his hair, whipping it wildly around his head … but Manning’s head was caked with blood. In a moment, the men from the town came out from cover; they stood at the base of the steps, indecisive.

  They too were waiting for something.

  Rynason hefted the body up over one shoulder and drew a disintegrator with the hand he had freed. Slowly, then, he descended the steps.

  When he had neared the bottom the circle of men fell back. They were uneasy and sullen … but they had seen the power of the disintegrator, and now they saw Manning’s crushed body.

  Rynason bent and dropped the body to the ground. He looked up coldly at the ring of faces and said, "One of the Hirlaji did that with his hands. That’s all—just his hands."

  For a moment everyone was still … and then one of the men broke from the crowd, snarling, with a heavy knife in his hand. He stopped just outside the white circle of the handlight, the knife extended before him. Rynason raised the disintegrator and trained it on him, his face frozen into a cold mask.

  The man stood in indecision.

  And from the crowd behind him another figure stepped forward. It was Malhomme, and his lips were drawn back in disgust. He struck with an open hand, the side of his palm catching the man’s neck beneath his ear. The man fell sprawling to the ground, and lay still.

  Malhomme looked at him for a moment, then he turned to the men behind him. "That’s enough!" he shouted. "Enough!" Angrily, he looked down at the crumpled form of Manning’s body. "Bury him!" he said.

  There was still no movement from the men; Malhomme grabbed two of them roughly and shoved them out of the crowd. They hesitated, looking quickly from Malhomme to the disintegrator in Rynason’s hand, then bent to pick up the body.

  "It’s a measure of man’s eternal mercy," said Malhomme acidly, "that at least we bury each other." He stared at the men in the mob, and the fury in his eyes broke them at last. Muttering, shrugging, shaking their heads, they dispersed, going off in two and threes to take cover from the wind-driven sand.

  Malhomme turned to Rynason and Mara, his face relaxing at last. The hard lines around his mouth softened into a rueful smile as he put his arm around Rynason’s shoulder. "We can all take shelter in the buildings here for the night. You could use some rest, Lee Rynason—you look like hell. And maybe I can put a temporary splint on your arm, woman."

  They found a nearby building where the roof had long ago fallen in, but the walls were still standing. While Malhomme ministered to Mara he did not stop talking for a moment; Rynason couldn’t tell whether he was trying to keep the girl’s mind off the pain or whether he was simply unwinding his emotions.

  "You know, I’ve preached at these men for so many years I’ve got callouses in my throat. And one of these days maybe they’ll know what I’m talking about, so that I won’t have to shout." He shrugged. "Well, it would be a dull world, where I didn’t have a good excuse to shout. Sometimes you might ask your alien friends up there, Lee … what did they get out of choosing peace?"

  "They didn’t choose it," said Rynason.

  Malhomme grimaced. "I wonder if anybody, anywhere, ever will. Maybe the Outsiders did, but they’re not around to tell us about it. It’s an intriguing question to think about, if you don’t have anything to drink … what do you do, when there’s nothing more to fight against, or even for?"

  He straightened up; the splint on Mara’s arm was set now. He settled her back in a drift of sand as comfortably as possible.

  "I’ve got another question," Rynason said. "What were you doing among those men who came at me on the steps earlier?"

  Malhomme’s face broke into a wide grin. "That was a suicidal rush on you, Lee. A damned stupid tactic … a rush like that is only as strong as the weakest coward in it. All it takes is one man to break and run, and everybody else will run too. So it was easy for me to break it up."

  Rynason couldn’t help chuckling at that; and once he had started, the tension that had gripped him for the past several hours found release in a full, stomach-shaking laugh.

  "Rene Malhomme," he gasped, "that’s the kind of leadership this planet needs!"

  Mara smiled up from where she lay. "You know," she said, "now that Manning is dead they’ll have to find someone else to be governor…."

  "Don’t be ridiculous," said Malhomme.

  * * *

  Contents

  EIGHT KEYS TO EDEN

  by Mark Irvin Clifton

  SEVEN DOORS TO SEVEN ROOMS OF THOUGHT

  =1= Accept the statement of Eminent Authority without basis, without question.

  =2= Disagree with the statement without basis, out of general contrariness.

  =3= Perhaps the statement is true, but what if it isn't? How then to account for the phenomenon?

  =4= How much of the statement rationalizes to suit man's purpose that he and his shall be ascendant at the center of things?

  =5= What if the minor should become major, the recessive dominant, the obscure prevalent?

  =6= What if the statement were reversible, that which is considered effect is really cause?

  =7= What if the natural law perceived in one field also operates unperceived in all other phases of science? What if there be only one natural law manifesting itself, as yet, to us in m
any facets because we cannot apperceive the whole, of which we have gained only the most elementary glimpses, with which we can cope only at the crudest level?

  =And are those still other doors, yet undefined, on down the corridor?=

  1

  One minute after the regular report call from the planet Eden was overdue, the communications operator summoned his supervisor. His finger hesitated over the key reluctantly, then he gritted his teeth and pressed it down. The supervisor came boiling out of his cubicle, half-running down the long aisle between the forty operators hunched over their panels.

  "What is it? What is it?" he quarreled, even before he came to a stop.

  "Eden's due. Overdue." The operator tried to make it laconic, but it came out sullen.

  The supervisor rubbed his forehead with his knuckles and punched irritably at some buttons on an astrocalculator. An up-to-the-second star map lit up the big screen at the end of the room. He didn't expect there to be any occlusions to interfere with the communications channel. The astrophysicists didn't set up reporting schedules to include such blunders. But he had to check.

  There weren't.

  He heaved a sigh of exasperation. Trouble always had to come on his shift, never anybody else's.

  "Lazy colonists probably neglecting to check in on time," he rationalized cynically to the operator. He rubbed his long nose and hoped the operator would agree that's all it was.

  The operator looked skeptical instead.

  Eden was still under the first five-year test. Five-year experimental colonists were arrogant, they were zany, they were a lot of things, some unprintable, which qualified them for being test colonizers and nothing else apparently. They were almost as much of a problem as the Extrapolators.

  But they weren't lazy. They didn't forget.

  "Some fool ship captain has probably messed up communications by inserting a jump band of his own." The supervisor hopefully tried out another idea. Even to him it sounded weak. A jump band didn't last more than an instant, and no ship captain would risk his license by using the E frequency, anyway.

  He looked hopefully down the long room at the bent heads of the other operators at their panels. None was signaling an emergency to draw him away from this; give him an excuse to leave in the hope the problem would have solved itself by the time he could get back to it. He chewed on a knuckle and stared angrily at the operator who was sitting back, relaxed, looking at him, waiting.

  "You sure you're tuned to the right frequency for Eden?" the supervisor asked irritably. "You sure your equipment is working?"

  The operator pulled a wry mouth, shrugged, and didn't bother to answer with more than a nod. He allowed a slight expression of contempt for supervisors who asked silly questions to show. He caught the surreptitious wink of the operator at the next panel, behind the supervisor's back. The disturbance was beginning to attract attention. In response to the wink he pulled the dogged expression of the unjustly nagged employee over his features.

  "Well, why don't you give Eden an alert, then!" the supervisor muttered savagely. "Blast them out of their seats. Make 'em get off their--their pants out there!"

  The operator showed an expression which plainly said it was about time, and reached over to press down the emergency key. He held it down. Eleven light-years away, if one had to depend upon impossibly slow three-dimensional space time, a siren which could be heard for ten miles in Eden's atmosphere should be blaring.

  The supervisor stood and watched while he transferred the gnawing at his knuckles to his fingernails.

  He waited, with apprehensive satisfaction, for some angry colonist to come through and scream at them to turn off that unprintable-phrases siren. He braced himself and worked up some choice phrases of his own to scream back at the colonist for neglecting his duty--getting Extrapolation Headquarters here on Earth all worked up over nothing. He wondered if he dared threaten to send an Extrapolator out there to check them over.

  He decided the threat would have no punch. An E would pay no attention to his recommendation. He knew it, and the colonist would know it too.

  He began to wonder what excuse the colonist would have.

  "Just wanted to see if you home-office boys were on your toes," the insolent colonist would drawl. Probably something like that.

  He hoped the right words wouldn't fail him.

  But there was no response to the siren.

  "Lock the key down," he told the operator. "Keep it blasting until they wake up."

  He looked down the room and saw that a couple of the near operators were now frankly listening.

  "Get on with your work," he said loudly. "Pay attention to what you're recording."

  It was enough to cause several more heads to raise.

  "Now, now, now!" he chattered to the room at large. "This is nothing to concern the rest of you. Just a delayed report, that's all. Haven't you ever heard of a delayed report before?"

  He shouldn't have asked that, because of course they had. It was like asking a mountain climber if he had ever felt a taut rope over the razor edge of a precipice suddenly go slack.

  "But there's nothing any of you can do," he said. He tried to cover the plaintive note by adding, "And if you louse up your own messages ..." But he had threatened them so often that there was no longer any menace.

  He spent the next ten minutes hauling out the logs of Eden to see if they'd ever been tardy before. The logs covered two and a fraction years, two years and four months. The midgit-idgit scanner didn't pick up a single symbol to show that Eden had been even two seconds off schedule. The first year daily, the second year weekly, and now monthly. There wasn't a single hiccough from the machine to kick out an Extrapolator's signal to watch for anything unusual.

  Eden heretofore had presented about as much of an outré problem as an Iowa cornfield.

  "You're really sure your equipment is working?" he asked again as he came back to stand behind the operator's chair. "They haven't answered yet."

  The operator shrugged again. It was pretty obvious the colonists hadn't answered. And what should he do about it? Go out there personally and shake his finger at them--naughty, naughty?

  "Well why don't you bounce a beam on the planet's surface, to see?" the supervisor grumbled. "I want to see an echo. I want to see for myself that you haven't let your equipment go sour. Or maybe there's a space hurricane between here and there. Or maybe a booster has blown. Or maybe some star has exploded and warped things. Maybe ... Well, bounce it, man. Bounce it! What are you waiting for?"

  "Okay, okay!" the operator grumbled back. "I was waiting for you to give the order." He grimaced at the operator behind the supervisor. "I can't just go bouncing beams on planets if I happen to be in the mood."

  "Now, now. Now, now. No insubordination, if you please," the supervisor cautioned.

  Together they waited, in growing dread, for the automatic relays strung out through space to take hold, automatically calculating the route, set up the required space-jump bands. It was called instantaneous communication, but that was only relative. It took time.

  The supervisor was frowning deeply now. He hated to report to the sector chief that an emergency had come up which he couldn't handle. He hated the thought of Extrapolators poking around in his department, upsetting the routines, asking questions he'd already asked. He hated the forethought of the admiration he'd see in the eyes of his operators when an E walked into the room, the eagerness with which they'd respond to questions, the thrill of merely being in the same room.

  He hated the operators, in advance, for giving freely of admiration to an E that they withheld from him. He allowed himself the momentary secret luxury of hating all Extrapolators. Once upon a time, when he was a kid, he had dreamed of becoming an E. What kid hadn't? He'd gone farther than the wish. He'd tried. And had been rebuffed.

  "Clinging to established scientific beliefs," the tester had told him with the inherent, inescapable superiority of a man trying to be kind to a lesser intelligenc
e, "is like being afraid to jump off a precipice in full confidence that you'll think of something to save yourself before you hit bottom."

  It might or might not have been figurative, but he had allowed himself the pleasure of wishing the tester would try it.

  "To accept what Eminent Authority says as true," the tester had continued kindly, "wouldn't even qualify you for being a scientist. Although," he added hopefully, "this would not bar you from an excellent career in engineering."

  It was a bitter memory of failure. For if you disbelieved what science said was true, where were you? And if it might not be true, why was it said? Even now he shuddered at the chaos he would have to face, live with. No certainties on which to stand.

  He washed the memory out of his thought, and concentrated on the flashing pips that chased themselves over the operator's screen. There was nothing wrong with the equipment. Nothing wrong with the communication channels between Eden and Earth.

  "Blasted colonists," the supervisor muttered. "Instead of a beam on their planet, I'd like to bounce a rock on their heads. I'll bet they've let all the sets at their end get out of order."

  He knew it was a foolish statement, even if the operator's face hadn't told him so. Any emergency colonist, man or woman--and there were fifty of them on Eden--could build a communicator. That was regulation.

  "You sure there haven't been any emergency calls from them?" he asked the operator with sudden suspicion. "You're not covering up some neglect in not notifying me? If you're covering up, you'd better tell me now. I'll find out. It'll all come out in the investigation, and ..."

  The operator turned around and looked at him levelly. He looked him over, with open contempt, from bald head to splayed feet. Then he coolly turned his back. There was a limit to just how much a man could stand, even to hold a job at E Headquarters.