The Space Opera Megapack: 20 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Tales

by John W. Campbell

  He caught the expression in her eyes, the minute tightening of muscles, the cautious veil. Abruptly he was calm, his anger dissipating at the result of his probe.

  “I guessed,” he said, “but I want you to say it. No one offers this kind of money for a legitimate operation. Now talk!”

  “Give me a minute.” She looked at her empty cup. “I could use some more coffee.”

  And time to think up a story, he thought, but made no comment. From the automat he drew two cups, pausing on the way back as the woman across the dome began to scream. She sat, quivering, eyes glazed and a thin trickle of saliva running from her mouth. Her cries were sharp discordant, unthinking. The insidious beat of the cadenza had gripped her, jarring her nervous system, warring with the regular beat of her heart.

  Durgan crossed to her table, set down the cups of coffee, and slapped her sharply across the cheek.

  “What—” The screaming died as she sat, blinking, one hand rising to the place he had struck. “What’s the matter?”

  “It got you,” he explained. “The music. Either move or break the circle. Think of something pleasant, talk to someone, look outside.”

  Her eyes measured his height, the planes of his face, registered an unmistakable invitation.

  “Talk, you said. With you?”

  “Not me.” He picked up the cups. “I’m busy.”

  Sheila looked at him as he sat down, her eyes moving from his face to the woman. “A hell of a way to snap her out of it. Aren’t you ever gentle?”

  “When I’ve got the time, yes. Now I haven’t got the time. You were going to tell me something. Let’s get on with it.”

  She toyed with her cup, very beautiful, very alluring, her femininity enhanced by the colored shadows, the primitive impact of the music. Twice he caught the movement of her eyes, the subtle hesitation, then she made her decision.

  “I’ll give you the truth, Brad, and it is the truth no matter what else you might hear. The ship was carrying a cargo from the United Combines. It was a year’s production of shedeena crystals. I shouldn’t have to tell you what they are.”

  “I know.”

  Callisto was unique in its core-formation. The crystals, some said, were the result of divergent pressures existing way back when the solar system was first created. Others tended to think that Callisto might be a stellar wanderer caught in Jupiter’s gravity well—but none of that really mattered. Callisto was the only source of the crystals. And the crystals had a unique property.

  She continued, “The various companies holding crystal franchises are forced to work together and pool their harvest. In all other matters they work as separate units, but not in this. You can guess why.”

  “A price ring,” said Durgan thickly. “More. The only way in which they can avoid mutual warfare. A year’s production, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked down at his hand. It was trembling a little, the coffee in the cup he was holding shimmering as it caught the light from above. A year’s supply! Why they had allowed it to accumulate didn’t matter. To force up the price, to ensure security, to gather a full working load—none of it mattered. All that was important was that the shedeena crystals were an anti-agathic, an anti-death drug which enabled the old, the rich, the influential to gain renewed youth and extended virility. Immortality, perhaps, if the supply could be maintained.

  A year’s supply!

  Its value was incalculable. How much is life worth to a rich and dying man? What concessions would a ruler grant to the one who could deliver the source of longevity?

  “Sometimes it happens,” said Sheila quietly. “A combination of events that opens the door to everything you’ve ever dreamed about. I saw my chance and took it. When the ship was hit, everyone seemed to go crazy. I was monitoring the flight and operating the computer. I kept track of the fall until the information ceased coming in—and then I made a couple of alterations. The information the combines have is useless. Only I have the true position of the wreck.”

  “And Creech?”

  “The money-man, the fixer, the one who figured out what to do. He’s clever, Brad. He waited just long enough to make sure that I was telling the truth, and then he acted. Then—”

  Durgan was sharp. “How?”

  “How what?”

  “How did he know that you were telling the truth?” He answered his own question. “When they didn’t find the cargo, naturally. There must have been attempts at salvage. The combines wouldn’t leave that stuff lying about without trying to get it. How many attempts?”

  “Five.”

  “And?”

  “Five failures. Three ships just disappeared. One aborted the mission when the crew lost their nerve. The other imploded two-thirds of the way down.” She hesitated, then added, “All were using Nanset’s force field.”

  “Which means it doesn’t work,” said Durgan. “Good news.”

  “It does work. At least he says it does, and he’s willing to risk his neck on it. According to him, the other engineers didn’t know how to adjust the compensating factor. He could be right. Everything was done in such a hurry that something could have been unchecked. And the pilots weren’t as experienced as they might have been.”

  Hurry, he thought, and fear, and the desire for secrecy. Bucket boat riders might have done the job, but they were all under contract aside from those no longer fit. And no bucket rider in his right mind would have agreed to take a ship down so far.

  Nanset said, “This really isn’t necessary, Durgan. I can assure you that the field will give us ample protection.”

  “I like protection,” said Durgan. “As much of it as I can get. That’s why we’re going to wear the suits from the beginning.” His voice echoed in his ears, and he remembered there was no need to project his words. The radio would do that.

  “Engineers,” said Pendris sourly. “Give me a field man every time.”

  “How the hell do you think we’re going to move down there without the suits? Or did you figure we could get them on just before we land?”

  “All right, I’ll accept that, but why the increased pressure in the cabin? Surely we could wear the suits and leave the faceplates open?”

  Durgan checked his instruments before replying. The ship handled well despite the alterations but, in space, that told little. The test would come when they hit the atmosphere and began to fight the winds.

  “Protection,” he said flatly. “Our internal pressure is as high as the fabric will take. We’ll equalize it a few miles down, but it will give us an advantage. Now shut up and let me get on with the job.”

  It had been the same in the old days. The voice of the monitor had been a source of irritation, a scratching at his concentration best ignored if he was to put all he had into the dangerous business ahead. Then he had ridden alone without others to keep informed. Now he was not alone but all else was the same. The darkness of star-shot space, the transmitted thrum of the tubes, the mounting tension as the great ball of Jupiter swam closer and closer until it filled both mind and vision.

  “Monitor to ship. You are three degrees off course.”

  Sheila, riding with Creech in an attendant vessel, checking his flight with her stolen data, hoping to guide him through a screaming hell of frozen gases and hit a minute bullseye far below.

  Durgan acknowledged and returned to his concentration. At first it wouldn’t be too bad, a slowing, a tendency to veer and twist, a mounting whine from beyond the hull. Then he would match speeds and begin to fall. The whine would increase, the shuddering fight as winds tore at the vessel and negated the controls. To fight them was useless. The trick was to use them, to ride the streaming currents, using vanes and jets to maintain some measure of control. If he lost it, the ship would spin, flung by mighty forces and turning end over end to be torn apart in shattered ruin.

  He heard the sharp intake of breath as the winds caught them, sensed the tension of Nanset and Pendris as they gripped their couche
s. Strapped down, they were relatively safe, but he could understand their fear. The screens pictured a seething fog of fuming nightmare, the external friction a nerve-tearing whine.

  It lessened a little as he matched velocities, ignoring the voice from his radio, knowing that he was off-course but knowing that he could do nothing about it for the moment. Durgan checked his instruments, the big red hand of the external pressure gauge centered in the panel, handling the ship automatically with the skill of hard-won experience.

  “Prepare for first pressure-adjustment,” he said to Pendris.

  “System ready.”

  “Seal first compartment at double interior pressure.”

  As they descended, the compartments between the hulls would be filled and sealed with gases of increasing pressure, each helping to bolster the metal skins against that outside. With four extra hulls and a highly pressurized cabin, they would be able to withstand six times the pressure of a single hull.

  Six times…a wide margin, but enough?

  Durgan grunted as he rode the winds. Already he was down further than he had ever been before, and now the ship seemed sluggish, the exterior density robbing it of easy manoeuvrability. And the old fear was growing. The knowledge that pressure mounted the lower he went until it would reach a million atmospheres.

  “You are widely off-course.” Sheila’s voice reflected her strain. “Correct seven degrees north.”

  Durgan made the adjustment.

  “Final compartment sealed.” Pendris dropped his hands from the bank of controls before which he lay. “Now it’s up to Nanset.” He grunted as something rose beneath them and sent the ship into wild gyrations. “Durgan!”

  He made no answer, hands dancing on the controls, jets of fire streaming from the tubes as he judged time and pressure. It was a thing impossible to teach and learned only by doing. The instinctive reaction of a trained pilot, a man who was almost a flesh-and-blood extension of his vessel.

  As the ship settled, he snapped to Nanset: “Activate your shield.”

  A faint blue shimmer spread throughout the cabin and vanished as it raced for the outer hull. A generator moaned as it took the strain, the note rising as the engineer made an adjustment.

  “Field adjusted and operating at optimum level.” Nanset’s voice was confident. “Now we’ve nothing to worry about. The field is established on the fringe molecules and will take all this planet can give it. It’s a form of stasis,” he explained. “An energy-concept linked to the center of the generator. The higher the pressure, the more power will automatically be fed into the field and, in a sense, the pressure is fighting itself. The function can best be expressed by he mathematical formula—”

  “Forget it,” said Pendris impatiently. “This is no time for a lecture. Just so long as it works I’ll be satisfied. How much longer, Durgan, before we find the jackpot?”

  “As long as it takes.”

  “Is that the best you can do?”

  “Quit bothering me.”

  Pendris inhaled with a spiteful hiss. Thickly he said, “I’m in this too, or have you forgotten?”

  Durgan made no answer.

  “Listen, you—”

  “Shut your mouth!” Durgan snarled, as he felt the ship twist and begin to spin. The last thing he wanted now was the idle chatter of fools! Sweat beaded his forehead and ran down his face as he struggled to maintain control. It stung his eyes, the raw patch on the side of his neck where the suit had chafed. Like a wild animal, the vessel fought his control. Something struck against the hull with a dull reverberation. Fog plumed in the screens, parting to show frothing masses of vapor, uniting in coiling tendrils.

  Nanset made a choking sound. “God!”

  Something rose before them, tall, white, jagged with broken peaks. The engines roared as Durgan fed extra power into the jets, the ship tilting as he lifted the nose. For a moment they seemed to hang stationary, and then the massed ice threw itself towards them, dropping as they climbed, exploding into raging steam at the touch of their blast.

  And, suddenly, the vapor lifted, seeming to jerk upwards in a lowering bank of cloud beneath which they flew with flaring jets and clear vision.

  “We’ve done it!” said Pendris. “By God, we’ve done it!”

  Below them lay the solid mass of Jupiter.

  It was a place of nightmare, the ebon darkness ripped by the ruby light of widespread volcanic activity, the crimson glow fanning out in feathered plumes of flaming gas. The scene brightened as Durgan adjusted the screens, utilizing the lower wavelengths of light, electronic magic converting them into the visible spectrum. Now they could see raging pools of liquid ammonia whipped into a frenzy by the tidal waves stemming from the spouting craters. The pools, small on Jupiter but large enough for seas on Earth, stretched between mountain chains of solid ice, blue and green and somber umber, shining with red and orange light from the burning gases. The glare of their own blast illuminated the landscape and caused long trails of incandescent vapor to writhe like serpents, green and yellow and brilliant red, twisting and coiling in enigmatic patterns.

  “The heat is breaking down the elements,” said Nanset quietly. “Cracking compounds locked for millions of years in frigid stasis. That’s oxygen burning, and hydrogen and methane. Who knows what elements and how they will act down here?’

  “Heat?” Pendris snorted his disgust. “What about all those volcanoes? The heat of our blast is nothing to them.”

  “Heat is relative. On Earth those volcanoes would be nothing. They wouldn’t even get started. That stuff isn’t water, remember, but liquid ammonia. Those mountains are of ice. The lower atmosphere must be a mixture of hydrogen, ammonia, methane, and carbon tetrahydride. Interesting.”

  “Check your field,” said Durgan sharply. “You’ve no time to gawk at the scenery. Pendris, get busy on the detector.”

  Creech had given them the instrument. A box fitted with dials, which, he claimed, would register the presence of the cargo. If they could get close enough. If it would work in the conditions existing under the clouds. If the cargo was still as it had been.

  Durgan spoke into the radio.

  “Sheila. We’ve reached bottom. Check my position.”

  “You moved off course. You should have stayed on it.”

  “A mountain got in the way. We—”

  “Brad!” Her voice was strained. “Are you all right?”

  “So far, yes. Now quit being polite and get on with the job. Direct me please. Direct!”

  He fell silent as her professional drone came over the speaker, a string of coordinates, corrections, alterations. The ship thrummed as it moved in a wide circle, slowing as it met the head-on force of the wind, which moved at a constant velocity over the ground, bucking as it met it side-on.

  Pendris sucked in his breath.

  “Anything?”

  “I’m not sure, Dugan. The needles kicked a bit. Can you go back over?”

  “I’m spiraling. Keep a sharp watch and yell if you see anything. Nanset!”

  “Yes?”

  “How is the field holding out?”

  “Fine.” The engineer had lacked conviction. He enlarged the comment at Durgan’s insistence. “We dropped a fraction back there. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did. Maybe the atmosphere is corroding the outer hull and thus building up resistance. I’ve made the necessary adjustments.”

  “The hull is corrosion-proof,” said Pendris. “Stop making excuses and keep your attention on your machine. Right, Durgan?”

  “That’s good advice—why don’t you follow it?”

  “I’m doing just that.” His voice was ugly. “But when we get out of here, you and me are going to have a little talk in a dark alley. I don’t go for snotty pilots.”

  Sheila spoke before Durgan could answer. “Have you located it yet, Brad?”

  “No.”

  “What’s keeping you?”

  “Are you joking? It’s a mess down here. We could be lucky and
hit it right away, or we could search for a hundred years. Is Creech riding you?”

  “Well, he—”

  “Tell him to get lost. Have you any more data I can use? No? Then quit babbling and let me get on with the job.”

  It was hard to talk with more than two gravities tearing at the muscles, making every movement an exercise in applied strength, and he was beginning to feel the strain. The suits helped, but that help had to be paid for in sore places, a body slimed with perspiration, itches which couldn’t be scratched, aches which couldn’t be relieved. And it was impossible to forget the pressure outside, the giant hand which would crush him into a smear should something go wrong.

  Durgan adjusted the controls, tightening the spiral pattern he had chosen, thinking of a falling ship and the variable forces that would play on it. A last-second shift of wind and it would have been carried miles from the anticipated crash-point. An abrupt loss of mass, the same. Yet the girl had been adamant as to its location.

  He examined the screens, trying to catch a glimpse of twisted metal, the lines of something artificial and alien to the landscape below. He saw nothing but the fury of volcanic activity, the shimmer of disturbed seas, the red glow painted on curtains of glistening ice.

  “There!” Pendris’s voice was high with excitement. “We’ve just passed it. The needles damn near left the dials!”

  The vessel shuddered as Durgan cut acceleration and turned to face back from where they had come.

  “There!” said Pendris again. “There!”

  A torrent of lava fell from the crest of a high ridge, falling into a pool sparkling with flecks of dying brilliance. To one side, almost hidden by a crusted mass of deposited crystals, a sheared plate of twisted metal shone in the ruby light.

  The wreck of the Archimedes.

  They found the cargo container a mile away, lying in a patch of luminous snow, a thin green haze blurring fine detail. Incredibly, it was still almost intact, the thick metal buckled and warped, torn in several places, those openings having prevented crushing implosion. Deftly Durgan steered the ship towards it, his hands delicate on the controls as he fed power to the jets, the outer hull slithering over the frozen surface.