Possible Worlds of Science Fiction

by Groff Conklin

  The rock beneath Akro's craft was, as we have said, extremely hard. Since there was relatively free escape upward for the constantly liberated energy, this stratum melted very slowly, gradually letting the vessel sink deeper into the earth. What would have happened if Akro's power supply had been greater is problematical; Aller can tell us only that some five hours after the landing, as he was resting for a few moments near the top of a rocky hillock, the phenomenon came to a cataclysmic end.

  A quivering of the earth beneath him caused the surveyor to look back toward his erstwhile camp. The lake of lava, which by this time was the better part of a mile in breadth, seemed curiously agitated. Aller, from his rather poor vantage point, could see huge bubbles of pasty lava hump themselves up and burst, releasing brilliant clouds of vapor. Each cloud illuminated earth and sky before cooling to invisibility, so that the effect was somewhat similar to a series of lightning flashes.

  For a short time—certainly no longer than a quarter of a minute—Aller was able to watch as the activity increased. Then a particularly violent shock almost flung him from the hilltop, and at nearly the same instant the entire volume of molten rock fountained skyward. For an instant it seemed to hang there, a white, raging pillar of liquid and gas; then it dissolved, giving way before the savage thrust of the suddenly released energy below. A tongue of radiance, of an intensity indescribable in mere words, stabbed upward, into and through the lava, volatilizing it instantly. A dozen square miles of desert glowed white, then an almost invisible violet, and disappeared in superheated gas. Around the edges of this region, great gouts of lava and immense fragments of solid rock were hurled to all points of the compass.

  Radiation exerts pressure; at the temperature found in the cores of stars, that pressure must be measured in thousands of tons per square inch. It was this thrust, rather than the by no means negligible gas pressure of the boiling lava, which wrought most of the destruction.

  Aller saw little of what occurred. When the lava was hurled upward, he had flung an arm across his face to protect his eyes from the glare. That act unquestionably saved his eyesight, as the real flash followed; as it was, his body was seared and blistered through his clothing. The second, heavier shock knocked his feet from under him, and he half crawled, half rolled down to the comparative shelter of the little hill. Even here, gusts of hot air almost cooked him; only the speed with which the phenomenon ended saved his life.

  Within minutes, both the temblors and the hot winds had ceased; and he crawled painfully to the hilltop again to gaze wonderingly at the five-mile-wide crater, ringed by a pile of tumbled, still-glowing rock fragments.

  Far beneath that pit, shards of neutronium, no more able to remain near the surface than the steel pieces of a wrecked ocean vessel can float on water, were sinking through rock and metal to a final resting place at Earth's heart.

  ~ * ~

  "The glow spread as we watched, still giving no clue to the nature of the substance radiating it," continued Kron. "Most of it seemed to originate between us and Akro's ship; Akro himself said that but little energy was being lost on the far side. His messages, during that last brief period as we swept by our point of closest approach, were clear—so clear that we could almost see as he did the tenuous light beyond the ever-thinning walls of his ship; the light that represented but a tiny percentage of the energy being sucked from the hull surface.

  "We saw, as though with his own senses, the tiny perforation appear near one end of the ship; saw it extend, with the speed of thought, from one end of the hull to the other, permitting the free escape of all the energy in a single instant; and, from our point of vantage, saw the glowing area where the ship had been suddenly brightened, blazing for a moment almost as brightly as a piece of Sun matter.

  "In that moment, every one of us saw the identifying frequencies as the heat from Akro's disrupted ship raised the substance which had trapped him to an energy level which permitted atomic radiation. Every one of us recognized the spectra of iron, of calcium, of carbon and silicon and a score of the other elements—Sirian, I tell you that that `trapping field' was matter—matter in such a state that it could not radiate, and could offer resistance to other bodies in exactly the fashion of a solid. I thought, and have always thought, that some strange field of force held the atoms in their `solid' positions; you have convinced me that I was wrong. The `field' was the sum of the interacting atomic forces which you are trying to detect. The energy level of that material body was so low that those forces were able to act without interference. The condition you could not conceive of reaching artificially actually exists in Nature!"

  "You go too fast, Kron," responded the Sirian. "Your first idea is far more likely to be the true one. The idea of unknown radiant or static force fields is easy to grasp; the one you propose in its place defies common sense. My theories called for some such conditions as you described, granted the one premise of a sufficiently low energy level; but a place in the real universe so devoid of energy as to absorb that of a well-insulated interstellar flier is utterly inconceivable. I have assumed your tale to be true as to details, though you offer neither witnesses nor records to support it; but I seem to have heard that you have somewhat of a reputation as an entertainer, and you seem quick-witted enough to have woven such a tale on the spot, purely from the ideas I suggested. I compliment you on the tale, Kron; it was entrancing; but I seriously advise you not to make anything more out of it. Shall we leave it at that, my friend?"

  "As you will," replied Kron.

  ~ * ~

  Editor’s Note:

  . . . And what about Pluto? Pluto, the outermost planet of the Solar System, is so far away (forty times as far from the Sun as the Earth is) and so small that practically nothing is known about it, except that it would not be a particularly comfortable place for human beings. No science-fiction story about Pluto has been found that merits reprinting, and for that reason it shall be left up to the reader to dream up his own private notion about what sort of “possible world” it may be. Ideas welcome!

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  ~ * ~

  PART TWO

  THE GALAXY

  AS SOON as we escape from the limiting confines of the Solar System, we immediately notice a sense of freedom and an uninhibited imagination which makes even the more fantastic of the tales about life on our own planets seem quiet and ordinary. We know some restrictive data about the planets around the Sun, but about the worlds of other stars we know absolutely nothing, and therefore we are under no restrictions whatsoever.

  Consequently, from here on you may expect anything—even ordinary folks exactly like human beings—on the imagined worlds of the Galaxy.

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  ~ * ~

  Murray Leinster

  PROPAGANDIST

  The problem of establishing communications between peoples of two alien planetary systems has long worried science-fiction writers. By the very nature of things, it would be unwise to assume automatic friendliness on the part of such strangers light-years away from us. Means of communication and understanding would have to be developed; and the technical difficulties of wording out such methods might well be almost insurmountable, particularly if the evidence indicated a high level of civilization among such alien people. The more civilized, the more trigger-happy. . . .

  In this story the problem is solved by a most fortunate accident, involving perhaps the only Earthian life form which could not possibly be deceitful, which by its very nature always represents reality in its primitive emotions, and which is therefore able to reflect accurately the essential decency of dog-loving man.

  ~ * ~

  YOU remember the Space Assassins, of course. They were that race of which no human being ever saw a living member, and escaped to tell about it afterward. You also remember the deadly, far-flung search that was made for their base, their home. They’d been sniping our ships for a long time. But then a squadron of their space fleet raided the Earth colony on Capella Three
and without warning or provocation or alternative slaughtered every one of the colony’s half million human population. Then the hunt for them began.

  This is the story of one of the incidents of that hunt—and also it’s the story of a dog named Buck.

  ~ * ~

  Buck trailed his master sedately into the control room of the light cruiser Kennessee. He waited patiently until the skipper looked up from the electron telescope. Then Buck’s master—Holden—sat down with the sheaf of wave records he’d brought from the communications room. Buck blinked wisely at the skipper and lay down on the floor with an audible, loose-jointed thump. He put his nose between his paws and sighed heavily. But the sigh was not of unhappiness. Buck was a simple dog. He was friendly with everybody on the Kennessee, from the skipper himself to the lowliest mess boy, but his master and private deity was Junior Lieutenant Holden. Whithersoever Holden went, there Buck went also—regulations permitting—and waited until Holden wanted to go somewhere else.

  Now he lay on the foamite flooring. He heard his master’s voice, and the skipper’s in reply. They were concerned and uneasy. Buck dozed. Little, half-formed dreams ran through his slumber. Memory dreams, mostly, of himself racing gloriously through tall grass on the green fields of Earth, with Holden always somewhere near. The voices of the two men formed a half-heard background to his dozing.

  The men were troubled. The Kennessee rode a comet’s orbit through the solar system of Masa Gamma, her drive off and giving no sign of life. She was impersonating a barren visitor from the void, spying out the ground for what would be—if she was successful—the monstrous destruction of an entire race by planet-smasher guided missiles and the merciless weapons of an Earth fleet. The men did not like it. They’d hoped that some other ship would be the one to meet with success in its search. But they had their orders.

  Some weeks back the ship had dropped from overdrive to less-than-light speed far beyond the outermost of the Masa Gamma planets. She’d decelerated to an appropriate speed and course for a wanderer, and she’d begun her ride along a comet’s path through the eleven-planet system. And almost immediately her receptors had picked up evidence of civilization here. Space-radio signals. They were unintelligible, of course, but they told that here was a civilization comparable to human culture on a technical basis. And that was what the Kennessee, with every other light ship of Earth’s space navy, was hunting for. There was a race which, without known contact with Earthmen, was the deadly enemy of humanity. For years past, exploring ships from Earth had dropped out of sight with ominous frequency. There had been suspicions, but no proof of an inimical race which destroyed humans wherever it came upon them. But six months ago the Earth colony on Capella Three had been wiped out, terribly, by raiders of whom nothing was known except that they were not human. So somewhere there was a race which held Earth to be its enemy. It had to be found. If it could not be negotiated with, it must be destroyed before it grew strong enough to wipe out all of humankind. And the men on the Kennessee knew that they might have found it on the planets of Masa Gamma. This system had never been explored before, and this civilization which had space radio might be the one—

  Buck, the dog, dozed lightly on the control-room floor. Little fragments of dreams ran through his half-slumbering consciousness: the smells in the engine room; an irrelevant fragment of chasing a cat; a moment or two in which he sniffed elaborately at a tree ... A slightly louder comment made him open his eyes.

  “They’ve interplanetary travel, sir, at least”—that was Holden. “We’ve picked up space-radio messages from definitely between planets. It looks like this is the race we were sent to find.”

  The skipper nodded.

  “It could be. But if they’re to be smashed on our report, we need to make sure. That’s orders, too. Can they smash the Kennessee? That’s the test for the enemy. If this race can’t kill us, they’re not the enemy we’re looking for. If they can, they are. We’ve got to find out.”

  “But interplanetary travel is good evidence—”

  “It’s not interstellar travel,” said the skipper. “We’ll send a torp back immediately with all the data to date. But you’ve picked up no whango waves, Holden. We’ve no proof that these folk can travel between the stars. The enemy can.”

  “They might be concealing the fact,” said Holden. “They’d have picked up our whango wave on arrival. They might be laying for us, waiting for us to walk into their parlor where they can smash us without a chance to fight back or report. That would be typical.”

  He stood up and Buck got immediately to his four paws and wagged his tail. His master, Holden, was going to go somewhere. So Buck was going with him. He waited contently. To Buck, happiness was going where Holden went, being wherever Holden was, simply soaking in the sensation of being with Holden. It was a very simple pleasure, but it was all he asked of fate or chance. When Holden petted him or played roughly with him, Buck was filled with ecstatic happiness, but now he waited contentedly enough simply to follow Holden.

  “What you say is true enough,” agreed the skipper. “They could be laying for us. We’ll see. A message torp will make sure that if we don’t get back our fleet will know where to come and who to smash. Then we’ll make a landing in a lifeboat. Our enemy couldn’t resist smashing that! And if it gets away, we’ll know something about their weapons, anyhow.”

  “I volunteer, sir, for the lifeboat,” said Holden quickly.

  “We’ll see,” said the skipper. “You get your data ready for the torp. You’re sure this record is a scanning beam? Like the old-fashioned radar? And it’s being kept on us from this fourth planet?”

  “Quite sure, sir,” said Holden. “We can’t know how detailed the information may be that it takes back. Of course, it would be logical enough to scan a supposed comet—”

  “Let’s hope,” said the skipper, twinkling, “that the echo from our hull says, ‘Nobody out here but us comets, boss.’ Get your stuff ready for half an hour from now, Holden.”

  Holden saluted and went out of the control room. Buck went sedately after him, a large brown dog who did not bother his head over such trivia as interstellar travel or nonhuman races that massacred half a million humans with an insensate ferocity.

  Buck was a very contented dog. He was with his master.

  ~ * ~

  The Planetary Council of Masa Four was in session. It was not a happy gathering. Scanning beams had reported that a supposed new comet, driving in on a perfectly convincing orbit, was actually an artifact—a spaceship. It used no drive and seemed empty of life. But it had come in through the gravitation field of the outermost planets—and it showed no sign of rotation. Which was impossible unless gyroscopes or some similar device were running within it.

  “We have had one visitor from space, before,” said the Moderator of the Planetary Council. He looked very weary. “Our histories tell us of the consequences. If this is another ship of the same race, we must destroy it. Since it is attempting secrecy, such action is justified, I think. But that secrecy suggests suspicion of us—a suspicion that we may have destroyed the last visitor. If we destroy this ship also, we may be sure that suspicion will become certainty and a third visit will be made in overwhelming force. That means that we will have to convert our whole civilization for war. We will have somehow to develop an interstellar drive, and we will have to spend the rest of the time in battle for our very survival. We will have to change from a peaceful race to one with a psychology adapted only to war.”

  The Spokesman for the First Continent said hopefully:

  “Is it certain that this is a ship of the same race as the first? It is not of the same form. Is it certain that this race is of a not-possibly-friendly type, like the first?”

  “It is not certain,” said the Moderator tiredly. “The psychological factors implied by its outer design suggest a different race. But can we risk an attempt at peaceful contact? The crew of one ship would be at our mercy. Might they not pretend friendship
in order to escape with information leading to our destruction? Could we trust the friendship of any race at all which sent a single ship to spy?”

  There was silence. Two centuries before, another ship had entered the Masan system. Half a planet devastated, and millions upon millions of lives, had been the cost of the destruction of that one ship. But its destruction had been necessary. Its crew made no response to peaceful overtures. Wherever they landed they destroyed, ferociously, everything savoring of a rival civilization. Especially the inhabitants. They could not be treated with—only killed.

  “If,” said the Spokesman for the Third Continent wistfully, “we could capture a single member of this spaceship’s crew, we could make sure that friendship was hopeless. It is a pity we cannot make sure before—”

  “It is a great pity,” said the Moderator bleakly. “To convert not only our civilization but our people to endless war, for all time, is the greatest of pities. But I do not think there is anything else to do. Will you vote upon preparations for the destruction of this ship?”