The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume VI: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

by Various

  "H-hmm!" Bert wasn't sure at all. "But this moving through time," he asked helplessly, "and the change from one plane of oscillation to another--they're all mixed up--what have they to do with each other?"

  "All five dimensions of our universe are definitely interrelated and dependent one upon the other for the existence of matter in any form whatsoever. You see--but here we are."

  * * * * *

  The motors slowed down and a titanic page seemed to turn over in the cosmos with a vanishing blaze of magnificence. Directly beneath them glowed the disk of blue-white light that was Tom's force area. The sphere swooped down within its influence and came to rest.

  "Make haste," the Wanderer said. "I shall be here in the gateway though you see me not. Bring them here, speedily."

  On the one side Bert saw familiar objects in Tom's laboratory, on the other side the white cliff and the pitchy sea of the Bardek realm. And the cage of basket-weave between, with his friends inside struggling with the spider men. It was the instant after the capture.

  "Joan! Tom!" Bert shouted.

  A side of the sphere had opened and he plunged through and into the Bardek plane--to the inky surface of the sea, fully expecting to sink in its forbidding depths. But the stuff was an elastic solid, springy under his feet and bearing him up as would an air-inflated cushion. He threw himself upon the cage and tore at it with his fingers.

  The whimpering screams of the spider men were in his ears, and he saw from the corner of his eye that other of the tortoiselike mounds were rising up out of the viscid black depths, dozens of them, and that hundreds of the Bardeks were closing in on him from all directions. Weapons were in their hands, and a huge engine of warfare like a caterpillar tractor was skimming over the sea from the cliff wall with a great grinding and clanking of its mechanisms.

  But the cage was pulling apart in his clutches as if made of reeds. With Joan in one encircling arm he was battling the spider men, driving swift short-arm jabs into their soft bloated bodies with devastating effect. And Tom, recovering from the first surprise of his capture, was doing a good job himself, his flailing arms scattering the Bardeks like ninepins. The Wanderer and his sphere, both doomed to material existence only in infra-dimensional space, had vanished from sight.

  A bedlam rose up from the reinforcing hordes as they came in to enter the force area. But Bert sensed the guiding touch of the Wanderer's unseen hand, heard his placid voice urging him, and, in a single wild leap was inside the sphere with the girl.

  With Joan safely in the Wanderer's care, he rushed out again for Tom. Then followed a nightmare of battling those twining tentacles and the puffy crowding bodies of the spider men. Wrestling tactics and swinging fists were all that the two Earthlings had to rely upon, but, between them, they managed to fight off a half score of the Bardeks and work their way back into the glowing force area.

  "It's no use," Tom gasped. "We can't get back."

  "Sure we can. We've a friend--here--in the force area."

  Tom Parker staggered: his strength was giving out. "No, no, Bert," he moaned, "I can't. You go on. Leave me here."

  "Not on your life!" Bert swung him up bodily into the sphere as he contacted with the invisible metal of its hull. Kicking off the nearest of the spider men, he clambered in after the scientist.

  * * * * *

  The tableau then presented in the sphere's interior was to remain forever imprinted on Bert's memory, though it was only a momentary flash in his consciousness at the time: the Wanderer, calm and erect at the control panel, his benign countenance alight with satisfaction; Tom Parker, pulling himself to his feet, clutching at the big man's free arm, his mouth opened in astonishment; Joan, seated at the Wanderer's feet with awed and reverent eyes upturned.

  There is no passing directly between the planes. One must have the force area as a gateway, and, besides, a medium such as the cage of the Bardeks, the orange light of the metal monsters, or the sphere of the Wanderer. Bert knew this instinctively as the sphere darkened and the flashing light-forms leaped across the blackness.

  The motors screamed in rising crescendo as their speed increased. Then, abruptly, the sound broke off into deathly silence as the limit of audibility was passed. Against the brilliant background of swift color changes and geometric light-shapes that so quickly merged into the familiar blur, Bert saw his companions as dim wraithlike forms. He moved toward Joan, groping.

  Then came the tremendous thump, the swinging of a colossal page across the void, the warping of the very universe about them, the physical torture and the swift rush through Stygian inkiness....

  "Farewell." A single word, whispered like a benediction in the Wanderer's mellow voice, was in Bert's consciousness. He knew that their benefactor had slipped away into the mysterious regions of intra-dimensional space.

  * * * * *

  Raising himself slowly and dazedly from where he had been flung, he saw they were in Tom's laboratory. Joan lay over there white and still, a pitiful crumpled heap. Panicky, Bert crossed to her. His trembling fingers found her pulse; a sobbing breath of relief escaped his lips. She had merely swooned.

  Tom Parker, exhausted from his efforts in that other plane and with the very foundations of his being wrenched by the passage through the fifth dimension, was unable to rise. Only semiconscious, his eyes were glazed with pain, and incoherent moaning sounds came from his white lips when he attempted to speak.

  Bert's mind was clearing rapidly. That diabolical machine of Tom's was still operating, the drone of its motors being the only sound in the laboratory as the inventor closed his mouth grimly and made a desperate effort to raise his head. But Bert had seen shapes materializing on the lighted disk that was the gateway between planes and he rushed to the controls of the instrument. That starting lever must be shifted without delay.

  "Don't!" Tom Parker had found his voice; his frantic warning was a hoarse whistling gasp. He had struggled to his knees. "It will kill you, Bert. Those things in the force area--partly through--the reaction will destroy the machine and all of us if you turn it off. Don't, I say!"

  "What then?" Bert fell back appalled. Hazily, the steel prow of a war machine was forming itself on the metal disk; caterpillar treads moved like ghostly shadows beneath. It was the vanguard of the Bardek hordes!

  "Can't do it that way!" Tom had gotten to his feet and was stumbling toward the force area. "Only one way--during the change of oscillation periods. Must mingle other atoms with those before they stabilize in our plane. Must localize annihilating force. Must--"

  What was the fool doing? He'd be in the force area in another moment. Bert thrust forward to intercept him; saw that Joan had regained consciousness and was sitting erect, swaying weakly. Her eyes widened with horror as they took in the scene and she screamed once despairingly and was on her feet, tottering.

  "Back!" Tom Parker yelled, wheeling. "Save yourselves."

  * * * * *

  Bert lunged toward him but was too late. Tom had already burst into the force area and cast himself upon the semitransparent tank of the spider men. A blast of searing heat radiated from the disk and the motors of Tom's machine groaned as they slowed down under a tremendous overload.

  Joan cried out in awful despair and moved to follow, but her knees gave way beneath her. Moaning and shuddering, she slumped into Bert's arms and he drew her back from the awful heat of the force area.

  Then, horrified, they watched as Tom Parker melted into the misty shape of the Bardek war machine. Swiftly his body merged with the half-substance of the tank and became an integral part of the mass. For a horrible instant Tom, too, was transparent--a ghost shape writhing in a ghostly throbbing mechanism of another world. His own atomic structure mingled with that of the alien thing and yet, for a moment, he retained his Earthly form. His lean face was peaceful in death, satisfied, like the Wanderer's when they had last seen him.

  A terrific thunderclap rent the air and a column of flame roared up from the force area. Tom's apparatus gl
owed to instant white heat, then melted down into sizzling liquid metal and glass. The laboratory was in sudden twilight gloom, save for the tongue of fire that licked up from the force area to the paneled ceiling. On the metal disk, now glowing redly, was no visible thing. The gateway was closed forever.

  * * * * *

  What more fearful calamity might have befallen had the machine been switched off instead, Bert was never to know. Nor did he know how he reached his parked flivver with Joan a limp sobbing bundle in his arms. He only knew that Tom Parker's sacrifice had saved them, had undoubtedly prevented a horrible invasion of Earth; and that the efforts of the Wanderer had not been in vain.

  The old house was burning furiously when he climbed in under the wheel of his car. He held Joan very close and watched that blazing funeral pyre in wordless sorrow as the bereaved girl dropped her head to his shoulder.

  A group of men came up the winding road, a straggling group, running--the loungers from the village. In the forefront was the beardless youth who had directed Bert, and, bringing up the rear, limping and scurrying, was the old man they had called Gramp. He was puffing prodigiously when the others gathered around the car, demanding information.

  And the old fellow with the thick spectacles talked them all down.

  "What'd I tell you?" he screeched. "Didn't I say they was queer doin's up here? Didn't I say the devil was here with his imps--an' the thunder? You're a passel o' idjits like I said--"

  The roar of Bert's starting motor drowned out the rest, but the old fellow was still gesticulating and dancing about when they clattered off down the winding road to Lenville.

  * * * * *

  An hour later Joan had fallen asleep, exhausted.

  Night had fallen and, as mile after mile of smooth concrete unrolled beneath the flivver's wheels, Bert gave himself over to thoughts he had not dared to entertain in nearly two years. They'd be happy, he and Joan, and there'd be no further argument. If she still objected to living on the fruit farm, that could be managed easily. They'd live in Indianapolis and he'd buy a new car, a good one, to run back and forth. If, when her grief for Tom had lessened, she wanted to go on with laboratory work and such--well, that was easy, too. Only there would be no fooling around with this dimensional stuff--she'd had enough of that, he knew.

  He drew her close with his free arm and his thoughts shifted--moved far out in infra-dimensional space to dwell upon the man of the past who had called himself Wanderer of Infinity. He who would go on and on until the end of time, until the end of all things, watching over the many worlds and planes. Warning peoples of humanlike mold and emotions wherever they might dwell. Helping them. Atoning throughout infinity. Suffering.

  * * *

  Contents

  SHOCK ABSORBER

  BY E. G. VON WALD

  A man acts on what he believes the facts are, not on the facts. He lives or dies by what the facts are. Now sometimes you don't have time to correct a man's beliefs, yet he must act correctly....

  The aging little psychologist looked down at the captain's insignia on his sleeve and scowled.

  "I know it's a lousy, fouled-up situation, commander," he said with evident irony. "You speak of discipline. Well, it's bad enough here on Mars, where a junior officer like you feels free to argue with a full captain like me, but out there with the fleet, discipline is now virtually nonexistent."

  He looked up again and quickly added, "Oh, of course there is a discipline of a sort, and in its own way it is quite effective. Strict, too, as you will find. But it has few of the marks of the military academy, of which the regular officers were so fond. Perhaps that was the reason why they let the situation get away from them, and why we are in charge of it now."

  "I still think--" the commander started, but he was interrupted again.

  "I know what you think, commander. You can forget it. It's wishful thinking and we cannot permit such daydreaming in our precarious condition. Face the facts as they exist in the present. After we kick the aliens out of our solar system, maybe we can go back to the old ideas again. Maybe. I'm not even very sure of that. But as for now, the characteristic of despair is the lowest common denominator among the combat patrols, and we therefore have mutinies, disobedience of orders, defections of every variety. That is a real situation, and it will persist until we can induce the men to accept tactical leadership that can cope with the enemy.

  "Actually, it is not very remarkable that this situation developed. Strategy is still a rational computable quantity, but the actual tactics of fighting is something else entirely. The aliens have an intellectual response that is in full truth alien to us. It simply cannot be comprehended rationally by a human being, although they manage to guess pretty well the responses of our own fighters. Naturally, the result has been that in the past our losses were almost ninety per cent whenever a patrol actually engaged in a firefight with the enemy.

  "Fortunately, the aliens are much too far from their home to possess anything like the number of personnel and other resources that we have. Otherwise, they would have beaten us long ago. Completely wiped us out. And all because an ordinary, intelligent human being cannot learn any patterns by which the aliens operate, and by which he can fight them successfully."

  "I know that," the commander muttered. "I spent plenty of time out there before I got tapped for this new branch of service." He rubbed the moist palms of his hands together nervously.

  "Certainly you did," the captain acknowledged absently. Then he continued his explanation. "Fortunately, there was a small body of information on extra-rational mental faculties that had been developed over the past century, and as soon as we expanded it sufficiently, we were able to form this new branch of service you now belong to. But unfortunately, some idiot in the Information Service released a popularization of the data on the new branch. That was ill-advised. The veterans who had survived so far had their own way of accounting for their survival, and that did not include what that silly description alluded to as 'blind guessing' by commanders of 'exceptional psychic gifts.'

  "Like most popularizations, the description was grossly inaccurate, and was promptly withdrawn; but the damage had already been done. The damage was completed by another idiot who named the new branch the Psi Corps, merely because the basic capacity for extra-rational mental faculties is technically signified by the Greek letter 'psi.' The name was slightly mispronounced by the men, and that automatically produced that nasty little nickname, which has stuck, and which expresses very well the attitude of the men toward the new service.

  "As I say, fleet discipline is very bad, and the men simply would not accept orders from such officers. There are numerous cases on record where they killed them when there was no other way out.

  "Now, as far as discipline itself is concerned, the best procedure would be to pull an entire fleet out of the defense perimeter and retrain them, because the newly trained recruits can be made to accept Psi Corps officers as commanders. But our situation is far too desperate to permit anything like that. Therefore, we must use whatever devices we can think of to do the job.

  "The ship you are going to is staffed by veterans. They were incredibly lucky. From the outset, they had a CO who was a man highly gifted in psi without he or anyone else knowing about it until a few months ago when we ran a quiet little survey. But he got killed in a recent encounter, along with their executive officer, so we are now sending them a new captain and a new exec as well. But those men simply will not accept orders from a Psi Corps officer. Furthermore, they have heard the rumors--soundly based--that the Psi Corps, as a result of its opposition, has gone underground, so to speak. They know that its personnel has been largely disguised by giving them special commissions in the regular Space Combat Service. As a result, they will most certainly suspect any new commanding officer no matter what insignia he wears.

  "Of course, now and then you will find one of the old hands who will accept the Psi Corps, so long as it isn't jammed down his throat. Just pray tha
t you have somebody like that aboard your new ship, although I must admit, it isn't very likely."

  * * * * *

  "All right, all right," the commander growled with irritation. "But--with your permission, sir--I still think my particular method of assignment is a lousy approach and I don't like it. I still think it will make for very bad discipline."

  "Whether you like it or not, commander, that is the way it will have to be accomplished. We are simply recognizing a real situation for what it is, and compromising with it."

  "But couldn't this change in command personnel be postponed until--"

  "If it could be postponed," the captain replied acidly, "you may rest assured we would not be employing disagreeable--and somewhat questionable--devices to speed it up. Unfortunately, our outlying detectors have identified the approach of a fleet of starships. They can only be reinforcements for the aliens, about equal to what they already have here, and they will arrive in two years. If those two forces can join each other, there will be no need to worry further about discipline among the humans. There will shortly be no humans left. So we are preparing a full-scale assault against those aliens now within our system in the very near future. And we simply must have all tactical combat devices commanded by men with extra-rational mental abilities in order to deal with them effectively."

  "Effectively?" the commander snorted. "Thirty-two per cent effective, according to the figures they gave us in the Psi school."

  "That is considerably better than twelve per cent, which is the statistical likelihood of survival in combat without it," the captain retorted.

  Nervously, the commander scratched the back of his thin neck, grimmaced and nodded.

  "The first and most important problem for you is to gain the confidence of your crew. They will be worse than useless to you without it, and it will be a very difficult job, even with all the advice and help our men can give you. And you will have to be careful--don't forget what I said about assassinations. The way we are going about it, that you find so disagreeable, should minimize that danger, but you can't ever tell what will happen."