The Red Stuff

by John Wyndham

  THE RED STUFF

  from THE BEST OF JOHN WYNDHAM

  John Wyndham

  SPHERE BOOKS

  Published 1973

  ISBN 0 7221 9369 6

  Copyright© The Executors of the Estate of the late John Wyndham 1973

  INTRODUCTION

  AT a very tender age my latent passion for all forms of fantasy stories, having been sparked by the Brothers Grimm and the more unusual offerings in the children's comics and later the boy's adven­ture papers, was encouraged in the early 1930s by the occasional exciting find on the shelves of the public library with Burroughs and Thorne Smith varying the staple diet of Wells and Verne.

  But the decisive factor in establishing that exhila­rating ‘sense of wonder’ in my youthful imagi­nation was the discovery about that time of back numbers of American science fiction magazines to be bought quite cheaply in stores like Wool­worths. The happy chain of economic circum­stances by which American newstand returns, some­times sadly with the magic cover removed or mutilated, ballasted cargo ships returning to English ports and the colonies, must have been the mainspring of many an enthusiastic hobby devoted to reading, discussing, perhaps collecting and even writing, science fiction – or ‘scientifiction’ as Hugo Gerns­back coined the tag in his early Amazing Stories magazine.

  Gernsback was a great believer in reader partici­pation; in 1936 I became a teenage member of the Science Fiction League sponsored by his Wonder Stories. Earlier he had run a compe­tition in its fore­runner Air Wonder Stories to find a suitable banner slogan, offering the prize of ‘One Hundred Dollars in Gold’ with true yankee bragga­dacio. Discovering the result some years later in, I think, the September 1930 issue of Wonder Stories seized upon from the bargain-bin of a chain store, was akin to finding a message in a bottle cast adrift by some distant Robinson Crusoe, and I well remember the surge of jingo­istic pride (an educa­tional trait well-nurtured in pre-war Britain) in noting that the winner was an English­man, John Beynon Harris.

  I had not the slightest antici­pation then that I would later meet, and acknow­ledge as a good friend and mentor, this contest winner who, as John Wyndham, was to become one of the greatest English story-tellers in the idiom. The fact that he never actually got paid in gold was a disappoint­ment, he once told me, that must have accounted for the element of philo­so­phical dubiety in some of his work. Certainly his winning slogan ‘Future Flying Fiction’, al­though too late to save the maga­zine from foundering on the rock of eco­nomic depression (it had already been amalga­mated with its stable­mate Science Wonder Stories to become just plain, if that is the right word, Wonder Stories), presaged the firm stamp of credi­bility combined with imagi­native flair that charac­terized JBH's writings.

  John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (the abundance of fore­names conve­niently supplied his various aliases) emerged in the 1950s as an important contem­porary influence on specu­lative fiction, parti­cularly in the explo­ration of the theme of realistic global catas­trophe, with books such as The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes, and enjoyed a popularity, which continued after his sad death in 1969, comparable to that of his illus­trious pre­decessor as master of the scientific romance, H. G. Wells.

  However, he was to serve his writing apprentice­ship in those same pulp maga­zines of the thirties, competing success­fully with their native American contributors, and it is the purpose of this present collection to high­light the chrono­logical develop­ment of his short stories from those early beginnings to the later urbane and polished style of John Wyndham.

  ‘The Lost Machine’ was his second published story, appea­ring in Amazing Stories, and was possibly the proto­type of the sentient robot later developed by such writers as Isaac Asimov. He used a variety of plots during this early American period parti­cu­larly favour­ing time travel, and the best of these was undoubtedly ‘The Man From Beyond’ in which the poign­ancy of a man's reali­za­tion, caged in a zoo on Venus, that far from being aban­doned by his fellow-explorers, he is the victim of a far stranger fate, is remark­ably out­lined for its time. Some themes had dealt with war, such as ‘The Trojan Beam’, and he had strong views to express on its futility. Soon his own induc­tion into the Army in 1940 produced a period of crea­tive inactivity corres­ponding to World War II. He had, however, previously established him­self in England as a promi­nent science fiction writer with serials in major period­icals, subse­quently reprinted in hard covers, and he even had a detec­tive novel published. He had been well repre­sented too – ‘Perfect Crea­ture’ is an amu­sing example – in the various maga­zines stemming from fan activity, despite the vicissi­tudes of their pre- and imme­diate post-war publish­ing insec­urity.

  But after the war and into the fifties the level of science fiction writing in general had increased consi­derably, and John rose to the challenge by selling success­fully to the American market again. In England his polished style proved popular and a predi­lection for the para­doxes of time travel as a source of private amuse­ment was perfectly exem­plified in ‘Pawley's Peepholes’, in which the gawp­ing tourists from the future are routed by vulgar tactics. This story was later success­fully adapted for radio and broad­cast by the B.B.C.

  About this time his first post-war novel burst upon an unsus­pecting world, and by utili­zing a couple of unori­ginal ideas with his Gernsback-trained atten­tion to logically based expla­natory detail and realis­tic back­ground, together with his now strongly deve­loped narra­tive style, ‘The Day of the Triffids’ became one of the classics of modern specu­lative fiction, survi­ving even a mediocre movie treat­ment. It was the fore­runner of a series of equally impressive and enjoyable novels inclu­ding ‘The Chrysalids’ and ‘The Mid­wich Cuckoos’ which was success­fully filmed as ‘Village of the Damned’. (A sequel ‘Children of the Damned’ was markedly inferior, and John was care­ful to dis­claim any responsi­bility for the writing.)

  I was soon to begin an enjoy­able asso­ciation with John Wyndham that had its origins in the early days of the New Worlds maga­zine-publish­ing venture, and was later to result in much kindly and essen­tial assis­tance enabling me to become a specia­list dealer in the genre. This was at the Fantasy Book Centre in Blooms­bury, an area of suitably asso­ciated literary acti­vities where John lived for many years, and which provi­ded many pleasu­rable meet­ings at a renowned local coffee establish­ment, Cawardine's, where we were often joined by such person­alities as John Carnell, John Chris­topher and Arthur C. Clarke.

  In between the novels two collec­tions of his now widely pub­lished short stories were issued as ‘The Seeds of Time’ and ‘Consider Her Ways’; others are re­printed here for the first time. He was never too grand to refuse mater­ial for our own New Worlds and in 1958 wrote a series of four novel­ettes about the Troon family's contri­bution to space explo­ration – a kind of Forsyte saga of the solar system later collected under the title ‘The Outward Urge’. His ficti­tious colla­borator ‘Lucas Parkes’ was a subtle ploy in the book version to explain Wyndham's appa­rent devia­tion into solid science-based fiction. The last story in this collection ‘The Empti­ness of Space’ was written as a kind of post­script to that series, especially for the 100th anni­versary issue of New Worlds.

  John Wyndham's last novel was Chocky, published in 1968. It was an expan­sion of a short story follow­ing a theme similar to The Chrysalids and The Midwich Cuckoos. It was a theme pecu­liarly appro­priate for him in his advancing matu­rity. When, with charac­teristic reti­cence and modesty, he announced to a few of his friends that he was marry­ing his beloved Grace and moving to the country­side, we all felt that this was a well-deserved retire­ment for them both.

  But ironica
lly time – always a fasci­nating subject for specu­lation by him – was running out for this typical English gentle­man. Amiable, eru­dite, astrin­gently humo­rous on occasion, he was, in the same way that the gentle Boris Karloff portrayed his film monsters, able to depict the night­mares of humanity with fright­ening realism, made the more deadly by his masterly preci­sion of detail. To his great gift for story-telling he brought a lively intellect and a fertile imagi­nation.

  I am glad to be numbered among the many, many thou­sands of his readers whose ‘sense of wonder’ has been satis­facto­rily indulged by a writer whose gift to posterity is the compul­sive reada­bility of his stories of which this present volume is an essen­tial part.

  — LESLIE FLOOD

  THE RED STUFF (1951)

  (Note: The Government is of the opinion that in the present critical situation the widest possible publicity should be given to the facts of the case and the events which gave rise to it. It is, therefore, with official approval and encouragement that the proprietors of WALTERS SPACE-NEWS here reprint in pamphlet form the account first published in both the printed and broadcast versions of the issue of that journal dated Friday, 20th July 2051)

  Here is an official Government emergency warning:

  “From now until further notice Clarke Lunar Station will be closed to traffic. No vessel of any kind at present on the Station may put to space, nor will any local craft be permit­ted to take off from there. All vessels now in space, whether earth­ward or outward bound, scheduled to call at Clarke must make imme­diate arrange­ments to divert to Whitley. Outward bound craft will ground at the normal Whitley Lunar Station base; earth­ward bound vessels will be directed to the emergency field and must ground there. Any vessel ignoring this instruc­tion will be refused grounding and be dealt with severely. It is empha­sized that any vessel grounding at or near Clarke for any reason whatsoever will be refused permis­sion to leave. This warning is effective imme­diately.”

  It is likely that only a few of the millions who heard that an­nounce­ment, or the versions of it in other languages, broad­cast on the evening of Monday last, 16th July, took any great notice of it, in spite of its serious­ness of tone. After all, though we call this the Space age, only a frac­tional percen­tage of us have ever been or ever will be in space.

  Readers of this journal cannot fail to have been troubled, more likely alarmed, by the order, but they think of space in a specialized way as some­thing directly affecting their calling or livelihood.

  But to the average man, what is the Moon? It is an air­less, cheer­less cinder, the scene of some mining, useful as a testing ground for space condi­tions, but chiefly notable as a way-station appar­ently designed by provi­dence for the conve­nience of space-voyaging humanity. He knows that it is impor­tant, but he does not know how impor­tant, nor why.

  He knows, perhaps, that the Clarke Lunar Station was first opened over fifty years ago, and that it was so named in honour of the octo­genarian Doctor of Physics who did so much to further space-travel, but he does not realize what, in terms of mathe­matics, of power and pay-load, the exis­tence of such a Station and fuel­ling base means. Nor that its absence would entail sus­pension of space-travel almost entirely for a very long time, until we could com­pletely orga­nize our methods — if we could.

  Luckily we are not altogether denied use of the Moon by the closing of Clarke; we can still operate through the Whitley Station — at present. But if that cannot be main­tained in use, the question of conti­nued space-travel ships of the present types becomes grave to the point of hope­less­ness.

  To our regular readers parts of the account which follows will not be new, but it has seemed to the editors desir­able that at this critical junc­ture all the infor­mation available should be collated and presented to the public in the form of a narra­tive giving as honest a picture as possible of the present situ­ation, and its poten­tiali­ties.

  CHAPTER I

  At 20.58 G.M.T. on the 6th January 2051 the radio-operator of the Madge G. reported to the Captain that he had picked up a message globe and asked for further instruc­tions.

  The Madge G. after a cautious route well out of the elliptic to hurdle the asteroid belt had corrected course and was now in fall towards her desti­nation, Callisto, Moon IV, of Jupiter. Her Captain, John G. Troyte, was not pleased by his operator's report. The passage of the aster­oids is always a strain for a con­scien­tious man; even at wide berth there is still the chance of lonely out­flyers from the main swarm which will go through a ship as if she were a paper hoop. There is not a lot to be done about it: should the out­flyer be any­thing above the size of a foot­ball, it is just too bad; if it is smaller, prompt action can save the ship, provi­ding no vital part is hit. Alert­ness sus­tained for the long period is extremely tiring and Captain Troyte felt that he had earned a period of repose and relax­ation during the fall towards Callisto.

  What was more, he was pretty certain it would not turn out to be a message-globe after all. He had had such a report half a dozen times in the course of his career, and it had always turned out to be untrue. In the whole of his time in space he could only recall five being picked up at all. They were a good idea, only they didn't come off: they'd have been all right if there hadn't been quite so much space for them to get lost in, but, practice being so different from theory, it was little wonder that the clause for their compul­sory carriage had been struck out of the shipping regu­lations. They stood, in his opinion, as little chance of being picked up as a two-ounce bottle in mid-Atlantic, probably less. He went along to the radio-cabin himself. The operator was humming in rhythmic har­mony with the High-Shakers broad­cast from Tedwich, Mars, when he entered.

  “Turn off that blamed racket,” said Captain Troyte shortly. “Now what's all this about a globe?”

  The operator clicked out the High-Shakers, and touched a switch to bring in the pre-set receiver. He listened a moment and then handed over the head-phones. The Captain held one to his ear, and waited: after a few seconds came an unmis­takable da da, da da di. He looked at his watch, timing it. Exactly ten seconds later it came again —da da, da da di. He waited until it had repeated once more.

  “Good heavens, I really believe it is,” he said.

  “Can't be anything else, sir,” said the operator, smugly.

  “Got a line on it?”

  The operator had. He gave the angles. The Captain considered. The globe was ahead. By rough clock-face placing, at four o'clock 30 degrees oblique on the last reading, and widening. There was no like­li­hood of colli­ding with it.

  “Is it coming towards us, or are we chasing it?” he demanded.

  “Can't say, sir. At a guess I should say we're more or less chasing it. It's signal strength had improved, but only slowly.”

  “H'm,” said the Captain thought­fully. “We'll have to get it in. Keep an ear on it. Don't do any­thing until you're sure the signal strength is past maxi­mum, there'd be a nasty mess if we were to hit it head on. When it's begun to fade get the acti­vator going, and we'll fish it in. But for God's sake do it gently, we don't want the thing hurtling at us like a cannon ball. Better let me know once you've got it started.”

  The Captain returned to his own cabin more inter­ested than he admitted. The message-globe was an ingenious contri­vance which had looked like being more useful than it had proved. The problem had been to provide a ship with some means of communi­cating its trouble in case of radio fail­ure or wreck. In theory it was to be dis­charged in the direc­tion of the nearest space­line where its signal could scarcely fail to be picked up; in actual use very few had been picked up and it had progres­sively less chance of being found as the area of space opera­tion increased. The general opinion which had led to its omis­sion from the statutory list of equip­ment was that the majority of the globes sent off conti­nued to tick out their signals unde­tec­ted until their power gave out where­upon they floated about in space as additional
hazards. There was a feeling that the hazards of space were quite nume­rous enough with­out them.

  The radio operator hung his phones on a hook where he could hear the inter­mittent signal from the globe conve­niently, pondered whether he should try to listen to the High-Shakers at the same time, decided against it, and hunted for the sealed box in which the acti­vator had lain ever since the Madge G. was launched. After study of the instruc­tions which he had not seen since the day when he'd mugged them up for his final exami­nation, he got it set up. Then there was nothing to do but wait.

  Two and a half hours later the meter showed the signal strength of the globe to be falling off slightly. He lit a cigarette, took another look at the operating instruc­tions and grunted. Then he pressed a key on the activator, and waited.

  Nearly a thousand miles away in space the 2½-foot-diameter steel globe revolved slowly as it drifted in a leisurely way upon the orbit into which it had fallen. To all appear­ance it was as inert as any other frag­ment of flot­sam in the void. Then gradually, almost imper­cep­tibly at first, its revo­lu­tion began to slow. In a few minutes it was revolving clumsily like a ball with its weight out of true. Another five minutes and it failed to complete a revolution, it paused as though just short of top dead centre, swung back, oscil­lated gently awhile and then came to rest.

  Back on the Madge G., the radio operator called up the navigator who did some quick figuring. Out in space the globe swung a little in response to the cal­cu­la­tions. The radio operator pressed another key. An observer, had there been one close to the globe, would have seen little jets of flame spurt from that side of it distant from the Madge G. as the relays went in. Simul­tan­eously he would have watched it break from its orbit and scud away on a course calcu­lated to inter­sect with that of the ship far out of sight.

  The radio operator informed the Captain that the globe was on its way. The Captain joined him, and together they bent over the signal-meter.