Lunar Vengeance: A Collection of Science Fiction Stories

by Fearn, John Russell

  “Yes, I did,” Jackson retorted, dragging himself free of the grip. “I didn’t mean to murder, though. It was an accident. The information 1 stole enabled me to become a first mate aboard a spaceship. I was down and out, Grant: I had to steal the answers to technical questions in order to pass the examination and get a job quickly. Then I met with an accident. It ruined my face and crushed my chest. But it was also a golden opportunity. I realised when the surgeons had finished with me that my voice was different due to what they’d done inside my chest, and my face too was entirely altered by plastic surgery, leaving also a deep scar down one cheek. I had only to dye my hair to become a different person entirely. For all the law knew Slade Jackson had died somewhere in space. I became Bob Anderson, first mate. And at last I was assigned to work beside you.”

  “You, a murderer, worked beside me! Why?” Grant demanded. “Since you killed my wife you could just as easily have killed me—many a time! Why didn’t you?”

  “I keep on telling you, I didn’t murder deliberately! I worked beside you for one purpose only. I was waiting for the day when those various scientific inventions of yours would see fruit. I planned to steal them when that happened. Since we’re in a spot right now I’ve no need to hold anything back…Yes, I intended to steal them. I believed, and rightly I think, that I could one day become scientific master of the System—at your expense. That was why I stayed beside you.”

  Grant waited, his face drawn and hard.

  “When I knew we were going to make for Pluto at a speed nearly equal to that of light I became worried,” Jackson continued. “I knew it was quite possible that the speed of light might be exceeded, mainly because the hairline is so slight. If that happened, I decided, events exactly similar to those that have come about would happen. Devolution instead of evolution. I’m not entirely a mug in scientific matters, Grant.

  “I knew it was just possible that the years might fade from me like mist. That I had to prevent at all costs. I could not cry off from the trip because that would have stamped me as a quitter and I’d have lost my job—and you. The only course, it seemed, was to sabotage things so that you could never reach the speed of light. I did not want to cripple all means of power, mark you: that would have spelled disaster since, without power, we’d have gone on hurtling through space at a fixed velocity until some powerful gravity-field caught us and drew us to destruction. No; I had to partly cripple things…”

  Jackson paused and reflected, a cynical smile on his ever-younger face.

  “I fixed the electric switch so that Dawson got killed. On Brogan’s bunk I smeared insite poison. As you know it brings first madness and then death. I knew that he would be sweating heavily from working in the rocket hold and that the poison would be absorbed through his open pores. I also put the time-bomb in the rocket-tube. I believed these things would produce a mutiny. It nearly worked, only Baxter proved more level-headed than the rest and kept order. In spite of all my efforts the speed of light was exceeded…I believed, too, that if the speed of light were exceeded there would still be a way back to our own Universe, and that that would take me back as a branded criminal. Now there’s no way back.”

  Grant said slowly: “And you planned all this, knowing there was canthite aboard? If our speed had slowed up as you intended the stuff would have exploded.”

  “There is no canthite aboard,” Jackson answered dryly. “I took it away the night before departure and substituted an identical parcel. It was that parcel which you saw on the morning of departure.”

  Grant sat down slowly. Before his sombre gaze Jackson was sweeping backwards down the scale of time. Grant too realized how far he himself had gone.

  At length Jackson spoke. “Somehow, it’s funny! You and me in an alien universe—bitter enemies—and neither of us can do a thing about it! You and me alone, with only the spirits of those who have died. Something else too, Grant. This ship is comparatively new. When it has retrogressed a certain distance it will fall in pieces—long before we have gone back to the moment of our births. Even if there is a way back we shan’t have the time to discover it. We couldn’t, either, because our minds are losing chunks of knowledge all the time. Knowledge accumulated through the years is just vanishing…”

  Grant gazed with steady, accusing eyes.

  “I murdered by accident in the first place,” Jackson went on, but later it was by design. The men below, I mean. They were just criminal scum, the whole damned bunch of them. I had no qualms about blotting them out…You’re not much better than I am, Grant. When you found out you tried to kill me.”

  “And was prevented,” Grant said quietly, “for which I thank heaven—” He looked up quickly as there was a curious sound from the direction of the rocket-holds.

  “The ship’s beginning to break up!” Jackson whispered, moistening his lips. Suddenly he got to his feet and went to the airlock. “Do I open it and get it over with?”

  Grant shook his head slowly. “Give it a moment or two longer. Too much to face all at once.”

  He turned and looked pensively at the instruments, then that odd sound came again from the rocket-hold. The vessel lurched violently, seemed to spin in a dizzy half-circle to the sudden blast of rocket tubes.

  Jackson wheeled, dumbfounded, staring through the port on to a sky that had abruptly become powered with stars.

  “Grant, we’re free!” he shouted hoarsely. “Look, man! The stars are back!”

  He stopped dead. Grant, his face merciless, was holding a flame pistol steadily in his hand. For several moments he stood motionless, as also did Jackson. Both of them needed the respite to catch up on the adjustment to normal time and space dimensions again…At last they had caught up on the years. Jackson’s face was again scarred; his voice had changed back; his hair was dark once more

  “Grant, what’s happened?” he whispered. He looked again through the port, to behold Pluto dead ahead.

  At last Grant spoke. “For your information, Jackson, I have played tag with a cosmic law to expose a murderer! You thought the police believed you dead—but they didn’t. They worked it out that Robert Anderson could be Slade Jackson, but they could not prove it. What was required was cast-iron evidence in sound and vision. That has now been obtained. During the time we were beyond the deadline you broke down and told everything because Time itself had stripped you bare. In this control room, hidden from you are cameras and recorders. Everything was taken down!”

  “No use at all!” Jackson shouted. “They were photographing and recording in a negative Time—”

  “Which compensator instruments back on Earth will straighten out! Just as a chemical brings an otherwise invisible image into view on a photographic plate.” Then Grant continued calmly: “The moment you came under suspicion I ceased to refer to my progress with scientific inventions, so you could not learn anything. From then on I was determined to nail you. It may surprise you to know that I have exceeded the speed of light before now. I did it once with an old and very expert scientist who worked out the mathematics to get back to normal. After that—not possessing one tenth of his mathematical ability—I devised mechanical instruments to do it for me, on the lines of an electronic brain. These instruments were embodied in this ship. They accomplished automatically what a retrogressed brain could not even grapple with. They re-fired the rockets and catapulted us back into normal space-time. That was the noise we heard. It wasn’t a crack-up.”

  “Then—then every bit of this was planned?” Jackson demanded.

  “Every bit of it, yes, with the connivance of the Commanding Officer. He saw to it that this ship had the special mechanisms embodied in it: he also worked alongside the law when they suggested this means of forcing you into the open as a long-wanted murderer…I used a bit of psychology in guessing that you’d probably get nervy when you knew the speed we’d have to move at to reach Pluto in time. The contact I had with you had shown me that you have a good scientific knowledge. You would, I figured, probably b
e afraid of exceeding the speed of light. You did many of the things we thought you would, Jackson. You say you even took away the canthite? All you actually took was the parcel the C.O. had delivered to me.”

  “That was canthite!” Jackson snapped. “You said so yourself! I removed it and buried it in waste ground.”

  Grant smiled crookedly. “You remember a bottle of fluid I brought on departure morning? That was the canthite, my misguided friend! I realised you knew little about it. The C.O. gave it to me secretly on departure morning. Up to the last moment it was safely tucked away in an underground vault. I guessed you might switch parcels, and you did…You see, I knew you had done so the moment I looked in the storage-hold.”

  “You damned well couldn’t have known!”

  “But I did. The C.O.’s parcel was wrapped in jitmus paper which is ordinarily yellow, but locked in the darkness it would have turned bright blue through chemical reaction by the time we were ready to depart, a colour only noticeable in darkness. Since all night passed and there was no bright blue colour when I looked at the parcel in the darkness—remember I did that?—it was perfectly obvious a switch had been made. The crew, though they had access to the ship itself during the night had not got a key to the stronghold. Only you had that.”

  “Then,” Jackson said slowly, “does this mean that canthite is not a genuine mutational substance?”

  “Most certainly it is, only the speed of change is not nearly so rapid as you were led to believe. As to the rest, the Pluto assignment was quite genuine. There is trouble on Pluto and that canthite is desperately needed.”

  “Normal speed would have sufficed?”

  “Yes.” Grant shrugged his broad shoulders. “You walked right into the trap, Jackson. Now you can give me a hand to land this ship—unless you’re anxious to die without trial!”

  Jackson obeyed, staring as he moved with hopeless eyes towards the fast approaching bulk of the ninth world.

  Behind his head the flame pistol pointed…inexorably.

  THE ARBITER

  The year of 2080—and peace…The wreckage of past ages of barbarism had been cleared away. All over the Earth stood flawless cities. The peoples had nothing to complain of. They lived in a tempered, happy world of smoothly working machines and vast foolproof control panels. But in this there perhaps lay the seeds of danger.

  Selby Doyle, President of the Earth, voted into office by common consent, was a shrewd man. Slim, wiry, with grey hair swept back from an expansive brow, there was little to stamp him as extraordinary, unless it was the resolute tightness of his lips or the squareness of his chin. Here was a man who reasoned, decided, and then acted.

  He had accomplished all that he had set out to do and moulded the world afresh. It gave him pleasure to sit as he was now, in the dim half-light of the lowering night, his chair tilted back on its hind legs, his grey eyes gazing on the lights of Major City as they sprang automatically into being at the scheduled times. The lower lights first, then the higher ones, as the tide of day ebbed from the deeper walks.

  Presently he glanced round as the warning light on his great desk proclaimed somebody’s approach. Instantly he was the chief magistrate—self-possessed, ready for his visitor. He closed the switches which filled the room with an intense yet restful brilliance.

  The automatic door opened. Doyle sat looking at the tall man who crossed the threshold. Vincent Carfax, chairman of the Committee for Public Welfare, inclined his bald head in greeting. “Your excellency!” he acknowledged, and stepped forward to shake hands. Doyle waved him to a chair. Carfax was an inhuman index of a man who carried endless statistics in his agile brain. Poker-faced, emaciated as a skeleton, it was his proud boast that he had never been known to smile.

  “You will overlook the lateness of the hour, Mr. President?” he asked at length, in his precise voice.

  “I was about to leave,” Doyle answered. “However, only an important matter could bring you here, Carfax. What is it?”

  “Unrest.”

  “Unrest?” President Doyle raised his eyebrows. “Unrest in Major City? My dear fellow!”

  “Unrest!” Carfax insisted. “I have suspected it for a long time, but I’ve refrained from bringing it to your notice until I was absolutely certain. Now I have conclusive evidence. Major City is resting on quicksand, your excellency.”

  Doyle pondered for a moment. “Tell me about it,” he invited.

  “The facts are plain,” Carfax answered slowly. “The reaction of perfect security after many years spent in wars and struggle is going directly against the adaptive strain Nature builds up. I have had the First in Biology check on that. The human body and mind, keyed to every emergency, had until recently something it could grapple with. Now there is nothing but perfection. The mind has of necessity to find a new form of excitation in order to maintain its equilibrium. Do I make it clear?”

  “I provided science for the people,” President Doyle said quietly. “Is not that exciting enough?”

  “Science, sir, is for the chosen few. Men such as you and I, and all the other master-brains who have brought this sublime state into being, are different. Call them geniuses if you will. At least they do not represent the masses. I have been forced to the unpleasant realization that very few minds are adapted to scientific study. Just as in the pre-Wars Era a man accepted the electric light for what it is without involving himself in the electronic processes embodied in it, so today there is that same aspect of laziness and torpor—and there, Mr. President, lie the seeds of unrest and mischief.”

  Doyle smiled. “It can be stopped. The Congress has the power.”

  “This goes deeper than you realize,” Carfax said, shaking his bald head, “It is not confined to Major City. It exists nearly everywhere. So much so I felt it my duty to warn you. If this unrest is not quelled it means—back to war!”

  The Chief Executive was silent.

  “There is a way,” Carfax said.

  “There is?”

  “It is becoming increasingly clear that the Last War did not entirely kill the belief in men’s minds that force of arms is the only sure way to Right. The element of unrest now present will grow rapidly. At the moment it takes the form of vicious words. It would like to build up a barrier against all things scientific and tear down the perfect structure we have created. But I say— if I may—that the close of the Last War really did end war for ever!”

  “Perhaps.” The President smiled grimly.

  “Listen,” Carfax resumed, tapping his finger emphatically on the desk. “We must forever outlaw war as a disease. Until now Man has not had sufficient power at his disposal—scientific power that is—to make his dreams come true. The earlier men tried it with pacts, treaties, and leagues of nations—and they all came to grief—because there was no science back of them.”

  “And now?”

  “Now, with tremendous scientific resources at our command, we can make a stand against this eternal enemy of progress, destroy it while it is still young.” Carfax hesitated briefly and looked apologetic. “What I am about to say, your Excellency, may make it appear I am teaching you your business. You will forgive that?”

  Doyle shrugged. “Only a fool refuses to learn. Continue,”

  “Many years ago men adopted the principle of arbitration,” Carfax resumed. “They were enlightened enough, in civil matters at least, to place any matter of dispute, particularly in instances of capital and labour, before a council usually composed of three experts. That council was vested with complete power to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ upon the point at issue. Thus matters were arbitrated. Endeavours were made, futilely enough, to devise an arbitration scheme between nations.

  “The principle of arbitration relied on the good faith of nations to seek arbitration, but lost in a welter of power politics and overcome with greed, backed by terrific man power and armaments, wars followed wars. Arbitration was ignored. But, sir, the idea was not lost. Why cannot a new arbiter arise? Not one, not thr
ee—but twelve! In olden times a jury was usually composed of twelve men and women. So in respect to that judicial tradition let it still be twelve. Twelve—to arbitrate!”

  President Doyle sighed a little. “An excellent idea, old friend. But what twelve men or women, however competent, would be accepted by the masses as sole judges?”

  “There comes the difference!” the Statistician said calmly. “I have been investigating on my own account. Ever since this unrest began I have pondered the idea of an Arbiter. I have interviewed, at great length, twelve men and women, each one of them equipped with the finest brain in the world for his particular sphere. The twelve major sciences of present day civilization can each have a master at the head. Yes, I have talked with them. Each one of them has foreseen as we have the grim fate that awaits mankind if unrest is allowed to prevail. Now I have their assurance, once the word is made lawful by you, that each one of them is prepared to sacrifice his life for the particular science he controls in order that the future of mankind may be assured.”

  Doyle sat bolt upright. “Sacrifice their lives!” he cried. “What on earth do you mean, man? Why should they?”

  “Because there can be no other way to make a true Arbiter!”

  The President got to his feet, stood by the window with his hands clasped behind him.

  “Go on,” he said, lost in thought.

  “Twelve brains will be pooled for the common good,” Carfax explained. “Twelve brains will work in unison to provide a common answer, and a just one, for every conceivable difficulty in every walk of life. Twelve brains, functioning as one unit, will be the judge of humanity’s future actions and set discord at naught.”

  “Even brains die,” President Doyle pointed out, turning. “It is only putting off the vital issue for a short period. When the brains die the old trouble will be back. This is just—just a temporary panacea, making things comfortable for the present age. What of posterity, Carfax? This is the problem.”