Suddenly close-by human voices cut in, excited, happy, welcoming voices, and John Burns’ swift, answering speech: “He is tired; it has been hard for him. And—you know he has lost his sight. The radiation of the Sim so close. He would rather be taken where he can rest.”
“Very well—but can’t he say something? Just a few words?” Burns looked back at the old man. Malcolm Mackay shook his head.
The man outside spoke again: “Very well. We will take him directly to anywhere he wants.”
Mackay smiled slowly, thoughtfully. “Anywhere, anywhere I can smell the trees. I think I’d like to go to some place in the mountains where the air is sweet and spicy with pine smells.
I will be feeling better in a few days—”
They took him to a private camp in the mountains. A ten-room “cabin,” and they kept the world away, and a doctor took care of him. He slept and rested, and Burns came to see him twice the next day, but was hurried away. The next day and the next he did not come.
Because even Burns had not gathered quickly the meaning of all this. Even he had at first thought it was in celebration of the invention of the atomic generator.
At last he had to come. He came into Mackay’s room slowly. His pace told the blind man something was wrong.
“John—John, what’s troubling you so?”
“Nothing; I was not sure you were awake.”
Mackay thought for a few seconds and smiled. “That wasn’t it, but—we will let it pass now. Do they want me to speak?”
“Yes. At the special meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And—also on the subject of the thermlectrium elements. You have done far more than you thought, doctor. You have remade the worlds already. Those cars I thought were powered by broadcast energy? I was wrong. We were blind to the possibilities of that lesser thing, the thermlectrium element. Those cars were powered by it, getting their energy from the heat of the air. All the industries of the world are powered by it. It is free power.
“The elements are cheap, small, simple beyond anything conceivable, a bar of common metal—a coil of wire. They require no control, no attention. And the- energy costs nothing at all. Every home, every store, every man, has his private thermlectrium element. Every car and every vehicle is powered by it.
“And the map of the world has been twisted and changed by it in three short years. The tropics are the garden spot of the world. Square miles of land are cooled by giant thermlectrium installations, cities air-conditioned, till the power they develop becomes a nuisance, a thing they cannot get rid of. The tropics are habitable, and they have been given a brisk, cool, controlled climate by your thermlectrium elements.
“Antarctica is heated by it! There are two mining developments that suck heat from that frozen air to make power in quantities they cannot use.
“And rocket fuel costs nothing! Nothing at all. The tropical countries find the electrolytic breaking down of water the only cheap, practical way to get rid of their vast energy, without turning it right back into heat. They give the gases to whosoever will take them away.
“And Venus you have remade. Venus has two large colonies already. They are cooled, made habitable, by the thermlectrium apparatus. A ten-dollar unit will cool and power an average house forever, without the slightest wear. By moving it outside in winter, it will warm and power it. But on Venus it is all cooling. They are developing the planet now. Dr. Mackay, you have remade the worlds!”
Dr. Mackay’s face was blank. Slowly a great question was forming. A great, painful question. “But—but, John—what about—atomic energy?”
“One of the greatest space lines wants to contract for it, doctor. Their interplanetary ships need it.”
“One!” cried the Grand Old Man. “One—what of the others?”
“There is only one interplanetary line. The lines to the Moon are not interplanetary-”
And Dr. Mackay caught the kindness in his tone.
“I see—I see—they can use the free gases from the tropics. Free power—less than nothing.
“Then the world doesn’t want my atomic energy, does it?” he said softly. His old body seemed to droop.
Visiting Yokel - Cleve Cartmill
The Private Feud Between Sergeant McBriar and Captain Kennedy of “The Finest” Halted an Earth invasion—But They Didn’t Know it!
SERGEANT RION McBRIAR barked his order.
“Pull over to that pylon!”
The sergeant’s voice was loud and harsh with effort to hide his fear. Not fear of the pilot of that peculiar looking craft, but of Captain Kennedy. If McBriar allowed the Peace Parade to be messed up, Kennedy would certainly send him back to the sticks. McBriar hoped no official eyes were on this incident.
The pilot turned his helmeted head, gave McBriar a penetrating look, and obeyed the pointing finger. He swung the blunt snout of his flyer toward the spidery pylon, picked up McBriar’s thought impulses and cursed himself as he stalled his ship beside the high, bright tower.
“Norg,” he thought, “you have been stupid. This being is a petty official. You have broken a rule, carelessly, and may be exposed.”
Norg considered striking McBriar dead, then discarded the thought. The inhabitants of this planet had no such weapon as his, and they must have no knowledge of it until too late. He waited, faintly amused at the fuming thoughts that swirled in McBriar’s middle-aged head.
“Where did you learn to fly?” McBriar demanded wrathfully. He brought his traffic car to the side of the long, dull craft and eyed the pilot with steady contempt. “You may fly that way in the country, cousin, but you’re in the city now. Didn’t you see the warning?”
Norg glanced at his panel instrument that broke these alien sounds down into thought patterns, picked up the anticipated reply from McBriar’s thoughts, and made appropriate sounds of his own:
“I am sor-ry.”
A tiny flicker of suspicion rippled across McBriar’s thoughts, brought a calculating gleam to his gray eyes and a wrinkle to his brow.
ME THOUGHT: funny talking guy.
Funny looking, too. Never saw eyes like them. What’s that helmet? Maybe—Oh, lord, maybe he’s some big bug that’s got a right here. But why didn’t they tell me?
“What’re you doing here?” McBriar demanded with subdued belligerence. “Look!”
He waved at motionless traffic, hundreds of passenger craft at the local level, big freighters above them, and at two majestic liners, small and high.
“They stopped, see? And I don’t care who you are, you should’ve, too. The parade’s coming.”
Norg read thoughts, picked up the expected answer.
“I did not know of a pa-rade. I am sor-ry.”
McBriar gave him a blank look of astonishment.
“Where you been, anyway? Everybody knows there’s a Peace Parade every year. This is it, chum.”
“I am sor-ry,” Norg repeated.
“You talk funny,” McBriar said in a worried voice. “Look, maybe you got a right here, and if so, I apologize. But you better let me see your—” He broke off as he caught movement far off. “Oh—oh! Here it comes. Stay where you are till I get back.”
McBriar tilted his drive prism, swooped up on a long curve to official level, and brought his bright red craft to attention. To his right and left, other red traffic ships were regularly spaced, facing replicas of themselves across the parade channel. Below them and above, traffic was still.
Sergeant Rion McBriar paid little or no attention to the scene. He was no more consciously aware of familiar objects than that he was breathing. He had seen it so often, the individual ships, the shining roofs of the greatest city in the world, the sprinkle of pedestrians on crosswalks.
His strange encounter was in his mind, obscuring the oncoming parade. His thoughts drowned out ceremonial speeches from the leading, ship. He had heard it all before—the history of this day and the pact it celebrated. He thought of the helmeted pilot and the peculiar cra
ft that had moved when others stopped.
Not that the ship was really so strange, he thought. Everyone, these days, colored his flyer or equipped it with gadgets. Individuality was the watchword. But there was a feel to the ship. That was it, McBriar said to himself. It felt different. And the pilot, too. That funny looking helmet, the hesitating speech.
Just my luck, he thought, if the guy is an experimenter. If he’s in with the big boys, I’ll catch a little hell. Anyway, nothing happened, really. Nobody saw it—I hope.
The hope was thin, dying even as it formed. For bad luck had dogged his career and fended off even a sergeantcy until recently. McBriar remembered with some bitterness how younger men passed over him to higher offices, and how his contemporaries had become commissioners. All because of the breaks.
Somebody was a cinch to have seen the incident. Of course, it had to occur in his sector. Perverse fate saw to that. It couldn’t have happened to one of the other boys, oh, no! They were all young men, headed for cushy jobs. No, it came straight to McBriar, and slight though the disturbance had been it would wind up as a notation on his record.
The parade began to pass. McBriar’s eyes, filmed with gloom, were hardly aware of the glittering line of ships. Only his subconscious registered the event and recorded the pompous speeches. His conscious mind turned inward to himself.
SUDDENLY he stiffened, jerked his gaze to one side where a flash of movement marred the immobile symmetry of civilian traffic. His hand shot out to his controls, but froze midway. Nothing was important enough to pull him out of position, not even that strange ship which now streaked across the front of the parade and disappeared.
McBriar cursed. He’d lose his sergeant’s star now. That was certain. Not only had his brother officers observed this flagrant breach of traffic rules and noted that it had occurred in McBriar’s sector, but all the high and mighty officials on earth were in that front ship.
McBriar could picture their scandalized expressions as the peculiar craft cut across their bow, could hear the crackling messages which must even now be burning the ears of Captain Kennedy.
McBriar was stunned with despair. He would face Kennedy for this. And painful as that incident was sure to be, it was certain to be pleasant compared to the ordeal of facing his wife and kids later.
Myrna wouldn’t bawl him out, no. That was the devil of it. She’d comfort him, and try to build up his ego. But then she’d go off by herself and cry. And the kids would be casually contemptuous of his loss.
“What’s an old star?” they’d say. “We like the country. So what are we waiting for?”
And he’d reply in kind, wisecracking while packing to go back to the sticks, and with the heart of him breaking inside.
“If I ever catch that guy—” McBriar said aloud through stiff lips. His mind took it up, made pictures of satisfying tortures.
He’d just finished knocking the guy’s helmet off with his own bloody leg when the signal came through for traffic to move again.
Hard on the signal came a voice, rasping from his monitor.
“McBriar! Wake up! And get down here. I want to talk to you!” The sergeant went, unhappily…..
After his meeting with McBriar, Norg had watched the little red car pull away and assume position. With one swift comprehensive glance he sized up the motionless panorama, the formal waiting. When the parade came, all the inhabitants in this locality would remain where they were. Should he go or stay?
He had felt the uneasy suspicions of the petty official who had stopped him. That one would be back to investigate. Close investigation would not necessarily bring the truth to light, but it would force him to action which might prove disastrous.
Dangers here were manifold, but not to his person. If by some fluke these—what did they call their planet, Earth?— these Earthmen should learn that he was different and so pursue him, Norg’s own fate would be sealed. He could elude them, he could destroy some of them, but they would know.
In that knowledge lay disaster for his own people who waited for his report far out in space. Norg had learned many things since his scout ship had entered this planet’s atmosphere, and chief among these was that the inhabitants of this planet were intelligent.
Weak, yes, and ill-prepared to resist an attack. But even so, though their intelligence was rudimentary compared to his own, they were keen enough to use sheer force of numbers to advantage.
Therein lay his own people’s weakness—they were few in number. Only by complete surprise could they wipe out this Earth race and appropriate the planet.
If one Earthman suspected that Norg were alien, that suspicion would generate a certain amount of uneasy alertness which might prove troublesome.
That official, for example, would return to complete his examination when the parade had passed. He was afraid of losing some bauble, apparently a symbol of his position. Though Norg could not understand such childish fear, he knew that it was important to the petty official. He knew that the official would prosecute his inquiry with dogged persistence and that exposure might well follow.
On the other hand, if he went away from here, a search would be instigated. His scout ship was distinctive enough to give direction to the search, and eventually someone would spot him and raise the authorities.
NORG made his decision. As long as he was a fugitive, these creatures would not know, would not be frightened into action that might harm the invasion attempt. Furthermore, he had spent some time—enough time, perhaps—in this greatest of their cities, and knew what he needed to know about this race. Before reporting to his flagship, he had yet to estimate the fruitfulness of the land.
He would go, then, to the rural spaces where eyes were few and danger minimized. If his report on the people themselves was sketchy, it should be counterbalanced by over-elaborate data on the planet itself.
He acted at once, swooping across the front of the parade. He caught a welter of horrified and angry thoughts from the flagship as he cut across her bow. Caught, too, thoughts of helpless rage. None could pursue, the pattern of the parade could not be broken.
A thought of exultation exploded along his brain. He was safe, then, for a time. He didn’t need much time. This was perfectly obvious as endless green fields rolled backward under him. There was a rich fatness in them, unlike the barren, dead spaces of other planets he had scouted.
Here was home for the homeless who had been forced out of their own by a rogue star.
He remembered the bright destruction of that far planet on which he had been born; remembered the grim despair which laid a curtain of thought around that vast caravan; remembered the search through stellar systems, the rising hopes when a new planet was sighted, the disappointments after exploration.
This was home. He felt it, knew it. No poisonous atmosphere, no killing gravity, no inedible staples. There it lay below him, fat with life, rolling with green beauty, thrusting upward in the distance stark hills which collected water in their season.
He dropped down in the vicinity of a small community. He could take samples here, and continue his observations of such inhabitants as were available. Then off to his own people, report; make a swift surprise attack, wipe out this race, every member of it, and—
At long last, home… .
Sergeant Rion McBriar was uneasy. He wanted to twist his hands, but resisted the loss of dignity this would entail.
He twisted them, however, in his mind as he waited for Captain Kennedy to open the interview.
He leaned forward on the edge of his chair as his superior went leisurely through a sheaf of official reports. He could see only the top of Kennedy’s head, but the silver sheen seemed baleful to McBriar, as he knew the frosty blue eyes would be when they met his.
They did, and they were. The voice, however, was dulcet, seemingly sympathetic. The tone indicated that Captain Kennedy’s sole concern was the happiness, comfort, and general well-being of Sergeant McBriar.
“Well, Sergeant,” Ke
nnedy purred, “I trust you are well?”
McBriar stiffened inside. He thought: so he’s going to draw it out, cat and mouse.
“Yes, sir,” he said formally, “I am well.”
“And the little woman, Sergeant? She is well? And the children? Boys, I believe? Ah, yes, strong lads both.”
***
McBRIAR couldn’t keep a small glow from his eyes, but his voice was impersonal.
“We are all well, sir.”
“Good!” Kennedy said heartily. “You know, Sergeant, many members of the force seem to feel that I place efficiency above human relations. Isn’t that true?”
“I don’t know, Captain,” McBriar said evenly. “I haven’t heard any talk. My duties keep me too busy to listen to gossip.” A good thing, the sergeant thought, the guy can’t read my mind.
“Of course,” Kennedy said, “you are busy. But I’m sure that you are as aware as I of my reputation. I have here”— he tapped the sheaf of reports—“some interesting data concerning efficiency. It concerns you, Sergeant. In fact, it is a long record of incidents which eloquently reflect your efficiency. Now there are many who say that I would allow these reports to influence my personal relations with you. No?”
McBriar’s jaw hardened. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, Captain.”
“Ah? For example, during your probationary period, your zeal drove you to reprimanding an Experimenter before you discovered his mission and identity. You may remember.”
McBriar remembered. That was the first of a series of bad breaks. The man had been surly in response to routine questions, and McBriar had reacted as any officer should.
He said nothing. He waited for Kennedy to go on.
“And here is another, Sergeant. The Baltar robbery. You may remember the results of your investigation.”
My Best Science Fiction Story Page 14