The Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction MEGAPACK®: 20 Classic Science Fiction Tales

by Frank Belknap Long

  “What other explanation is there? What other possible explanation?”

  “I’ll get Jim,” she said.

  She turned, and was gone.

  Brewster stood for a moment listening to her footsteps die away. Then he turned hack to the ship, his mouth strangely dry.

  He entered the ship through the open port-lock, and stared about him. Everything seemed incredibly new—new and bright and shining. He saw the double pilot seats, facing the controls. He went to the instrument board, tested the air pressure, and looked out through the viewpane at the green immensity of the forest.

  In the small compact control room there was a security which could not be found in the forest, or by the sea wall. The forest could kill in a thousand cruel ways. And by the sea-wall lurked shadows which could threaten a man’s sanity.

  In the forest a man could die horribly, and his bones lie bleached and whitening under cold stars. There were two pilot seats, but one man could pilot the ship. There was room for two—but not for three. The ship could not carry two men and one woman back on overdrive to Earth. The jungle was green and threatening outside the viewpane. The jungle whispered: Do not be a fool! This is your chance! Act quickly!

  Brewster climbed into one of the pilot seats.

  He stared out into the green jungle. But he did not see the jungle. He saw New York. He was back in that tremendous city, the lights of evening fading from the windows of the buildings he loved, the rooftops shining clear in the heavens.

  He was back in New York with a lot of money to spend. He was hack in his favorite restaurant at his favorite table. It was dark outside, he could see the stars shining in the winter sky. The wine was poured quickly, it bubbled in his glass.

  Opposite him sat a woman. Her name did not matter. He only eared that she was a woman, tender and very beautiful, and that if he lost her, there would always be another woman waiting. He shut his eyes and she was tight in his arms. Her lips were fire, and the words she spoke to him would have prevented him from seeking another. He would have welcomed that too. He would not have cared. Brewster climbed down front the pilot seat and went outside to wait for Jim and Helen. The jungle screamed at him: You’re quite mad! You had your chance! Why didn’t you take it?

  There was no answer he could give the jungle. He could not seem to bring his thoughts into clear focus. Two strangers had welcomed him as a friend, had trusted him completely. But that was no proper answer. It explained nothing, really.

  * * * *

  He saw them approaching along the path and straightened in sudden concern. He’d be having a time with Jim. You couldn’t just say to a survey officer: Your ship was wrecked, and you were closeto death. But an intelligence whose existence I cannot even prove healed you. It rebuilt your shiptoo. Climb in and take off. Hurry, Jim! Before they try to stop you. If they could read our thoughtsthey’d be here now, they’d stop you cold. There must be a mind block of sonic sort. Takeadvantage of it, Jim! Don’t just stand there staring at me!

  For a survey officer had an approach to reality that would never give ground that fast. He’d have to be convinced first, and that would take time.

  “Donald, when Helen told me, I couldn’t believe it. I thought it was sonic sort of gag you’d cooked up between you. I—I’ve got to sit down.”

  Brewster looked up and saw Jim standing before him. Not the Jim he’d imagined himself opposing, but Jim the flesh—an even harder Jim to argue with.

  Emery sat down on a tree stump and stared at the ship.

  “How did it get here?” he asked.

  “We found it here,” Brewster said.

  “It is our ship,” Helen said. “Have you any doubt at all, Jim?”

  “I’ll know when I’ve looked at the instrument board.”

  Emery got up then, and went into the ship. Brewster and Jim’s wife followed. Jim walked slowly around the control room, his lips tight, his eyes shining strangely.

  Emery moved about the ship like a man in a trance, his eyes roving from the control board whose dials indicated ample fuel reserves and perfect mechanical, electronic functioning, to the orderly, properly fastened array of essential equipment. But a frown creased his face when he observed only two take-off pressure coaches.

  “Good Lord!” he muttered. “It just can’t be. It’s against all reason.” Brewster knew then what had to be done. He was no hero. His past was crammed with so many things he wanted to forget that one more sordid episode wouldn’t have appreciably darkened the whole. This was, however, the first time he could remember being treated as a decent human being. It was a new experience. There comes a time when a man has to give as well as take.

  “Jim!” he said.

  He waited until Emery had turned and was facing him.

  “I’ve never had two better friends than you and Helen, Jim,” he said. Then Brewster sent his fist crashing against Emery’s jaw. It was a hard, quick blow, and it dropped Emery to the deck. Helen cried out in horror.

  Brewster turned and took her by the shoulder. She tried to wrench free, her eyes wild, but he refused to release her. “Listen to me,” he pleaded. “Jim told me you were a survey officer too. You know how to pilot this ship.”

  “You struck him for no reason at all.”

  Brewster shook his head. “I had a reason. We’re in very great danger, but I couldn’t have convinced him. He wouldn’t have listened. But he’s your husband, and he’s helpless now. He’s your man—and a woman in love will always listen.”

  “Listen to what?” she asked, fiercely.

  “I’m going to stay and draw the danger away from you. I’m going to make myself a target. But don’t get the silly idea that I’m sacrificing myself. If you stay Jim may be the target—but my chances won’t he any better.

  He shook her, a little roughly, solely to anger her. “Do you understand? I’d have to stay anyway. But you can save Jim by using common sense.”

  She ceased to struggle suddenly. She stared at him, her lips white. “Do you really mean that?”

  “Of course I mean it. I’m going outside. As soon as I’m clear—I want you to take off. Just give me thirty seconds to get clear.”

  He didn’t wait to say goodbye. He crossed the control room in three quick strides, and swung the port-lock shut behind him.

  He was seventy feet from the ship when it took off with a thunderous roar. He walked slowly back through the forest, keeping to the path that seemed somehow now to be his last link with Earth.

  A sense of almost overwhelming loneliness came upon him when he saw the tower overwhelming the trees, its summit bright with weaving sunlight. Yet he walked across the clearing with his shoulders held straight.

  The tower had become suddenly very precious to him. In the tower he had enjoyed a truly wonderful hospitality. He had known himself for the first time in his life as a man capable of friendship, warm, deep and lasting.

  Horribly lonely and deserted the ascending platforms seemed now. Each shadow seemed to mock him, increasing his sense of loss, heightening the desolation which rested upon him like some evil cloak which had begun to grow into his flesh.

  Higher he climbed, and higher.

  Near the top of the spiral he paused to stare down.

  And suddenly he knew the secret of the tower. The tower was a house. On Earth a house was not a home until it had been lived in. When a house became a home it changed subtly. The people who lived in it changed it.

  If walls could speak and tell their secrets

  But walls had spoken. How else explain the visions he had seen, the voices he had heard? Some wise and tremendous intelligence had built this house and it was now a home. And why could not walls be made sensitive to waves of thought, just as photoelectric cells were sensitive to the approach of a physical body acting upon them from a distance
. A science that could heal the mortally injured would find no difficulty there.

  Brewster sat down at the edge of the topmost platform, and stared down the spiral, remembering the visions he had seen of a planet of tremendous contrasts, of sea and sky, miles of blowing spray and primeval jungle.

  On the shores of Earth’s seas dwelt enormous mollusks. Enormous for Earth, but here he had met in the jungle a lizard twenty feet tall.

  A snail would not have to remain permanently attached to its house. On Earth there were mollusks which could leave their shells at will.

  The ebb and flow of the sea tides, the surge of the great sea that never ceased. Would not an intelligence having its origin in the sea prefer to roam, to join itself to that surge and return to its house only at intervals?

  How easy it was to imagine such a creature, weary at last of its roaming, climbing up a sea-wall in its shining eagerness to be home.

  The strange grooves and hollows.

  In a mollusk’s body were similar grooves and hollows, for a mollusk must mold itself to its spiral house, must flow into every crevice and fill its house completely.

  Brewster sat very still, listening to he knew not what, his nerves suddenly tense. On Earth there were mollusks with great horny feet which could be fitted into grooves such as Brewster saw here on the immense spiral which fell away beneath him.

  A scientific intelligence, thought Brewster, could be completely lacking in compassion. It was possible that he had saved his friends from a fate worse than death—for the lot of the experimental guinea pig was never a happy one. But it was equally possible that the intelligence might have been moved by a spirit of altruism. To restore an alien life-form and the ship which had brought that form to its own world might have appealed to it as a kindly and generous thing to do.

  In that case Jim and Helen Emery would have been in no danger, and their departure would have fulfilled the original design of the intelligence. But if the intelligence had no such altruistic design in mind—might it not feel itself thwarted, and vent its rage on the one responsible?

  Well, if he had to be a guinea pig—

  The lapping was barely audible at first, a hollow mockery of sound that fell so lightly on Brewster’s ears that if he had not been listening with every nerve alert he would have thought it a breeze blowing in from the sea, rattling the dry leaves of the forest.

  He knew when he heard it that he could not hope to escape. He remained motionless, listening as the sound grew louder, listening and waiting and fighting back his fear. Louder and louder it grew, and suddenly a shadow fell across the base of the spiral that could only have been cast by a flowing shape moving with the resistless slowness of the sea tides themselves.

  Straight up the spiral swept the owner of the house, darkish portions of itself slithering over the ascending disks, and into the grooves and hollows. Closely and ever more closely as it ascended it molded itself to the spiral’s convolutions, as if the spiral were intimately a part of its mind and its flesh. It had returned completely into its house, rearing a great, horned head and staring down at Brewster with eyes that seemed to probe his very soul.

  Suddenly, from a crevice in the uneven limestone a floating, disk-like object emerged and swept down toward him, dazzling his eyes with its brightness.

  Incredibly intricate in construction the disk seemed, its numerous knoblike projections and delicately glowing tubes proclaiming it an instrument of science designed with accuracy for a specific purpose. That purpose Brewster sensed even before the tubes attached themselves to his brow. The walls could speak and this was their voice—an instrument of communication of a thistledown lightness which responded to every thought impulse generated by the owner of the house. Generated by guests as well? And why not? An automatic caretaker, perhaps—taking down messages in the owner’s absence and repeating them on the owner’s return. Absorbing impressions from every part of the house, from millions of tiny photoelectric cell mechanisms embedded on every tier. Attaching itself to friend and foe alike—

  As the tubes at Brewster’s temples lit up his face he knew that the strangeness and mystery of it would forever haunt him. But he knew also that the questions he would never cease to ask himself were of less importance than the simple fact that the owner of the house was using the device now to communicate with him directly.

  * * * *

  “For you,” a voice whispered, deep in his mind. “We built it for you, Donald Brewster!” Almost the great horned face seemed to smile. “It will take you back to your home planet!” Brewster saw the ship then, standing by the seawall in a blaze of sunlight. It was a beauty—the most beautiful ship he had ever seen.

  He blinked and there was a stinging at his eyelids. He wanted to stand up, to get to his feet and shout his gratitude. But so great was his surprise and delight that all he could do was stare.

  THE CALM MAN

  Originally published in Fantastic Universe, May 1954.

  Sally Anders had never really thought of herself as a wallflower. A girl could be shy, couldn’t she, and still be pretty enough to attract and hold men?

  Only this morning she had drawn an admiring look from the milkman and a wolf cry from Jimmy on the corner, with his newspapers and shiny new bike. What if the milkman was crowding sixty and wore thick-lensed glasses? What if Jimmy was only seventeen?

  A male was a male, and a glance was a glance. Why, if I just primp a little more, Sally told herself, I’ll be irresistible.

  Hair ribbons and perfume, a mirror tilted at just the right angle, an invitation to a party on the dresser—what more did a girl need?

  “Dinner, Sally!” came echoing up from the kitchen. “Do you want to be late, child?”

  Sally had no intention of being late. Tonight she’d see him across a crowded room and her heart would skip a beat. He’d look at her and smile, and come straight toward her with his shoulders squared.

  There was always one night in a girl’s life that stands above all other nights. One night when the moon shone bright and clear and the clock on the wall went tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. One night when each tick said, “You’re beautiful! Really beautiful!”

  Giving her hair a final pat Sally smiled at herself in the mirror.

  In the bathroom the water was still running and the perfumed bath soap still spread its aromatic sweet odor through the room. Sally went into the bathroom and turned off the tap before going downstairs to the kitchen.

  “My girl looks radiant tonight!” Uncle Ben said, smiling at her over his corned beef and cabbage.

  Sally blushed and lowered her eyes.

  “Ben, you’re making her nervous,” Sally’s mother said, laughing.

  Sally looked up and met her uncle’s stare, her eyes defiant. “I’m not bad-looking whatever you may think,” she said.

  “Oh, now, Sally,” Uncle Ben protested. “No sense in getting on a high horse. Tonight you may find a man who just won’t be able to resist you.”

  “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t,” Sally said. “You’d be surprised if I did, wouldn’t you?”

  It was Uncle Ben’s turn to lower his eyes.

  “I’ll tell the world you’ve inherited your mother’s looks, Sally,” he said. “But a man has to pride himself on something. My defects of character are pretty bad. But no one has ever accused me of dishonesty.”

  Sally folded her napkin and rose stiffly from the table.

  “Good night, Uncle,” she said.

  When Sally arrived at the party every foot of floor space was taken up by dancing couples and the reception room was so crowded that, as each new guest was announced, a little ripple of displeasure went through the men in midnight blue and the women in Nile green and lavender.

  For a moment Sally did not move, just stood staring at the dancing couples, half-hidden by
one of the potted palms that framed the sides of the long room.

  Moonlight silvered her hair and touched her white throat and arms with a caress so gentle that simply by closing her eyes she could fancy herself already in his arms.

  Moonlight from tall windows flooding down, turning the dancing guests into pirouetting ghosts in diaphanous blue and green, scarlet and gold.

  Close your eyes, Sally, close them tight! Now open them! That’s it… Slowly, slowly …

  He came out of nothingness into the light and was right beside her suddenly.

  He was tall, but not too tall. His face was tanned mahogany brown, and his eyes were clear and very bright. And he stood there looking at her steadily until her mouth opened and a little gasp flew out.

  He took her into his arms without a word and they started to dance …

  They were still dancing when he asked her to be his wife.

  “You’ll marry me, of course,” he said. “We haven’t too much time. The years go by so swiftly, like great white birds at sea.”

  They were very close when he asked her, but he made no attempt to kiss her. They went right on dancing and while he waited for her answer he talked about the moon …

  “When the lights go out and the music stops the moon will remain,” he said. “It raises tides on the Earth, it inflames the minds and hearts of men. There are cyclic rhythms which would set a stone to dreaming and desiring on such a night as this.”

  He stopped dancing abruptly and looked at her with calm assurance.

  “You will marry me, won’t you?” he asked. “Allowing for a reasonable margin of error I seriously doubt if I could be happy with any of these other women. I was attracted to you the instant I saw you.”

  A girl who has never been asked before, who has drawn only one lone wolf cry from a newsboy could hardly be expected to resist such an offer.