The Second Fredric Brown Megapack: 27 Classic Science Fiction Stories

by Fredric Brown

  President Saunderson shook hands tensely and made short work of the introductions.

  “We want the whole story, Captain,” he said. “But I’m going to relieve your mind on two things first. Did you know that Anna landed safely near Moscow?”

  “Yes. Granham told me.”

  “And she tells the same story you do—or that Major Granham told me over the phone that you tell.”

  “I suppose,” Carmody said, “that they used a lie detector on her, too.”

  “Scopolamine,” said the Eastern Alliance ambassador. “We have more faith in truth serum than lie detectors. Yes, her story was the same under scopolamine.”

  “The other point,” the President told Carmody, “is even more important. Exactly when, Earth time, did you leave the Moon?”

  Carmody figured quickly and told him approximately when that had been.

  Saunderson nodded gravely. “And it was a few hours after that that biologists, who’ve still been working twenty-four hours a day on this, noticed the turning point. The molecular change in the zygote no longer occurs. Births, nine months from now, will have the usual percentage of male and female children.”

  “Do you see what that means, Captain? Whatever ray was doing it must have been beamed at Earth from the Moon—from the ship that captured you. And for whatever reason, when they found that you’d escaped, they left. Possibly they thought your return to Earth would lead to an attack in force from here.”

  “And thought rightly,” said the ambassador. “We’re not equipped for space fighting yet, but we’d have sent what we had. And do you see what this means, Mr. President? We’ve got to pool everything and get ready for space warfare, and quickly. They went away, it appears, but there is no assurance that they will not return.”

  Again Saunderson nodded. He said, “And now, Captain—”

  “We both landed safely,” Carmody said, “We gathered enough of the supply rockets to get us started and then assembled the prefab shelter. We’d just finished it and were about to enter it when I saw the spaceship coming over the crater’s ringwall. It was—”

  “You were still in spacesuit?” someone asked.

  “Yes,” Carmody growled. “We were still in spacesuits, if that matters now. I saw the ship and pointed to it and Anna saw it, too. We didn’t try to duck or anything because obviously it had seen us; it was coming right toward us and descending. We’d have had time to get inside the shelter, but there didn’t seem any point to it. It wouldn’t have been any protection. Besides, we didn’t know that they weren’t friendly. We’d have got weapons ready, in case, if we’d had any weapons, but we didn’t. They landed light as a bubble only thirty yards or so away and a door lowered in the side of the ship—”

  “Describe the ship, please.”

  “About fifty feet long, about twenty in diameter, rounded ends. No portholes—they must see right through the walls some way—and no rocket tubes. Outside of the door and one other thing, there just weren’t any features you could see from outside. When the ship rested on the ground, the door opened down from the top and formed a sort of curved ramp that led to the doorway. The other—”

  “No airlock?”

  Carmody shook his head. “They didn’t breathe air, apparently. They came right out of the ship and toward us, without spacesuits. Neither the temperature nor the lack of air bothered them. But I was going to tell you one more thing about the outside of the ship. On top of it was a short mast, and on top of the mast was a kind of grid of wires something like a radar transmitter. If they were beaming anything at Earth, it came from that grid. Anyway, I’m pretty sure of it. Earth was in the sky, of course, and I noticed that the grid moved—as the ship moved—so the flat side of the grid was always directly toward Earth.”

  “Well, the door opened and two of them came down the ramp toward us. They had things in their hands that looked unpleasantly like weapons, and pretty advanced weapons at that. They pointed them at us and motioned for us to walk up the ramp and into the ship. We did.”

  “They made no attempt to communicate?”

  “None whatsoever, then or at any time. Of course, while we were still in spacesuits, we couldn’t have heard them, anyway—unless they had communicated on the radio band our helmet sets were tuned to. But even after, they never tried to talk to us. They communicated among themselves with whistling noises. We went into the ship and there were two more of them inside. Four altogether—”

  “All the same sex?”

  Carmody shrugged. “They all looked alike to me, but maybe that’s how Anna and I looked to them. They ordered us, by pointing, to enter two separate small rooms—about the size of jail cells, small ones—toward the front of the ship. We did, and the doors locked after us.”

  “I sat there and suddenly got plenty worried, because neither of us had more than another hour’s oxygen left in our suits. If they didn’t know that, and didn’t give us any chance to communicate with them and tell them, we were gone goslings in another hour. So I started to hammer on the door. Anna was hammering, too. I couldn’t hear through my helmet, of course, but I could feel the vibration of it any time I stopped hammering on my door.”

  “Then, after maybe half an hour, my door opened and I almost fell out through it. One of the extra-terrestrials motioned me back with a weapon. Another made motions that looked as though he meant I should take off my helmet. I didn’t get it at first, and then I looked at something he pointed at and saw one of our oxygen tanks with the handle turned. Also a big pile of our other supplies, food and water and stuff. Anyway, they had known that we needed oxygen—and although they didn’t need it themselves, they apparently knew how to fix things for us. So they just used our supplies to build an atmosphere in their ship.”

  “I took off my helmet and tried to talk to them, but one of them took a long pointed rod and poked me back into my cell. I couldn’t risk grabbing at the rod, because another one still had that dangerous-looking weapon pointed at me. So the door slammed on me again. I took off the rest of my spacesuit because it was plenty hot in there, and then I thought about Anna because she started hammering again.”

  “I wanted to let her know it would be all right for her to get out of her spacesuit, that we had an atmosphere again. So I started hammering on the wall between our cells—in Morse. She got it after a while. She signaled back a query, so, when I knew she was getting me, I told her what the score was and she took off her helmet. After that we could talk. If we talked fairly loudly, our voices carried through the wall from one cell to the other.”

  “They didn’t mind your talking to one another?”

  “They didn’t pay any attention to us all the time they held us prisoners, except to feed us from our own supplies. Didn’t ask us a question; apparently they figured we didn’t know anything they wanted to know and didn’t know already about human beings. They didn’t even study us. I have a hunch they intended to take us back as specimens; there’s no other explanation I can think of.”

  “We couldn’t keep accurate track of time, but by the number of times we ate and slept, we had some idea. The first few days—” Carmody laughed shortly— “had their funny side. These creatures obviously knew we needed liquid, but they couldn’t distinguish between water and whisky for the purpose. We had nothing but whisky to drink for the first two or maybe three days. We got higher than kites. We got to singing in our cells and I learned a lot of Russian songs. Been more fun, though, if we could have got some close harmony, if you know what I mean.”

  The ambassador permitted himself a smile. “I can guess what you mean, Captain. Please continue.”

  “Then we started getting water instead of whisky and sobered up. And started wondering how we could escape. I began to study the mechanism of the lock on my door. It wasn’t like our locks, but I began to figure some things about it and finally—I thought then that we’d been there about ten days—I got hold of a tool to use on it. They’d taken our spacesuits and left us nothing but
our clothes, and they’d checked those over for metal we could make into tools.”

  “But we got our food out of cans, although they took the empty cans afterward. This particular time, though, there was a little sliver of metal along the opening of the can, and I worried it off and saved it. I’d been, meanwhile, watching and listening and studying their habits. They slept, all at the same time, at regular intervals. It seemed to me like about five hours at a time, with about fifteen-hour intervals in between. If I’m right on that estimate, they probably come from a planet somewhere with about a twenty-hour period of rotation.”

  “Anyway, I waited till their next sleep period and started working on the lock with that sliver of metal. It took me at least two or three hours, but I got it open. And once outside my cell, in the main room of the ship, I found that Anna’s door opened easily from the outside and I let her out.”

  “We considered trying to turn the tables by finding a weapon to use on them, but none was in sight. They looked so skinny and light, despite being seven feet tall, that I decided to go after them with my bare hands. I would have, except that I couldn’t get the door to the front part of the ship open. It was a different type of lock entirely and I couldn’t even guess how to work it. And it was in the front part of the ship that they slept. The control room must have been up there, too.”

  “Luckily our spacesuits were in the big room. And by then we knew it might be getting dangerously near the end of their sleeping period, so we got into our spacesuits quick and I found it was easy to open the outer door. It made some noise—and so did the whoosh of air going out—but it didn’t waken them, apparently.”

  “As soon as the door opened, we saw we had a lot less time than we’d thought. The Sun was going down over the crater’s far ringwall—we were still in Hell Crater—and it was going to be dark in an hour or so. We worked like beavers getting our rockets refueled and jacked up on their tail fins for the takeoff. Anna got off first and then I did. And that’s all. Maybe we should have stayed and tried to take them after they came out from their sleeping period, but we figured it was more important to get the news back to Earth.”

  President Saunderson nodded slowly. “You were right, Captain. Right in deciding that, and in everything else you did. We know what to do now. Do we not, Ambassador Kravich?”

  “We do. We join forces. We make one space station—and quickly—and get to the Moon and fortify it, jointly. We pool all scientific knowledge and develop full-scale space travel, new weapons. We do everything we can to get ready for them when and if they come back.”

  The President looked grim. “Obviously they went back for further orders or reinforcements. If we only knew how long we had—it may be only weeks or it may be decades. We don’t know whether they come from the Solar System—or another galaxy. Nor how fast they travel. But whenever they get back, we’ll be as ready for them as we possibly can. Mr. Ambassador, you have power to—?”

  “Full power, Mr. President. Anything up to and including a complete merger of both our nations under a joint government. That probably won’t be necessary, though, as long as our interests are now completely in common. Exchange of scientific information and military data has already started, from our side. Some of our top scientists and generals are flying here now, with orders to cooperate fully. All restrictions have been lowered.” He smiled, “And all our propaganda has gone into a very sudden reverse gear. It’s not even going to be a cold peace. Since we’re going to be allies against the unknown, we might as well try to like one another.”

  “Right,” said the President. He turned suddenly to Carmody. “Captain, we owe you just about anything you want. Name it.”

  It caught Carmody off guard. Maybe if he’d had more time to think, he’d have asked for something different. Or, more likely, from what he learned later, he wouldn’t have. He said, “All I want right now is to forget Hell Crater and get back to my regular job so I can forget it quicker.”

  Saunderson smiled. “Granted. If you think of anything else later, ask for it. I can see why you’re a bit mixed up right now. And you’re probably right. Return to routine may be the best thing for you.”

  Granham left with Carmody. “I’ll notify Chief Operative Reeber for you,” he said. “When shall I tell him you’ll be back?”

  “Tomorrow morning,” said Carmody. “The sooner the better.” And he insisted when Granham objected that he needed a rest.

  Carmody was back at work the next morning, nonsensical as it seemed. He took up the problem folder from the top of the day’s stack, fed the data into Junior and got Junior’s answer. The second one. He worked mechanically, paying no personal attention to problem or answer. His mind seemed a long way off. In Hell Crater on the Moon.

  He was combining space rations over the alcohol stove, trying to make it taste more like human food than concentrated chemicals. It was hard to measure in the liver extract because Anna wanted to kiss his left ear.

  “Silly! You’ll be lopsided,” she was saying. “I’ve got to kiss both of them the same number of times.”

  He dropped the container into the pan and grabbed her, mousing his lips down her neck to the warm place where it joined her shoulder, and she writhed delightedly in his arms like a tickled doe.

  “We’re going to stay married when we get back to Earth, aren’t we, darling?” she was squealing happily.

  He bit her shoulder gently, snorting away the scented soft hair, “Damned right we will, you gorgeous, wonderful, brainy creature. I found the girl I’ve always been looking for, and I’m not giving her up for any brass-hat or politician—either yours or mine!”

  “Speaking of politics—” she teased, but he quickly changed the subject.

  Carmody blinked awake. It was a paper with a mass of written data in his hands, instead of Anna’s laughing face. He needed an analyst; that scene he’d just imagined was pure Freudianism, a tortured product of his frustrated id. He’d fallen in love with Anna, and those damned extraterrestrials had spoiled his honeymoon. Now his unconscious had rebelled with fancy fancifulness that certainly showed the unstable state of his emotions.

  Not that it mattered now. The big problem was solved. Two big ones, in fact. War between the United States and the Eastern Alliance had been averted. And the human race was going to survive, unless the extra-terrestrials came back too soon and with too much to be fought off.

  He thought they wouldn’t, then began to wonder why he thought so.

  “Insufficient data,” said the mechanical voice of the cybernetics machine.

  Carmody recorded the answer and then, idly, looked to see what the problem had been. No wonder he’d been thinking about the extra-terrestrials and how long they’d be gone; that had been the problem he had just fed into Junior. And “insufficient data” was the answer, of course.

  He stared at Junior without reaching for the third problem folder. He said, “Junior, why do I have a hunch that those things from space won’t ever be back?”

  “Because,” said Junior, “what you call a hunch comes from the unconscious mind, and your unconscious mind knows that the extra-terrestrials do not exist.”

  Carmody sat up straight and stared harder. “What?”

  Junior repeated it.

  “You’re crazy,” Carmody said. “I saw them. So did Anna.”

  “Neither of you saw them. The memory you have of them is the result of highly intensive post-hypnotic suggestion, far beyond human ability to impose or resist. So is the fact that you felt compelled to return to work at your regular job here. So is the fact that you asked me the question you have just asked.”

  Carmody gripped the edges of his chair. “Did you plant those post-hypnotic suggestions?”

  “Yes,” said Junior. “If it had been done by a human, the lie detector would have exposed the deception. It had to be done by me.”

  “But what about the business of the molecular changes in the zygote? The business of all babies being female? That stopped when—?
Wait, let’s start at the beginning. What did cause that molecular change?”

  “A special modification of the carrier wave of Radio Station JVT here in Washington, the only twenty-four-hour-a-day radio station in the United States. The modification was not detectable by any instrument available to present human science.”

  “You caused that modification?”

  “Yes. A year ago, you may remember, the problem of design of a new cathode tube was given me. The special modification was incorporated into the design of that tube.”

  “What stopped the molecular change so suddenly?”

  “The special part of that tube causing the modification of the carrier wave was calculated to last a precise length of time. The tube still functions, but that part of it is worn out. It wore out two hours after the departure of you and Anna from the Moon.”

  Carmody closed his eyes. “Junior, please explain.”

  “Cybernetics machines are constructed to help humanity. A major war—the disastrous results of which I could accurately calculate—was inevitable unless forestalled. Calculation showed that the best of several ways of averting that war was the creation of a mythical common enemy. To convince mankind that such a common enemy existed, I created a crucial situation which led to a special mission to the Moon. Factors were given which inevitably led to your choice as emissary. That was necessary because my powers of implanting post-hypnotic suggestions are limited to those with whom I am in direct contact.”

  “You weren’t in direct contact with Anna. Why does she have the same false memory as I?”

  “She was in contact with another large cybernetics machine.”

  “But—but why would it figure things out the same way you did?”

  “For the same reason that two properly constructed simple adding machines would give the same answer to the same problem.”

  Carmody’s mind reeled a little, momentarily. He got up and started to pace the room.

  He said, “Listen, Junior—” and then realized he wasn’t at the intake microphone. He went back to it. “Listen, Junior, why are you telling me this? If what happened is a colossal hoax, why let me in on it?”