His Share of Glory The Complete Short Science Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  "Fourth dimension?" wildly hazarded Cantrell. "Could we have tuned in on that?"

  "No. For the reason that waves from the fourth dimension would have to be vectorially sub-operative to the seventh power, at least, and the machine would register any abnormal strain like that. No—not the fourth or any dimension except this one. Are there any invisible planets floating around? That alone would explain everything."

  "None that I know of, and I used to specialize in astronomy. Maybe—

  maybe we've caught up with the thought-waves from Earth on a return trip from the end of space? That would explain the talk about rebels."

  "And your six-legged horses, of course. Don't be silly. We have to push on and get so damned far away from this spot that we won't even remember where it is. I'm going to gun the ship hard and fast. You get on the polyphone and tell me when the thought-waves from the place begin to weaken and die out."

  Boyle squared his jaw at the fuel gage and began to reckon how much they could allow for steerage and headway. How thin they could cut the corners for the return trip to Earth when the problem of the shakes was solved.

  Cantrell donned the head set and turned on the machine again. Again he reached out probing fingers into the crazy planet where horses had six legs and you could kill a man because he was a rebel against someone or something unspecified.

  On the screen of his mind things began to take shape. He had landed plumb in the brain of a lady who was waiting for a lover whom she pictured as tall and handsome. The lady turned slowly and surveyed a colossal city that rose about her. She was standing just outside its walls.

  They were fine walls, solid and ponderous, fitted with gates able to withstand the charge of a battletank.

  Her lover strolled up and there was a tender scene of greeting. Cantrell, feeling like a cad, reached out for another mind. He lighted on the brain of a person within the city; a person who considered himself as being of vast importance. All sorts of ponderous speculations were revolving through the important person's head, principally when he would eat next. A young man, clad in a sort of tunic, approached.

  The important person smiled. "Ah," he cried. "My dear boy!"

  The dear boy grinned briefly. "You'd better come. There's a strike on at the tubing works. They seized possession of the whole plant." The important person exploded with rage, swearing by strange gods.

  Cantrell shut off power and looked up.

  "When," he asked impatiently, "are you going to get going? It comes in as strong as ever." Boyle stared at him with a kind of sickly horror in his face. "Cantrell," he said, "since you put on that set we've gone half a million miles at right angles to our former course." "Lord," whispered his partner. "They're following us!"

  From random snatches of thought and casual, everyday conversation it is not easy, it is almost impossible in fact, to reconstruct the politics, biology and economics of an entire planet. Yet that, essentially, was what Boyle and Cantrell had to do. For flee where they might, nearer to or farther from Earth, they could not escape the vibrations from the land where horses had six legs.

  From long periods of listening in and comparing, they discovered one important fact: that evolution was proceeding on that planet at a staggeringly rapid pace; that in fact the two partners had started out with a violently mistaken notion of the place's tempo. It was swift, swifter than anything with which they were familiar.

  But their eavesdropping made it seem close to normal, for the human brain can accommodate itself to any speed of delivery. It can assimilate and synthesize at a faster rate than either of the two had previously suspected. It was natural that this discovery should wait for a moment like this, for never before had the human mind been called on to deliver at that rate.

  They discovered that the nameless land was tearing along at a scale of one to a million, approximately. When Cantrell had heard the horsemen curse the rebels, that had been the equivalent of the Puritan revolution in England, period of 1650 or thereabouts. A few minutes later he tuned in on a general strike that meant a lapse of about four hundred years.

  In two weeks of voyaging through space the strange planet had arrived at a world state which Earth had not yet attained.

  Boyle, irritably tuning in on the lunatic planet one day, drew a deep breath. "Cantrell!" he snapped. "Put your set on and follow my mind. I have a conference of astronomers!"

  His partner grabbed the ponderous metal bowl and clapped it on, groping out for the familiar mind patterns of Boyle. He caught onto him in about three seconds, then switched to one of Boyle's mental hosts.

  Through the eyes of that person he saw a sizable hall built up into a structure like the inside of a mushroom. As he studied the other persons in the hall he realized that physical evolution had progressed a few more steps since yesterday, when he had last tuned in on the place.

  His host's mood was one of confusion; through it he was speaking to the large gathering: "This symposium has been called on a somewhat abstract question. You all know what it is, I presume; otherwise you would not be astronomers.

  "As one looks back towards the glorious dawning days of our science, the names of those who were martyred in the cause of truth rise before us. Despots, with their piddling knowledge and tiny telescopes, maintained that the world was round, did they not? It remained for the genius of our clan to demonstrate that it was a truncated paraboloid.

  "Jealous superstition preached that like all other worlds ours had a core of rock in the state of stress fluid; it remained for us to prove that no such thing was true of our world—that we alone of all planets lived upon a shell of rhodium, and that that shell, though inconceivably thick, was not solid, and that our planet was definitely hollow."

  Cantrell looked up. "Lord," he said softly. "Oh, Lordy! Now I know where those six-legged horses came from."

  "Yes," said Boyle as he turned off the machine. "That planet is our ship, and those people are an entire civilization living on the shell of the old Andros. No wonder we couldn't get away from them; they were being carried around with us."

  "It's perfectly logical," argued Cantrell. "We carry Earth gravity for our own comfort; that's why we drew down a thin but definite atmosphere.

  Also dust and organic particles which settled on the hull. There was warmth from the inside of the ship, and that wonderful old Swede Arrhenius long ago demonstrated that spores of life are always present in space, driven by light-pressure. They landed on our hull, went through evolutionary stages, a man-like form emerged and is rapidly reaching a more advanced civilization than our own."

  "But," grunted Boyle, "that doesn't help us out with the shakes. If they're swarming out there, we'll never be able to probe each other.

  How can we shake them off? Spray acid on the hull?"

  "No!" barked Cantrell. "We couldn't do that—they have as much of a right to live as we. Perhaps—perhaps if we could communicate with them—?"

  "Son," raved Boyle, "you've got it! The answer to our prayers! A super-race made to order for the purpose of solving our problems. We'll have to adapt the polyphone; that's the only equipment we have. Son, we're going to make this the most useful interference ever recorded!"

  With bloodshot eyes and almost trembling fingers Cantrell tuned in the adapted polyphone. Then, through the eyes of a host he was surveying from an apparent altitude of twenty thousand feet a world enclosed in glass.

  "Come in," he said to Boyle. "Work toward the most powerful single person you can find." Feeling his own mind augmented by his partner's, he probed deep into the glassed-in world, toward the highest building he could find.

  He landed in the brain of a highly trained mathematician and felt a swirl of fantastically complicated figures and tables. Then the mathematician walked through an automatic door into the presence of a person whom he regarded with almost holy awe. Cantrell realized then how rapidly the acceleration of evolution had curved upward on this tiny world. The personage was small and weighed down with a staggering amount o
f braincells that could be seen pulsing and throbbing under a transparent dura mater. The skull had been wholly absorbed.

  "Right," snapped Cantrell to his partner. "Push it out, son. Make it stick like glue." The two psychologists united their minds in a staggering intellectual effort; there were visible sparks as they fused into one perfect sending outfit. Cantrell, only vaguely conscious of the personage and the mathematician, saw the former start with alarm and heard him ask as if from a distance: "Do you feel anything?"

  "No," said Cantrell's host. "This matter of geodesics—"

  "Leave me for a while," said the personage. "I sense a message of great importance." The mathematician exited, and Cantrell abruptly severed his mind from the host. For the first time he found himself to be a point of consciousness hanging before the personage, seeing, hearing and sending.

  He raised his hand in a choppy gesture. Boyle nodded, and shut his eyes. Sweat stood out on his brow as he projected the message: "Boyle and Cantrell speaking. Can you hear us?"

  The personage jumped as if he had been shot at. He looked around cautiously and said: "I can hear you. But who are you—where are you sending from?" In the language of the mind there is no need of translation; with the polyphone any two rational creatures can communicate.

  The psychologists, now working as a perfect team, sent: "Speaking from the inside of your planet. But it isn't a planet; it's our spaceship. We're from Earth—third planet around the sun. But let's skip the formalities.

  What do you know about—" and they launched into a technical description of the shakes.

  "Have you," asked the important personage, "tried polarizing the crystalline lens of the eye? That should do it. It is not, as you thought, a psychodeficiency lesion but—" In clear, concise thought images he gave a complete outline of the cause and cure of spastitis malignans. And he knew what he was talking about, for this personage later announced himself to be the Chief Assimilator of the planetary division. He was the one who received all the technical data and assembled it for reference and use. Specialization had raced ahead on this planet.

  "Thanks," said the psychologists at length. "Thanks a lot. We'll be heading back to Earth now—" he broke off in dismay. "If we do, that's the end of your people. Because as soon as our gravity plates switch off you get flung out into space, and we can't land without switching off the plates."

  "An interesting problem," brooded the Assimilator. "But not insoluble.

  We can make our own plates if necessary. I advise you to set your ship—

  my planet—into an independent orbit around the sun. In about twenty minutes of your time we will have developed to the point where we will have our enclosed cities reinforced against anything but collision with a major planet. We trust you to set the orbit so that that will not happen.

  You must return to Earth by some makeshift means." The Assimilator fell into a deep study, and the two psychologists withdrew.

  Boyle glanced at a stop-watch. "That whole interview," he said disbelievingly, "lasted exactly one one-thousandth of a second. That was thinking under pressure." Cantrell was dashing onto paper what the Assimilator had told him about the shakes. And it made brilliant sense. He photographed his notes and handed a copy to Boyle.

  "And now?" asked Boyle, carefully buttoning the data into a pocket.

  "Now we take the lifeboat," said Cantrell. He gestured distastefully at the little bullet of metal lugged to the wall. "It's said to be the least pleasant way of travel known to man." He turned to the control panel and set a simple course around the sun that would maintain itself after the fuel was wholly gone.

  Jammed into the little craft, cans of food floating about their ears and a hammering roar of exhausts in their heads, they strained to see through the little port that was the only communication from the outside. Boyle yelled something inaudible.

  "What?" shrieked Cantrell into his ear.

  Boyle drew a great breath and pointed with one thumb at the little crescent of light behind them—the Andros. "I said," he shrieked, "that it's a good thing we got away from those submicroscopic Einsteins.

  They gave me an inferiority complex."

  Cantrell grinned briefly and strained his eyes to see until the world they had made was quite invisible in the black of space.

  Forgotten Tongue

  [Stirring Science Stories - June 1941 as by Walter C. Davies]

  "Hands up, scum," grated a voice. "You're going for a jump."

  Pepper raised his hands and coughed drily. "Forget it," he said. "You can't get away with this." He felt a knee jolt the small of his back in answer.

  "Walk," said the voice.

  The street was narrow, and the buildings flanking it had no lights. This was the Industrial, one of the three great divisions of New York Sector.

  Plants were resting their machinery for two hours out of the twenty-four, Pepper realized. As he walked along, as slowly as he dared, the clopping of metal soles against the pavement sounding behind him, he cursed himself for an imbecile, coming alone and unarmed through this bleak part of town.

  "How long," he asked tentatively, "have you been gunning for me?" He wanted to find out how many of them there were.

  "Keep moving," said the voice. "You don't get news out of us, scum."

  He kept moving. They were headed in the direction of the Industrial Airport. That meant, probably, that he'd be crated like a gross of drills and accidentally dropped from a mile or so in the air. There would be protests; threats, recriminations. Then the customary jeering retort from the Optimus Press: "If a Lower wishes to disguise himself for purposes of his own and is damaged in the process, we fail to see how this is any reflection on the present able administration. Honi soit—"

  Not daring to give way to panic, knowing that it would mean an immediate and ugly death, Pepper walked on and tried to keep his knees from buckling.

  "Look," he began again. "We can make a deal—"

  "Shut up!" snarled someone. "And stay shut. I'd like to—"

  "Let him talk, Captain," said another voice. Pepper stiffened as he heard it, for the dialect was unmistakably the throaty whine affected by the Optimus as the "pure" speech.

  "Never mind," Pepper said. The sound of that voice was his death-warrant, he knew. Loyalists had been known to take bribes and deliver, their masters never. "How do you like this part of town, Cedric?" he demanded. "How does it strike you?"

  "Why Cedric?" the voice of the Optimus asked one of the Loyalists, ignoring Pepper. "Supposed to be funny, Mr. Fersen," said the Loyalist.

  Then Pepper heard a blow and cry. "I'm sorry, Mr.—sir—please—"

  "Let that be a lesson," said Pepper. "Never tell the name. But don't worry, Mr. Fersen—I never heard of you."

  "I'm just in," said the voice of the Optimus with a note of strain and disgust. "I'm just in from Scandinavia."

  "In that case," said Pepper, "you'd do well to get back there. Because here comes a gang of Lowers that mean you ill."

  Approaching them were people he knew. There was Marty who worked in a glass plant, Pedro who managed an autokafe; hard faces gleaming under the wide-spread street lights.

  Bats and clubs appeared in their hands. "Hello!" yelled Marty. The distance was about twice the width of the street.

  "Dash it!" whined the voice of the Optimus. "Dash the luck! You'll have to fire into the thick of them."

  The next thing Pepper knew was that he was dashing for the knot of Lowers down the street, zig-zagging wildly as projectiles buzzed about his ears. Even then he did not forget the rules he had been taught in Training School; he ran with a calculated, staggering gait that would—

  at least in theory—unsettle any marksman.

  His friends met him halfway; he was taken into their midst, lost in the little group of a dozen or so.

  "They won't attack," he gasped. "It's too near the shift. They'd be mobbed—torn to pieces."

  "Easy," soothed Marty. "Take it easy. They're breaking—going back.


  Jupiter—if I only had a camera to get those faces! Who are they?"

  Pepper grinned feebly. "I never got a look at one of them," he said.

  "There was an Optimus with them by the name of Fersen. Do you know him?"

  "Yes," said Marty. "I know him. He's a scientist. He's so thoroughly damned brilliant that even the Lowers' technical journals reprint his articles. He's a psychologist—experimental."

  "Let it go," said Pepper. He shook his head. "What happened? How come you came to meet me—armed?"

  "Something new of mine," said Marty. "We were trying it out. You can call it a psychological eavesdropper. We call it a modified Geiger-Muller counter reset for cerebrum-surface potential composition. It's thoroughly impractical, but we were waiting for you and I turned it on you for a demonstration. Before it blew out the thing showed that something had upset you terribly.

  "Pedro thought it must have been a babe walking down the street.

  That's the Latin mind. When you didn't come we put two and two together and found a slight case of Optimus."

  "Yes," said Pepper absently. "It's usually that."

  It usually was. The Fusionists were nominally in power throughout the whole hemisphere, but the hand of the Optimus tended to grow clumsier and clumsier, showing through the thin veil of the Continental Congress. The Fusionists had been elected generally on the most immense wave of enthusiasm ever to sweep a new party into office.

  Their appeal had been almost irresistible—to combine the best features of both classes and work for harmony.

  The Old Malarky, it soon developed. The Fusion officials— "Fightin'

  Bob" Howard, Oscar Stoop, "Iron Man" Morris—had been bought and paid for. Things were growing bad, worse than they had ever been before. The Lowers were arming. Every issue of their newspapers contained inflammatory statements, direct slurs against the government and the Optimus Party.

  Money was being spent like water by the Optimus; whole factories had been turned "Loyalist" by promises of tripled wages and security. The Loyal Lowers League was growing slowly, very slowly. There was a basically prejudiced attitude among the factory workers against turncoats of that stamp. This, of course, only widened the gulf between authentic Lowers and those who had joined the League. Things were in a very bad way indeed. Everybody on the continent was waiting for the next election. There was much wild talk about revolution and gutters running with blood.