The 31st Golden Age of Science Fiction

by Sam Merwin Jr

  Myra came in, her three eyes aglow, and said, “Boss, you were wrong for once in your life.”

  “What is it this time?” he asked.

  “About that Martian ship,” she repeated. “It just landed on the old spaceport. You can see it from the window.”

  “For God’s sake!” Bliss was on his feet, moving swiftly to the window. It was there—needle-nosed, slim as one of the mermaids in his private washroom, graceful as a vidar dancer. The entire length of it gleamed like silver in the sunlight.

  Bliss felt the premature old age that had been crowding upon him of late fall away like the wool of a sheep at shearing. Here, at last, was hope—real hope. After almost two and a half centuries of non-communication, the men of the infant planet had returned to the aid of the aging planet. For, once they saw the condition of Earth, and understood it, there could be no question of anything else.

  Mars, during the years of space-flight from Earth, had been the outlet for the mother planet’s ablest, toughest, brightest, most aggressive young men and women. They had gone out to lick a hostile environment, they had been hand-picked for the job—and they had done it. The ship, out there in the poisonous Sahara, was living proof of their success.

  He turned from the window and went back to his desk. He said, “Myra, have their leader brought here to see me as soon as possible.”

  “Roger!” she said, leaving him swiftly, gracefully. Again he thought it was too bad about her third eye. It had made it awfully hard for her to find a husband. He supposed he should be grateful, since it had made him an incomparably efficient secretary.

  The young man was space-burned and silver-blond of hair. He was broad and fair of feature and his body was tall and lean and perfect in his black, skin-tight uniform with the silver rocket-burst on the left breast. He stood at attention, lifted a gauntleted hand in salute and said, “Your excellency, Chancellor Bliss—Space-Captain Hon Yaelstrom of Syrtis City, Mars, bearing official rank of Inter-planetary legate plenipotentiary. My papers, sir.”

  He stood stiff as a ramrod and laid a set of imposing-looking documents on the vast desk before Bliss. His accent was stiff as his spinal column. Bliss glanced casually at the papers, nodded and handed them back. So this, he thought, was how a “normal,” a pre-atomic, a non-mutated human, looked. Impressive.

  Catching himself wandering, he pushed a box of costly smokes toward the ambassador.

  “Nein—no thank you, sir,” was the reply.

  “Suppose you sit down and tell me what we can do for you,” said Bliss, motioning toward a chair.

  “Thank you, sir, I prefer to stand,” was the reply. And, when Bliss motioned that it was all right, “My mission is not a happy one, excellency. Due to overpopulation on Mars, I have been sent to inform the government of Earth that room must be made to take care of our overpopulation.”

  “I see,” Bliss leaned back in his chair, trying to read the situation correctly. “That may take a little doing. You see, we aren’t exactly awash with real estate here.”

  The reply was rigid and harsh. Captain Yaelstrom said, “I regret to remind your excellency that I have circled this planet before landing. It is incredibly rich in plant growth, incredibly underpopulated. And I assure your excellency that my superiors have not sent me here with any idle request. Mars must have room to emigrate.”

  “And if we find ourselves unable to give it to you?”

  “I fear we shall have to take it, your excellency.”

  Bliss studied the visitor from space, then said, “This is rather sudden, you know. I fear it will take time. You must have prospered amazingly on Mars to have overpopulated the planet so soon.”

  “Conditions have not been wholly favorable,” was the cryptic reply. “But as to time, we are scarcely in condition to move our surplus population overnight. It will take years—perhaps decades—twenty-five years at a minimum.”

  Twenty-five years! That was too soon. If Captain Yaelstrom were a typical Martian, there was going to be trouble. Bliss recalled again that Earth had sent only its most aggressive young folk out to the red planet. He made up his mind then and there that he was somehow going to salvage for Earth its final half-century of peace.

  He said, “How many people do you plan to send here, Captain?”

  The ambassador hesitated. Then he said, “According to the computations of our experts, taking the population curve during the next twenty-five years into account, there will be seventeen million, three hundred thirty-two thousand five hundred—approximately.”

  The figure was too large to be surplus, Bliss decided. It sounded to him as if humanity were about to abandon Mars completely. He wondered what the devil had gone wrong, decided this was hardly the time to ask. He offered Captain Yaelstrom a drink, which was refused, then asked him if he wouldn’t like to wash up.

  To his mild surprise, the ambassador nodded eagerly. “I shall be grateful,” he said. “You have no idea how cramped spaceship quarters can be.”

  “I can imagine,” said Bliss dryly. He led the way into the black-and-gold washroom, was amused at the slight but definite popping of ambassadorial eyes. Earth might be dying, he thought, but at least her destroyers would leave a heritage. He motioned toward the basin with its mermaid taps and Captain Yaelstrom hesitated, then began pulling off his black gauntlets.

  Bliss thought of something. “You mentioned twenty-five years,” he said. “Is that Martian time or Earth time?”

  “Martian time,” said the ambassador, letting the water run over his hands.

  Twenty-five years, Martian time—a Martian year was 1.88 Earth years. Bliss exhaled and said, “I think perhaps we shall be able to come to an agreement. It will take a little time, of course—channels, and all that.”

  The Martian held his hands in front of the air-drier. They were strong, brown hands with long, muscular fingers. Bliss looked at them and knew the whole story. For, like himself, Captain Yaelstrom had seven fingers on each. Man had done no better on Mars than he had at home. The reason for such a desperate move as emigration was all too clear.

  Captain Yaelstrom stood back from the bowl, then noticed the stall shower. He said, “What is this? We have nothing like it on Mars.”

  Bliss explained its several therapeutic uses, then said, “Perhaps you’d like to try it yourself while I order us luncheon.”

  “May I, excellency?” the Martian legate asked eagerly.

  “Go right ahead,” said Bliss magnanimously. “It’s all yours.”

  TESTING

  Originally published in Fantastic Universe, March 1956, under the pseudonym “Jacques Jean Ferra.”

  A terrestrial journalist once described the plight of a space pilot on a solo interstellar trip as being similar to that of a flea on one of the great stone dogs of Planet VI, Betelgeuse. All that vast expanse to plunder and no way of getting at it.

  To Echelon Leader Hannibal Pryor, the simile was apt. It was aggravated by the fact that he was an unwilling flea. If his chief and sponsor, Star Marshal Stefan Lopez, had not backed the losing side in the last Sirius IX plebescite, Pryor would have been piloting the immense star-battleship Erebus, from which the planet-buster was to be dropped. Instead, he had been assigned this miserable chore of checking Rigel IV, the planet scheduled for blasting.

  It was a job that should have gone to a mere ensign, not a veteran echelon leader with three comets on his breast. There was nothing to do. His survey route had been plotted in advance by the calculators that crammed the deck below, and precision instruments did all the checking. If Rigel IV were habitable or inhabited, it would not have been selected for the test.

  The flying laboratory in which he sat would circle it twice, then return under automatic control to the dot in space, 3,000,000 kilometers away, five o’clock vector, where ships of half the inhabited planets were gathering to watch the test.

  Well
ington Smith, the new chief star marshal, had his own pet pilot for the big job. Hannibal Pryor, as one of Lopez’ top men, was out of the big picture.

  Flying the preliminary milk run! It made acid flow in his veins. And he was getting fat from punching out weird gastronomic combinations on the food-board. There was nothing to do but eat—and swill up the non-intoxicating drinks available through the dispenser.

  The way things stood, Pryor knew he’d be lucky if he made wing chief in ten years Earth-time. Once you were out of the big picture, it took a miracle to pull you back into focus.

  Idly, Pryor lowered his long dark-skinned body into the observer’s bucket, and watched the small golden dot that was Rigel IV swiftly enlarge itself on the screen. It took on a bluish tinge and acquired the fuzzy halo that denoted an atmosphere.

  The scientists, prodded by the political, leaders of Sirius Sector, had selected for the sake of thoroughness a planet known to be habitable, though uninhabited, at least by human beings. The planet buster had already been tested on the airless satellites of one of the dark stars.

  Without much interest, Pryor watched Rigel IV fill the screen, gradually become convex. He had landed on far too many worlds to be frightened by the effect of its falling upon him as he neared it. Half-subconsciously, he noted that the star-brakes were working perfectly.

  He felt the faint jar as the atmosphere engines took over from the star-drive. The little lights on the panel flared and flickered in proper sequence as the flying laboratory began its first circuit of a world that was soon to be blasted to stardust.

  * * * *

  Later, he realized that he must have dozed off. At any rate, he missed the flicker of green light at the left of the panel and it took the rasping electronic voice that unexpectedly called, “Pilot control, pilot control, pilot control,” to awaken him.

  He muttered, “Diamede!” in sheer disbelief as he pushed the button that turned off the voice and took over the controls. It couldn’t possibly have happened, and yet—the instruments were never wrong.

  Rigel IV was inhabited—by humans!

  As he brought the ship in along an ever-slowing parabola, Pryor pulled the outspeaker over in front of his mouth and said, “Lab Able calling Erebus, Lab Able calling Erebus. Locator shows humanity on Rigel Four, locator shows humanity on Rigel Four. Over.”

  He held course and watched the seconds tick by on the call chronometer. Eleven, twelve, thirteen…thirty-five-thirty six… A burst of gibberish emerged from the inspeaker until he tuned the unscrambler and heard, “I hear you, Lab Able. Check for inhabitants and arrange immediate evacuation, check for inhabitants and arrange immediate evacuation. Report when assignment complete, report when assignment complete. Time is of the essence, time is of the essence. Over and out, over and out.”

  Pryor wrestled with temptation. If he put another message through, unscrambled, stating the situation. Interstellar Control monitors would inevitably pick it up. Interstellar Control was death on any interference with inhabited planets. Interstellar Control was already on record as being against the planet-buster test on a usable world. And not even the new chief star-marshal was strong enough to buck IC.

  Pryor smiled and hummed a little Antarean tune as he slowed Lab Able to hovering speed. If he handled the situation adroitly, he should be able to get Marshal Lopez out of the doghouse—and, quite as important, one Echelon Leader Hannibal Pryor back in the big picture.

  According to the instruments, the humans on Rigel IV lived in a single small settlement in the south temperate zone of the planet, surprisingly close to the forbidding antarctic ice-cap.

  Pryor cut in distance-detail vision and blinked unbelievingly at a cluster of thatched roofs about a strangely familiar structure with a tall white pointed spire. The fields about the settlement, where they did not show cultivation, bore an odd pale purple hue. Beyond the village lay a long, narrow, twisting body of pale blue water.

  Pryor spotted a level spot that looked suitable for landing, clear of the tilled fields. His mocha colored fingers played the panel-buttons like the fingers of an organist ringing in stops, as he prepared Lab Able for its descent.

  * * * *

  Emerging from his ship, Pryor discovered that the pale purple fields were actually covered with a sort of low, tough shrubbery. It covered the sparsely-treed hills beyond the lake and seemed to fade into the deep misty blue of the afternoon sky.

  Although he had never seen a landscape like it in all his roving over scores of planets, Pryor found it pleasant. A strong, cool wind whipped his weatherproof coverall against the backs of his legs. After the artificial atmosphere of Lab Able, the fresh air stung his nostrils pleasantly. And the smell of the pale purple shrubbery was sweet.

  He scrambled over a low barrier of uncut gray stone that marked the boundary of the field in which he had landed and found himself on a narrow road of ochre-hued dirt. He trudged along it, toward the village, and around a dipping bend met two men riding in a surface car of fantastically ancient vintage. If Pryor had not seen similar vehicles in his histofilm course at the academy, he would scarcely have known what it was. It actually ran on wheels with plastic rims.

  It pulled to a halt alongside him, and the red-bearded patriarch sitting next to the young man at the controls leapt spryly out and said in odd thick accents, “Welcome to Leith on Nevis, sir.”

  The older man had to repeat the greeting before Pryor found words. There was so much that was astonishing about him. First, his clothing. It consisted of stout shoes of what looked like real leather, long woven socks in brilliant diamond checks, a brief black jacket and a sort of skirt woven in a complex pattern of blue-and-green checks and kept from flaring in the wind by a heavy pouch of some sort of fur.

  A sort of blanket that matched the skirt was slung over his left shoulder and an odd-looking flat black bonnet, turned up on one side by an elaborate metal clip, had a headband of the same bright material.

  Second, his beard. For centuries, all male human children were given facial depilation shortly after birth, and as a result, the old man’s luxurious red growth looked both alarming and unsanitary. Third, his skin. It was like that of the young man engaged in turning the vehicle awkwardly about, a pale reddish pink that made Pryor conscious of his own dark normality.

  When he had recovered from his surprise at encountering such a strange specimen, Pryor returned his greeting and asked to be taken to the chief or leader of the community.

  The younger man, who had pulled up alongside again but facing the other way, said, “You’re speaking to the Dominie now, sir.” His accent was as alien and thick as that of the man with the beard. And his costume was similar save for minor details.

  * * * *

  On the way to the village, they had to halt while a flock of baaa-ing gray sheep, tended by a husky-looking youngster and a longhaired black-and-white dog, crossed the dirt road. Pryor, who had never seen anything like them before, asked what they were, what they were for.

  The older man smiled and said, “Their wool supplies us with the clothing we wear. Their hides provide us with light leather. Their flesh provides us with meat for the table.”

  Pryor nodded, wishing he hadn’t asked. The idea of eating the flesh of living creatures—or recently living creatures—appalled him. He had an idea he wasn’t going to enjoy his dinner.

  The village, with its stone houses and thatched roofs reminded Pryor of a village in a fairy tale vidarfilm. He noted with growing amazement that all the inhabitants seemed to be fair of hair and skin, all wore the gay skirts and bonnets, regardless of sex. He was asked to alight in front of the largest house, one close by the stone church with its white wooden spire.

  The Dominie Jed him into a room of wholly unexpected comfort and applied flame to a pile of cut logs in a wide stone fireplace.

  This done, he produced two earthenware mugs and a stone bottle and said, �
��I doubt not but that your mission to Leith on Nevis is important. It is only fitting we indulge in a drop before we come to such matters.”

  The Dominie drained his mug without changing expression, but the innocent looking amber liquid made Pryor gasp. It seemed to burn his gullet and, seconds later, start a warming fire in his veins. When he could talk, he gasped, “What was that, Dominie?”

  “That,” said the older man, smiling through his beard, “is uisquebaugh, the water of life, known to the less ancient as whiskey.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” Pryor managed. He wondered if he weren’t dreaming the whole business and shook himself mentally in an effort to awaken in the prosaic surroundings of Lab Able. But nothing changed.

  “I’m afraid,” he said, “I’ve brought you a problem, Dominie.” He wondered what the word meant. “I’ve got orders from headquarters, Sirius Sector, to have this planet evacuated at once.”

  Courteously, the older man refilled Pryor’s mug, then poured more liquid fire into his own. He said, “And what is the alternative?”

  “There is no alternative,” Pryor replied bluntly. “In a matter of thirty-six hours, Earth-time, this little world is going to be blown to smithereens.”

  “I’ll say one thing for you, young man,” said the Dominie. “You don’t believe in beating about the bush.” He drained his mug once more and added over its rim, “Is the universe at war?”

  “Not at present, I’m happy to say,” said Pryor.

  “Then I fear your errand is wasted,” said the other. “If there is no war, then we shall not evacuate. Even if there were, I should hesitate to uproot my people. They would have to leave so much of what they have wrought and love behind them.”