Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

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  "That's better. Why didn't I close my eyes before? Those star streaks made me dizzy. I'll make a nice shooting star when I hit air. Come to think of it, I must be deep in air now. Let's take a look.

  "It's getting lighter. Look at those peaks down there! Like great knives. I don't seem to be falling as fast as I expected though. Almost seem to be floating. Let's switch on the radio and tell the world hello. Hello, earth ... hello, again ... and good-by ...

  "Sorry about that. I passed out. I don't know what I said, if anything, and the suit recorder has no playback or eraser. What must have happened is that the suit ran out of oxygen, and I lost consciousness due to anoxia. I dreamed I switched on the radio, but I actually switched on the emergency tank, thank the Lord, and that brought me round.

  "Come to think of it, why not crack the suit and breath fresh air instead of bottled?

  "No. I'd have to get up to do that. I think I'll just lie here a little bit longer and get properly rested up before I try anything big like standing up.

  "I was telling about the return journey, wasn't I? The long jump back home, which should have dumped us between the orbits of Earth and Mars. Instead of which, when James took his finger off the button, the mass-detector showed nothing except the noise-level of the universe.

  "We were out in that no place for a day. We astronomers had to establish our exact position relative to the solar system. The crew had to find out exactly what went wrong. The physicists had to make mystic passes in front of meters and mutter about residual folds in stress-free space. Our task was easy, because we were about half a light-year from the sun. The crew's job was also easy: they found what went wrong in less than half an hour.

  "It still seems incredible. To program the ship for a star-jump, you merely told it where you were and where you wanted to go. In practical terms, that entailed first a series of exact measurements which had to be translated into the somewhat abstruse co-ordinate system we used based on the topological order of mass-points in the galaxy. Then you cut a tape on the computer and hit the button. Nothing was wrong with the computer. Nothing was wrong with the engines. We'd hit the right button and we'd gone to the place we'd aimed for. All we'd done was aim for the wrong place. It hurts me to tell you this and I'm just attached personnel with no space-flight tradition. In practical terms, one highly trained crew member had punched a wrong pattern of holes on the tape. Another equally skilled had failed to notice this when reading back. A childish error, highly improbable; twice repeated, thus squaring the improbability. Incredible, but that's what happened.

  "Anyway, we took good care with the next lot of measurements. That's why we were out there so long. They were cross-checked about five times. I got sick so I climbed into a spacesuit and went outside and took some photographs of the Sun which I hoped would help to determine hydrogen density in the outer regions. When I got back everything was ready. We disposed ourselves about the control room and relaxed for all we were worth. We were all praying that this time nothing would go wrong, and all looking forward to seeing Earth again after four months subjective time away, except for Charley, who was still chuckling and shaking his head, and Captain James who was glaring at Charley and obviously wishing human dignity permitted him to tear Charley limb from limb. Then James pressed the button.

  "Everything twanged like a bowstring. I felt myself turned inside out, passed through a small sieve, and poured back into shape. The entire bow wall-screen was full of Earth. Something was wrong all right, and this time it was much, much worse. We'd come out of the jump about two hundred miles above the Pacific, pointed straight down, traveling at a relative speed of about two thousand miles an hour.

  "It was a fantastic situation. Here was the Whale, the most powerful ship ever built, which could cover fifty light-years in a subjective time of one second, and it was helpless. For, as of course you know, the star-drive couldn't be used again for at least two hours.

  "The Whale also had ion rockets of course, the standard deuterium-fusion thing with direct conversion. As again you know, this is good for interplanetary flight because you can run it continuously and it has extremely high exhaust velocity. But in our situation it was no good because it has rather a low thrust. It would have taken more time than we had to deflect us enough to avoid a smash. We had five minutes to abandon ship.

  "James got us all into the Minnow at a dead run. There was no time to take anything at all except the clothes we stood in. The Minnow was meant for short heavy hops to planets or asteroids. In addition to the ion drive it had emergency atomic rockets, using steam for reaction mass. We thanked God for that when Cazamian canceled our downwards velocity with them in a few seconds. We curved away up over China and from about fifty miles high we saw the Whale hit the Pacific. Six hundred tons of mass at well over two thousand miles an hour make an almighty splash. By now you'll have divers down, but I doubt they'll salvage much you can use.

  "I wonder why James went down with the ship, as the saying is? Not that it made any difference. It must have broken his heart to know that his lovely ship was getting the chopper. Or did he suspect another human error?

  "We didn't have time to think about that, or even to get the radio working. The steam rockets blew up. Poor Cazamian was burnt to a crisp. Only thing that saved me was the spacesuit I was still wearing. I snapped the face plate down because the cabin was filling with fumes. I saw Charley coming out of the toilet--that's how he'd escaped--and I saw him beginning to laugh. Then the port side collapsed and I fell out.

  "I saw the launch spinning away, glowing red against a purplish black sky. I tumbled head over heels towards the huge curved shield of earth fifty miles below. I shut my eyes and that's about all I remember. I don't see how any of us could have survived. I think we're all dead.

  "I'll have to get up and crack this suit and let some air in. But I can't. I fell fifty miles without a parachute. I'm dead so I can't stand up."

  * * * * *

  There was silence for a while except for the vicious howl of the wind. Then snow began to shift on the ledge. A man crawled stiffly out and came shakily to his feet. He moved slowly around for some time. After about two hours he returned to the hollow, squatted down and switched on the recorder. The voice began again, considerably wearier.

  "Hello there. I'm in the bleakest wilderness I've ever seen. This place makes the moon look cozy. There's precipice around me every way but one and that's up. So it's up I'll have to go till I find a way to go down. I've been chewing snow to quench my thirst but I could eat a horse. I picked up a short-wave broadcast on my suit but couldn't understand a word. Not English, not French, and there I stick. Listened to it for fifteen minutes just to hear a human voice again. I haven't much hope of reaching anyone with my five milliwatt suit transmitter but I'll keep trying.

  "Just before I start the climb there are two things I want to get on tape. The first is how I got here. I've remembered something from my military training, when I did some parachute jumps. Terminal velocity for a human body falling through air is about one hundred twenty m.p.h. Falling fifty miles is no worse than falling five hundred feet. You'd be lucky to live through a five hundred foot fall, true, but I've been lucky. The suit is bulky but light and probably slowed my fall. I hit a sixty mile an hour updraft this side of the mountain, skidded downhill through about half a mile of snow and fetched up in a drift. The suit is part worn but still operational. I'm fine.

  "The second thing I want to say is about the Chingsi, and here it is: watch out for them. Those jokers are dangerous. I'm not telling how because I've got a scientific reputation to watch. You'll have to figure it out for yourselves. Here are the clues:

  (1) The Chingsi talk and laugh but after all they aren't human. On an alien world a hundred light-years away, why shouldn't alien talents develop? A talent that's so uncertain and rudimentary here that most people don't believe it, might be highly developed out there.

  (2) The Whale expedition did fine till
it found Chang. Then it hit a seam of bad luck. Real stinking bad luck that went on and on till it looks fishy. We lost the ship, we lost the launch, all but one of us lost our lives. We couldn't even win a game of ping-pong.

  "So what is luck, good or bad? Scientifically speaking, future chance events are by definition chance. They can turn out favorable or not. When a preponderance of chance events has occurred unfavorably, you've got bad luck. It's a fancy name for a lot of chance results that didn't go your way. But the gambler defines it differently. For him, luck refers to the future, and you've got bad luck when future chance events won't go your way. Scientific investigations into this have been inconclusive, but everyone knows that some people are lucky and others aren't. All we've got are hints and glimmers, the fumbling touch of a rudimentary talent. There's the evil eye legend and the Jonah, bad luck bringers. Superstition? Maybe; but ask the insurance companies about accident prones. What's in a name? Call a man unlucky and you're superstitious. Call him accident prone and that's sound business sense. I've said enough.

  "All the same, search the space-flight records, talk to the actuaries. When a ship is working perfectly and is operated by a hand-picked crew of highly trained men in perfect condition, how often is it wrecked by a series of silly errors happening one after another in defiance of probability?

  "I'll sign off with two thoughts, one depressing and one cheering. A single Chingsi wrecked our ship and our launch. What could a whole planetful of them do?

  "On the other hand, a talent that manipulates chance events is bound to be chancy. No matter how highly developed it can't be surefire. The proof is that I've survived to tell the tale."

  * * * * *

  At twenty below zero and fifty miles an hour the wind ravaged the mountain. Peering through his polarized vizor at the white waste and the snow-filled air howling over it, sliding and stumbling with every step on a slope that got gradually steeper and seemed to go on forever, Matt Hennessy began to inch his way up the north face of Mount Everest.

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  Contents

  DROOZLE

  By Frank Banta

  Jean Lanni could see that his girl friend, Judy Stokes, thought it was the lamest excuse she had ever heard. If your ballpoint pen won't write as you want it to, your life doesn't stop, she probably was thinking. You just get yourself another pen—You don't call off a marriage....

  Skeptically the girl with the long, golden red hair pointed at his breast pocket. "This Droozle I must see. And who's that other member of the partnership there beside him? An Eversharp pencil named Blackie?"

  "No, that is the other end of Droozle. Permit me to introduce you." Blandly the tall, young artist slid Droozle from his breast pocket, straightened him from his U-shape and handed his twelve-inch pen to her.

  "A snake!" she shrieked.

  "What else?"

  "Why, I thought those ruby eyes were jewels! I must have squeezed right up against him when I kissed you," she cried indignantly.

  "You did. I felt him squirm a little."

  "Oh! And here I thought it was your heart beating wildly."

  "Well, maybe it was. It does that sometimes."

  "Let's try again. And this time hold your snake behind you." The long-legged girl stood on tiptoe to reach him.

  "It was your heart beating wildly," she decided a moment later. "Which makes me think you might not just be trying to get rid of me by a silly excuse."

  "Believe me, I'm not," he urged. "Droozle is the key to all my fortunes."

  "All right, tell me about it. But first tell me where in the universe you got him."

  "Oh, that was just after I graduated from art school. I was on my grand tour. We had an unexpected stopover at the Coffin planetary system. I discovered ballpoint snakes are the chief export of Coffin Two. When we lifted ship, I had acquired my little puppy snake, Droozle."

  "Is a puppy snake like a puppy dog?" she asked, fascinated. "I mean, do they have their little domestic troubles, such as the calls of nature?"

  "Oh, he was thoroughly pocket-broken before I acquired him. But he did like his little jokes, and I learned to leave him curled up in a circular ashtray until maturity sobered him."

  "Well, I should say! You drew sketches with him, didn't you tell me?"

  He nodded. "At first he only had one color of ink—red—and if I sketched with him all day he would commence to look wretchedly anemic. He took two days to refill, normally. But I could use him again in only one day's time provided I didn't mind the top three-fourths of my pen laying on my arm."

  "I hope his weight didn't get tiresome," she commiserated, holding in her amusement.

  "I coped somehow," he answered sturdily. "Later he learned—after I squeezed him on the liver a few times just to show him how—to switch to a lovely shade of ochre, which was delightful on pale green or pink paper. Why, what's the matter, Judy?"

  "Go on," she choked. "Go go go!"

  He beamed. "I write my letters with him too. Every day I wrote with him, first in red, and then in ochre to give him a rest. He seemed to love to write more than to sketch. He would jump into my hand with tail happily pointed downward as I sat down to my writing desk. And when I later saw his dark green stripes turning pastel and knew that anemia was imminent, and started to lay him down for a earned rest, he would stiffen himself as if to say, 'Oh, come, come! I'm good for half a page yet!'"

  "It sounds as though he was a willing worker, but I still can't see why his malfunction makes our marriage impossible."

  "I haven't gotten to his career as a novelist yet. There lies the heart of the tragedy."

  "Please proceed to the heart of the tragedy."

  "It all began when I found him arched up one morning, writing by himself—with difficulty, it is true. His first message to the world was, 'I hold that the supine viewpoint is seldom downward!'"

  "I don't see how he could stand up on end to write for very long, even with such a magnificent philosophy to bolster him."

  "What a terrible pun," Jean groaned. "He couldn't stand up very long at first. But I saw he had talent. I gladly learned the skill of holding him upright in a relaxed manner so that he could express himself on paper. In no time at all, he had written what was to be his first, sensational, best-selling shocker, Naked Bellies in the Grass."

  "That does sound sensational."

  "Not for snakes. He neglected to mention his characters were snakes. I Fang You Very Much followed swiftly afterward and was just as successful. Mothers were amused with its lispy title and got it for the children."

  "Sounds like a story with some meat in it."

  "Yes! Something you can get your teeth into. However, his next offering, A Snake Pit Full of Love, was by far the topper. It was banned in Boston."

  "You haven't mentioned anything tragic so far," she observed. "In fact, you have made a pot of money."

  "Right. After my snake had filed his income tax returns, we still had enough money to purchase this house and to support us for a couple of years. The only trouble is, his royalties have stopped coming in and that money is all used up. I still haven't been able to sell any of my landscape paintings. So we haven't any income, and that's why you and I can't marry for a long time yet—if ever!"

  Her exquisite brows wrinkled with concentration. "I don't understand. Has Droozle written himself out?"

  "Far from it," answered Jean, seating himself and parking Droozle on his knee. "He's writing more than ever."

  "The quality is gone, then?"

  Jean shook his head. "No, he's writing superlatively."

  "Then what is the problem?" she asked, now thoroughly mystified.

  "He's writing classics!" burst out Jean in baffled irritation. "He won't write anything else! Easily seeing the approaching catastrophe, I wrote long persuading essays to him. It was pathetically useless. Proudly he continued to write his Rise and Fall of the Western Plainsman in a lucid, passionate prose which would evoke an imperishable picture—but in three thousand pages
."

  "I think classics are nice," protested Judy, "and one of these days I'm going to read another one."

  Huskily Jean told her the worst. "Writing classics consumes paper by the ton. And if you ever get your 750,000 word story finished, you must then start shrinking it back to an acceptable 75,000 words. This is a nearly hopeless task. Of course if you can get it back to 75,000 words the digest magazines will have no trouble shrinking it to 15,000 words or fifteen pictures, and you then get your fingers in the till." He paused and all hope fled from his face. "Droozle won't live nearly long enough to get all of that shrinking done. And in the meantime that scribbling snake is writing me out of house and home!"

  "Are you going to let him get away with it?" the girl challenged.

  "I don't know whether I am or not," replied the young artist, looking worried. "I thought I had the problem solved at first. He got so sassy when we were arguing about him writing classics that I had no hesitation about applying a pinch of glue to his glittering little extremity. That put him out of the writing business until he came to terms."

  "Well, now. You were enterprising!" she approved.

  "It didn't do any good though," Jean grumbled despondently, bowing his head.

  "He wouldn't bargain?" she asked incredulously.

  "He didn't have to. He knew right where the cheese grater was."

  "Ooh!"

  "My sentiments exactly. But I don't know what to do with him now."

  "You're all out of ideas?"

  "Oh we could sell this house and move down to skid row where the rents are cheap," he flung out airily, but quite plainly worried sick.

  "I've got a much better idea than that," she said cheerily, getting a pad and pencil from her red handbag. "How about giving Droozle this ultimatum?" As she wrote, Jean read over her shoulder, "'Suggest you begin writing fiction pleasing both to you and your master, or we shall be forced to hand you over to the dog catcher!'"