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

by Various

  He wanted to look back as he walked. He wanted to talk, to hear Loren's answer and so know just where he was. More than anything he wanted to break into a run and get into that rocket and get out of here.

  He could see the gleam of the rocket finally, but he didn't look back yet. He kept moving. As he got closer he could see Leo, standing near the base of the ship, tall, leaning carelessly against the silver surface, smoking. He wanted to shout to Leo, to tell him for God's sake to wake up and protect him.

  They reached the edge of the clearing and Leo, whose careless body had stiffened, waited motionless, one hand on his pistol. Kirk stopped. "There it is, Harry," he said, not turning around. "There's the ship." He waited, half-closing his eyes, breathing slowly.

  There was no sound.

  "That's Leo, my friend, Harry," Kirk said, putting his palms flat against his thighs. "Your friend, Harry."

  Leo, Kirk could see, was still frozen, his eyes slitted to narrow brightness. Kirk began to step into the clearing. "Hello, there, Leo," he said, his voice a tense, grating sound. "I've brought some friends."

  Leo was lifting his pistol out of its holster, inchingly.

  "Friends," Kirk rasped.

  Leo's thin eyes flickered and the pistol slid back into the holster.

  Kirk turned around slowly, and he saw that Loren had stopped just inside the clearing. The animal remained beside him, its head making its slow circles. Loren was staring up at the rocket and the sun reflecting from the bright surface, came down and shown on Loren's face, deepening the lines there.

  "Leo," Kirk said slowly, "this is Harry Loren and his friend, Eddie. Harry's been here quite a while, waiting for us."

  "Oh, yes?" said Leo, still not moving.

  "That's right, Leo," Kirk said. "Quite a while. What year was it, Harry?" he said across the clearing. "What year did you crash?"

  Loren blinked and there were tears again in his eyes. He reached out slowly, and the animal shifted so that its head touched Loren's hand. "Twenty-four-nineteen."

  Kirk put his teeth together. "Twenty-four-nineteen," he said.

  Loren nodded slowly, his eyes still upon the rocket.

  "Eighteen years," Leo said softly.

  "A long time, Leo," Kirk said. He thought of a girl with her hair braided about her head, looking up, while Loren had shot into the depths of sky and space. He thought of a little boy called Dickie, standing there, too, watching a fast-disappearing blackness in the sky. He thought about eighteen years, and the fading of youth. A boy becoming a man. Braided hair becoming gray. Memories fading and minds adjusting. New love, new dedication. A world shifting, a universe shifting.

  Kirk looked at Eddie, the animal, real and alive, waiting patiently at the tips of Loren's fingers. "Eddie's been with Harry for a long time," he said.

  "Oh?" said Leo quietly.

  Loren's hand stroked the brown and yellow head.

  "Harry," Kirk said. "We're going to leave now. Are you ready?"

  Loren was silent.

  "You go up first, will you, Leo?" Kirk said.

  Leo looked at him, a faint frown touching his brow, then he began moving up the ladder to the air lock. Kirk waited until Leo had disappeared into the rocket, then he repeated, "We're going to leave now, Harry. Are you ready?"

  Loren remained motionless, his hand touching the animal's head. Suddenly he turned then and began moving slowly away through the brush, the brown and yellow creature bobbing beside him with queer rocker-like jumps.

  "Goodby, Harry," Kirk said. Finally he turned and climbed up the ladder. When he had gotten into his seat, he said, "Let's go, Leo," and he moved his hands to the controls.

  * * * * *

  The rocket settled into the quiet motion of its course through space.

  "But I don't get it," Leo said. "I really don't. All that time, and then all he has to do is walk a dozen yards and get into the rocket and he's going home. That's all he would have to do."

  "Why?" Kirk said.

  "Why?" said Leo, frowning.

  Kirk nodded, looking at the man. "Why?"

  * * *

  Contents

  PIPE OF PEACE

  By James McKimmey, Jr.

  There's a song that says "it's later than you think" and it is perhaps lamentable that someone didn't sing it for Henry that beautiful morning....

  The farmer refused to work. His wife, a short thin woman with worried eyes, watched him while he sat before the kitchen table. He was thin, too, like his wife, but tall and tough-skinned. His face, with its leather look was immobile.

  "Why?" asked his wife.

  "Good reasons," the farmer said.

  He poured yellow cream into a cup of coffee. He let the cup sit on the table.

  "Henry?" said the woman, as though she were really speaking to someone else. She walked around the kitchen in quick aimless bird steps.

  "My right," said Henry. He lifted his cup, finally, tasting.

  "We'll starve."

  "Not likely. Not until everybody else does, anyway."

  The woman circled the room and came back to her husband. Her eyes winked, and there were lines between them. Her fingers clutched the edge of the table. "You've gone crazy," she said, as though it were a half-question, a half-pronouncement.

  The farmer was relaxing now, leaning back in his chair. "Might have. Might have, at that."

  "Why?" she asked.

  The farmer turned his coffee cup carefully. "Thing to do, is all. Each man in his own turn. This is my turn."

  The woman watched him for a long time, then she sat down on a chair beside the table. The quick, nervous movement was gone out of her, and she sat like a frozen sparrow.

  The farmer looked up and grinned. "Feels good. Just to sit here. Does well for the back and the arms. Been working too hard."

  "Henry," the woman said.

  The farmer tasted his coffee again. He put the cup on the table and leaned back, tapping his browned fingers. "Just in time, I'd say. Waited any longer, it wouldn't have done any good. Another few years, a farmer wouldn't mean anything."

  The woman watched him, her eyes frightened as though he might suddenly gnash his teeth or leap in the air.

  "Pretty soon," the farmer said, "they'd have it all mechanical. Couldn't stop anything. Now," he said, smiling at his wife, "we can stop it all."

  "Henry, go out to the fields," the woman said.

  "No," Henry said, standing, stretching his thin, hard body. "I won't go out to the fields. Neither will August Brown nor Clyde Briggs nor Alfred Swanson. None of us. Anywhere. Not until the food's been stopped long enough for people to wake up."

  The farmer looked out of the kitchen window, beyond his tractor and the cow barn and the windmill. He looked at rows of strong corn, shivering their soft silk in the morning breeze. "We'll stop the corn. Stop the wheat. Stop the cattle, the hogs, the chickens."

  "You can't."

  "I can't. But all of us together can."

  "No sense," the woman said, wagging her head. "No sense."

  "It's sense, all right. Best sense we've ever had. Can't use an army with no stomach. Old as the earth. Can't fight without food. Takes food to run a war."

  "You'll starve the two of us, that's all you'll do. Nobody else will stop work."

  The farmer turned to his wife. "Yes, they will. Everywhere a farmer is the same. He works the land. He reads the papers. He votes. He listens to the radio. He watches the television. Mostly, he works the land. Alone, with his own thoughts and ideas. He isn't any different in Maine than he is in Oregon. We've all stopped work. Now. This morning."

  "How about those across the ocean? Are they stopping, too? They're not going to feed up their soldiers? To kill us if we don't starve first? To--"

  "They stopped, too. A farmer is a farmer. Like a leaf on a tree. No matter on what tree in what country on whose land. A leaf is a leaf. A farmer's the same. A farmer is a farmer."

  "It won't work," the woman said dully.

  "Ye
s, it will."

  "They'll make you work."

  "How? It's our own property."

  "They'll take it away from you."

  "Who'll work it then?"

  The woman rocked in her chair, her mouth quivering. "They'll get somebody."

  The farmer shook his head. "Too many people doing other things, like making shells and guns, like sitting in fox-holes or flying planes."

  The woman sat rocking, her hands together in her lap. "It won't work," she repeated.

  "It'll work," said the farmer. "Right now, it'll work. Yes, we've got milkers and shuckers, and we've got hatchers for the chickens. We've got tractors and combines and threshing machines. They're all mechanical, all right. But we don't have mechanical farmers, yet. The pumps, the tractors, the milkers don't work by themselves. In time, maybe. Not now. We're still ahead of them on that. It'll work."

  "Go out to the fields, Henry," his wife said, her voice like the sound of a worn phonograph record.

  "No," the farmer said, taking a pipe from his overalls. "I think instead, I'll just sit in the sun and watch the corn. Watch the birds on top of the barn, maybe. I'll fill my pipe and sit there and smoke and watch. And when I get sleepy, I'll sleep. After a while I might go see August Brown or Clyde Briggs or maybe Alfred Swanson. We'll sit and talk, about pleasant things, peaceful things. We'll wait."

  The farmer put the pipe between his teeth and walked to the door. He put on his straw hat, buttoned the sleeves of his blue shirt and stepped outside.

  His wife sat at the table, staring at nothing in the room.

  The farmer walked across the barnyard, listening to the sound of the chickens and the sound of the breeze going through the corn. Near the barn, he sat upon an old tree stump and filled his pipe with tobacco. He lit the pipe, cupping his hands, and sat there, smoking, the smoke spiraling up into the bright warm air.

  He took his pipe from his teeth and looked at it. "Pipe of peace," he said, laughing inside himself.

  The breeze was soft and the sun warm on his back. He sat there, smoking, feeling the quiet of the morning, the peace of the great sky above.

  He had no time to stand or to take his pipe from his mouth, when the two men crossed the yard and lifted him up by the arms. He dropped the pipe, while he was dragged past the house, to the road beyond. He had no time to yell or scream, before his hat was swept from his head, the overalls and the blue shirt stripped from his body.

  He had not even thought about what it was that had happened, before he was thrust inside a white truck, with strong steel sides and with grilled windows like those of a cell.

  He was just sitting there, in the truck, without his clothes, speeding away with August Brown and Clyde Briggs and Alfred Swanson.

  * * * * *

  Outside, the sun was warm upon the earth. Chickens clucked in their pens, while birds fluttered about the top of the barn. A pig squealed. The corn rustled. And beside the farmhouse, on the ground, lay a pipe, its tobacco spilled, the last of its smoke swirling out of its bowl into the air, disappearing.

  The woman sat in the kitchen of the farmhouse and turned her head when the door opened. She widened her eyes and caught at her throat with her hand.

  The sun through the doorway shone down on metallic hands and a metallic face, gleaming on the surface which the straw hat and the overalls and the blue shirt didn't hide. The door snapped shut, and there was a sound of heavy metal footsteps against the kitchen floor.

  The woman pressed against her chair. "Who are you?" she screamed.

  "Henry," said the mechanical thing.

  * * *

  Contents

  PLANET OF DREAMS

  By James McKimmey, Jr.

  The climate was perfect, the sky was always blue, and--best of all--nobody had to work. What more could anyone want?

  It was a small world, a tiny spinning globe, placed in the universe to weather and age by itself until the end of things. But because its air was good and its earth was fertile, Daniel Loveral had placed a finger upon a map and said, "This is the planet. This is the Dream Planet."

  That was two years before, back on Earth. And now Loveral with his selected flock had shot through space, to light like chuckling geese upon the planet, to feel the effect of their dreams come true.

  Loveral was sitting in his office, drumming his long fingers against his desk while the name, Atkinson, ticked through his brain like the sound of a sewing machine.

  Would he be the only one, Loveral asked himself, or was he just the first? In either case, it was up to Loveral, as leader and guiding hand, to stop this thing and stop it quickly.

  Loveral stood up and put on his jacket, although there was no need for it, other than the formality it gave his figure.

  He stepped out of his office into a clear bright day, where the air was clean and fresh in his lungs, at once like frost and fire and sweet perfume. He walked along a winding path, which was bordered by slim-necked flowers and a short hedge whose even clipped lines were kept neat by tireless robot hands.

  Trees pointed to a blue sky, rocking and fluttering their leaves in a soft breeze, and glinting metallic houses lay peacefully beyond in wooded hollows and upon slight hills.

  A whole small world was before his eyes, set there upon his direction, maintained by himself with the help of a dozen complex machines which lay locked and sealed in the Maintenance Room for only his fingers to touch.

  It was a busy life for Loveral, up at dawn to work until deep night, keeping his flock happy and free from spirit-killing labor. But it was a perfect plan, one which had been tested and turned in his mind for years. If he had to work hard to keep it running smoothly, that was all right. In fact, he had never been happier.

  Now, however, there was this business about Atkinson. Loveral was disturbed about that.

  He walked on, over the quiet path which would lead to the house where Atkinson and his wife lived. Loveral smiled, in readiness for any happy face that might appear before him, to greet him, to show with thankful eyes appreciation for his wonderful world. But that, too, brought thoughts that were a bit disturbing.

  Lately there had been few such faces. Most of his flock no longer seemed to care about walking along the cultivated paths, or smiling, or nodding, or touching a leaf here or a flower there. They preferred, it appeared, to remain deep inside their houses, as though they might have become tired of the soft perfection of Dream Planet. As though they might have become weary of quiet woods and sweet bird-music or a sky which was always blue.

  Loveral shook his head as he walked, puzzling out his thoughts. It was strange, but nothing to worry about certainly.

  Just this business about Atkinson. That was his only worry.

  He came slowly up a hill, the top of which held a low curving house, with a silver roof and wide, sweeping windows. There were yellow and blue and deep red flowers, skirting the sides of the house, and green ivy grew thickly between the glistening windows. The lawn, dotted with small leafy trees and round bushes, sloped down from the front of the house, looking like a carefully arranged painting.

  Loveral pressed a button beside a shining door and waited, smiling through his pale blue kindly eyes.

  * * * * *

  Mrs. Atkinson appeared after several moments and stood blinking at him. She was a thin woman, who seemed to have gotten even thinner, Loveral noticed. She was working her fingers at the neck of her dress. She smiled but her lips wavered.

  "My dear," Loveral greeted her in his soft voice, showing the goodness in his eyes.

  She nodded her recognition, opening her mouth without speaking.

  "May I?" said Loveral finally, waving his long fingers toward the living room.

  "Oh, yes," said the woman. "Of course, Mr. Loveral." And as she spoke Loveral had the impression she might suddenly begin crying.

  Loveral followed the woman into the house, noticing all over again the precise way everything had been arranged. The rug was soft beneath his feet, and the light ca
me in through the windows in such a way that it, too, became soft. The furniture, molded to hold a human body most comfortably, rested about the room in perfect efficiency.

  "Your place is so lovely," Loveral said, out of his old habit from Earth. But his words seemed to ring strangely in the quiet, because it was his own arrangement, like all the other rooms on the planet. And Mrs. Atkinson, standing thin and nervous before him, had nothing, after all, to do with it. The cleanliness was the work of his robot machines, the planning his own. It was like complimenting himself.

  He cleared his throat and stood, smiling his most benevolent smile to reassure Mrs. Atkinson.

  "Ah, my dear. Is George about?"

  Again, the woman's hand skittered to her throat.

  "He's not ill, surely?" Loveral asked, although this, too, was silly, because foods, selected and prepared for utmost nutrition, packed and frozen to be doled out in weekly quantities, purified air, disease-killing serums, simply written folders on exercise, and of course Loveral's own philosophies of quiet, peaceful living--all of this guarded well the health of Dream Planet's flock.

  The woman shook her head. "No, George is fine. He's just--sleeping, I think."

  "Rest is nature's finest tonic," said Loveral, and hearing his voice thought suddenly there was hardly anything he could say any more that might not sound a bit out of place in this peaceful world. Rest to the man who had nothing to do ceased to be a tonic.

  "Yes, yes," said Loveral. "May we just sit down, my dear?"

  Mrs. Atkinson jerked a hand toward one of the chairs and then wound her fingers.

  Loveral sat down and leaned back, smiling his most charming smile. "Perhaps George might awaken after a bit?"

  "Oh, yes," the woman said, her eyes flickering, and she sat upon the edge of one chair, like a bird perched upon a thin wire.