ENIGMA OF THE CITY
Originally published in Amazing Stories, April 1943.
“John! Oh, John!”
The sound of his name being called halted John Reid in his long-limbed progress up the slope. He turned, knee-deep in lush grass, to see the figure of a girl hurrying toward him.
John Reid smiled and waved an acknowledging arm. He waited as she approached, wiping his damp face on the sleeve of his tunic. Once he glanced up at the green sky where Alpha Centauri shone in all its fiery splendor. The heat had been intense for days, and as yet there was no sign of the rain clouds which would bring relief.
In another moment the girl was standing before him, her small bosom rising and falling rapidly beneath her simple blouse. Perspiration beaded the tanned oval of her face and darkened her auburn hair where it swept back from temple and forehead. She looked up at him with grey eyes that were clouded with anxiety.
“Hello, Susan,” Reid greeted, in the quiet tone with which he always spoke to her. “I was just going up to the Parsec to see how Doug Lain’s coming along with the engines.” He gestured up toward where the slope leveled off to a broad and grassy rise. Here, limned against the green sky, rested a great rocket freighter.
“You shouldn’t exert yourself like that,” Reid went on. “This isn’t Earth, you know, and we’ve got to take things easy until we grow accustomed to New Terra’s heavier gravity.”
Susan Carew brushed his gentle admonition aside with a sudden rush of words.
“Any sign of the auxiliary yet?”
Reid shook his head slowly; the admiration which had glinted in his brown eyes from sight of her died away. “None,” he answered in a voice grown curiously flat. “I’ve got lookouts posted on high ridges at four different points. They haven’t reported anything.”
“John, something must be wrong,” the girl declared worriedly. “Steve should have been back in the auxiliary days ago. What possibly could have happened to him?”
“I don’t know, Susan. But look here, now, it’s nothing to get excited about. Steve probably just went a bit further on this scouting trip than he usually does.”
“Yes—but even then he should have been back before this! Don’t try to put me off like that, John.”
There was a moment of strained silence. Reid became suddenly aware that her eyes were searching his face. He looked away uncomfortably. He had meant to be reassuring, but from all indications something was seriously wrong. Steve Norlin had been gone eight days now which made him more than merely overdue. Reid knew that the scout always planned his trips with the exactness of a time schedule, and this delay might easily mean disaster.
Reid looked down at the tiny valley which lay at the foot of the slope, fighting down the weary bitterness which was flooding him. Steve Norlin. Always it was Steve Norlin. Was she blind?
His moody eyes came to rest upon the camp which lay sprawled down there in the valley, and something of calm and comfort came into them. It was a sight which never failed to bring him some measure of peace. Peace—and at the same time, unrest.
The camp was spread out with only the faintest suggestion of geometrical planning. At first glance, it resembled something that might have been built by a people whose degree of civilized development had just progressed beyond that of living in caves. It was crowded and noisy, poorly constructed, littered with all sorts of imaginable things, from tools and personal belongings to stacks of piled logs not yet trimmed for building. Completed houses, really little more than crude wooden shelters stood here and there, mingling with others just under construction, while in several places stood flimsy tents consisting of a length of cloth draped over a framework of poles.
Through it all, busily engaged at a multitude of tasks, moved a small band of some two hundred men, women, and children. These were John Reid’s charges, the Arkites, as he had come to think of them, exiles as they were from a war-devastated Solar System. He thought in the same way of the Parsec which had brought them here to New Terra, not as the old, lumbering freighter it once had been, but as a great Ark bearing these last remnants of a once great species to a virgin world to begin life anew.
The Arkites had been in extremely difficult circumstances even while on Earth, and their present situation had been changed but little, save for he fact that the war which had menaced their lives had been left far behind. Their bodies were grimy and unkempt with toil, their clothing bedraggled and tattered. More than a few wore bandages about their limbs as mute evidence of their clumsiness and unfamiliarity with even the simplest of tools. They were thin, too, and had Reid looked carefully through the shimmering heat of Alpha Centauri, he might have noticed the sullen lines of discontent which were growing about their mouths and eyes.
But Reid did not see the crudeness and discomforts of the camp. Neither did he see the discontent just breaking into bud. He looked through the heat with a dreamer’s eyes, and the vision he saw was one of glittering, sky-high towers and a people happy and wise in their greatness.
“You should have listened to Steve,” Susan went on. “You should have had a radio installed aboard the auxiliary, so that if anything ever went wrong, we’d get to know about it in time to help.”
The vision faded from Reid’s eyes; the old bitterness crept back. “It wasn’t absolutely necessary,” he responded patiently. “Besides, neither the time nor the materials could have been spared in setting up a radio system. There’s no telling what kind of weather we’ll be having on this world, and it’s imperative that we get the camp set up and organized as soon as possible. Everyone and everything we have is needed for that.”
Susan pushed back a stray lock of auburn hair with a work-roughened hand, her red mouth set stubbornly. “I know that—but it seems to me that in your concern for the others you might have a little more consideration for Steve. He’s doing by far the most dangerous work of us all, and it’s only fair that—”
She broke off suddenly; her voice softened. “This is a strange, new world, John, and there are so few of us here…”
“Of course,” Reid muttered. He bent down suddenly and plucked one of the spear-like blades of the grass that grew about him. He felt angry with himself, and a little ashamed. He knew that his face had gotten that look of a jealous, small boy as it always did when Susan spoke of Steve Norlin.
Reid frowned down at the blade of grass in his hand, running a calloused thumb along its serrated edge. Trouble was, he was almost old enough to be her father. Why, streaks of grey were already beginning to appear in his crisp, black hair. He was a fool for ever daring to imagine that Susan might be interested in him. An old fool.
Steve Norlin was young and handsome. He had all the necessary dash and charm. He knew how to act around women, knew all the clever and witty things to say. Reid felt his own deficiency in this respect acutely. He’d been too busy all his life to cultivate the social manner. There had been so many other things to do…
He tried now, as always, to tell himself that Susan didn’t really matter. Hp was already well started up the path that led to final realization of his dream, the vision which had kept him inspired through the long, hard years. That was all that counted now—final realization of the dream.
But he glanced up from the blade of grass and looked at Susan, and now, as always, he knew that the final realization would be all the sweeter if she were there to share it with him. This small, rounded girl with her wealth of auburn hair and her cool, grey eyes was the embodiment of certain other dreams, of which up to the time of meeting her, he had been too busy to become fully aware.
“I’ve got to go,” Susan said abruptly. “I’ve got a lot to do.” She turned from him; her grey eyes refused to meet his brown ones.
“Of course,” Reid muttered again. The bitterness crept from his eyes and hardened around his mouth as he watched her go. Her purposeful figure went quickly down the slope and toward the
camp. Soon it was swallowed up in the general bustle of the Arkites.
* * * *
Reid stood alone upon the slope. Up in the green sky Alpha Centauri was beginning to edge down toward its resting place behind the tremendous mountains that lay to the north. It was nearing evening now, with the swiftness with which days passed on New Terra. The heat still held, thick and oppressive.
Memory of his intention to visit the Parsec came back to Reid; he crumpled the blade of grass in his hand, then let it drop to the ground as though it were a hope he was reluctantly casting aside. He resumed his journey up the slope, but something of the litheness of his earlier progress had gone.
It was not until he was several yards from the ship did Reid notice the lank, bony form of Doug Lain standing just within the airlock. Lain was wiping his hands on a bit of oily waste, and his long, seamed face was expressionless.
“Oh—hello, Doug,” Reid said, faintly startled. “Thought I’d come up to see how you were getting along.”
“I saw you talking to Susan,” Lain said quietly.
“Why, yes. She wanted to know if the auxiliary had been sighted yet.” Reid looked at the other with a trace of defiance.
“That isn’t quite what I meant,” Lain said. His features softened momentarily, and he gave Reid’s shoulder a gentle punch. “Wake up to yourself, John. If she can’t see that you’re worth two of that Norlin Don Juan any old day, then she’s not worth the trouble of running after.”
“It’s not that. It’s just that she’s young, and I’m—well, I’m pretty well along, Doug.”
Lain threw the bit of waste aside with an abrupt gesture. “That makes little difference, John. I know she’s pretty—but you want a woman who has a sense of values, too. Norlin’s a slacker. You know we had to give him that job of scouting in the auxiliary because there wasn’t much else he could do. And he’s just vain enough to go around boasting about it. Danger, adventure—hell! The auxiliary’s safe enough, and even in the event of a forced landing he’d be just as safe as though he were right in camp. We’ve seen enough of New Terra by now to know that its animal life hasn’t developed far enough even to be remotely dangerous. Norlin’s a trouble maker as well, mark my word.”
Reid nodded slowly; this last applied in his own case, at least. And more than once he had wished that he could find the necessary time to take over the scouting trips himself. Norlin was wasting too much fuel in searching for a site on which the Arkites could build a permanent settlement. There were any number of suitable locations which he might have missed.
But Reid shrugged these regrets aside; he turned to a more pressing problem.
“Have you found out what’s wrong with the engines, Doug?”
Lain shook his head with something of disgust. “No results again,” he grunted. “John, we’ll never learn what caused that strange shake-up unless we take the engines apart bolt by bolt.”
“I can’t imagine what could have caused it,” Reid said slowly. “I’m perfectly certain there was nothing wrong at my end. When the distance gauges showed that we were within Alpha’s system, I began to cut power from the field in just the gradations indicated by our stress-relaxation formulae. There was nothing wrong with these; I’d checked and rechecked them often enough during the trip. The meters showed the propelling warp to be folding in normally enough. It was almost gone, when—blam! I thought the Parsec had turned inside out.”
“Almost did—the old tub!” Lain growled. “I was tossed more than a dozen feet. Well, I guess the only thing that remains to be done now is to disassemble the engines. I’d never trust using them again without knowing just what was wrong.”
They stood silently together upon the rise. Except for essentials, there was little need for words between them. Their bitter struggle through the years had forged about them an unbreakable link of friendship.
It was a friendship which had begun at the university which both had attended during that turbulent last decade of the 26th century, when Earth and her rebellious subject worlds were rushing toward the brink of that terrible struggle later known as the War of the Planetary Secessions. It was a friendship founded on a mutual dream—interstellar travel.
To Doug Lain the dream had been one of finding a solution to the problem of crossing interstellar distances. But to Reid it had had more deep-reaching significance. He saw interstellar travel as the harbinger of a mighty galactic civilization, and, in its more immediate results, as something which would avert the conflict which then threatened.
All the habitable portions of the Solar System had become overcrowded; man’s last frontiers had fallen before his restless advance. There was seemingly nothing left in nature against which to pit his wits. So he had taken the only other outlet for his restless energies—he had invented quarrels with his fellows.
Earth’s colonial possessions, which had been satisfied with the Solar Federation for over two hundred years, had been clamoring for their independence. Reid realized that it wasn’t really this that they wanted. It was new fields to conquer, new outlets, new resources. Given the opportunity to spread out to the stars, they would quickly forget their petty quarrel with Earth.
But the problem of interstellar travel was a tremendous one. Somehow, a method had to be found which would enable the voyages to be made in as short a space of time as possible. They found the answer, finally, in Truman Varne’s “Supercosm” that vast and ingenious work which dealt with hyperspace as a higher extension of our three dimensional universe. Working from Varne’s theory and formulae, they had begun work upon a hyper-spacial drive.
But they had hardly progressed as far as building the first small warp-generating engine when the war broke out in a sudden flare-up of furious violence. In one stroke, Mars had seceded from the Solar Federation and taken over all Federation bases and Interplanetary Ranger stations within reach. A short time later all the other outer planets followed her example, leaving Earth, Venus, and Mercury facing a coalition of terrible, ruthless power.
Reid and Lain had worked feverishly while that titanic struggle raged about them. At first they had entertained the hope that the introduction of interstellar travel would bring about peace. But as the war progressed the hates and bitterness between both sides became so deep-seated and virulent that they had finally come to the sombre realization that nothing less than the complete extermination of one or the other would bring an end to the conflict.
By the time Reid and Lain perfected their hyperspatial drive engines, the Earth had lain in ruins. They themselves had escaped destruction only because they had hidden their laboratory deep in a wild and unfrequented portion of the Adirondack mountains.
Only one thing had been left to do, and they had done it. In the Parsec, that old rocket freighter which they had long ago secured as an adjunct to their experiments and within which they had now installed their hyper-spatial drive engines, they combed Earth’s devastated cities for the materials necessary for the start of a new civilization. From roving bands of refugees they had selected the best physical specimens of mankind still left, always on the alert for scientists, teachers, doctors, engineers. Then they had made a careful search for books, tools, food, and clothing. When they had gathered all of this available, they had departed for Alpha Centauri, leaving forever behind them the ruins and barbarism of what had once been a mighty interplanetary civilization. The trip through hyperspace had been uneventful enough, with the minor exception of the strange shake-up that had occurred when they had reached Alpha Centauri’s planetary system and emerged once more into normal space.
Doug Lain’s dream had been achieved. But his was the soul of an adventurer who, having overcome one problem, goes forever onward to meet the next. Hyperspace still presented many mysteries; Reid knew that Lain would be occupied with these for many years to come. As for himself, his dream lay down there in the valley, with the first crude Arkite settlement on New T
erra.
Reid’s interest had always been in people. Not people so much as individuals, but people as a race, a civilization. His vision of an interstellar culture had long since tumbled into dust, but out of it had arisen something deeper and finer, more personal. It was the dream of a new civilization—one that had carved out its own beginning from the stubborn crust of a new and virgin world. Though he knew he would never live long enough to see it reach the pinnacle of its glory and greatness, he found satisfaction in the knowledge that it would be himself who, with his own hands, had given it the impetus which had sent it upward.
The shadow of the Parsec was long upon the grass; the great, bloated disc of Alpha Centauri was almost touching the topmost peaks of the northern mountains. Down in the camp the first fires of the evening were being lit. But the coming of night brought no relief from the heat; it pressed down, thick and mostly humid.
Lain yawned and stretched his long, lean arms. “Well, it’s food and then bed for me. I’ll get back to work on the engines in the morning.”
Of a sudden, he stiffened, gripping Reid’s shoulder. “Listen!” he hissed.
A man’s cry, dim and far away, had sounded in a signal upon the air.
“The auxiliary!” Reid cried. “It’s coming back!”
Faintly at first, then louder and louder, the putt-putt of a rocket motor made itself audible. Silence had fallen heavily over the camp; the Arkites were standing like frozen statues among their fires, peering up at the darkening sky. In the west a tiny streak of flame became visible. It grew swiftly brighter until at last the auxiliary was circling the camp preparatory to landing.
The 38th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK Page 5