The 38th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK

by Chester S. Geier

  “Oh, Sue!” Amelia spat contemptuously. She leaned forward, her face intense. “Tom, don’t be a sentimental fool. What has Sue to offer that I can’t? She’s just a penniless snip of a girl. All your life with her you’d have to skimp and scrape to meet bills. You weren’t made for a life like that. And, Tom, I’m offering you your only chance. You won’t get another like it.”

  Again he shook his head. “I, I can’t do it—honestly. I just couldn’t forget Sue.”

  Amelia tried another tack. “Perhaps I’ve been too hasty about this matter, Tom. I’ll give you a few days to think it over.”

  “It’s no use,” he answered doggedly. “I won’t change my mind.”

  Amelia rose to her feet. Her angular thin, form was shaking, and her face was very white. “Then…you just won’t consider marrying me?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Amelia swayed, caught herself. The room whirled crazily before her eyes. A burning constriction in her throat prevented her from uttering the scathing denunciation which frothed up within her. She turned blindly and ran from the room.

  Amelia threw herself upon her bed and sobbed her rage, humiliation, and disappointment into the pillow. Later, in all her bedraggled finery, she fell asleep. When she awoke, it was still dark. She stared into the darkness, and a plan began to shape itself in her thwarted mind.

  Sue… Now, as never before, Amelia hated Sue. She loathed the girl for her youth and beauty, from which no amount of promised wealth seemed able to turn Tom Vale.

  Sue stood in the way of her happiness, Amelia thought grimly. Sue was an enemy. Therefore—Sue would be next to wear the jewel.

  Amelia could not get back to sleep. She lay still upon the bed, gazing fixedly before her, until the morning sun shone bright and warm through the windows of her room. Then she rose, bathed and dressed. A careful application of cosmetics made her face look normal enough.

  Finally Amelia felt herself ready for what she had to do. From its case she took the jewel. Then she walked quickly to Sue’s room, rapped softly at the door.

  “Some in.” Sue was still in bed, her chestnut hair tumbled upon the pillow, her blue eyes moist with sleep.

  “Good morning, dear,” Amelia greeted. She sat down on the side of the bed. “Did Tom tell you what happened last night?”

  “Why, no,” Sue replied. An expression of bewilderment removed the welcoming smile from her small face. “What do you mean, Amelia?”

  “We had a little quarrel,” Amelia said, as though reluctant to admit it. “It was nothing really important, but I’m afraid we did hurt each other’s feelings.”

  Sue looked relieved. “Tom acted very strange when I rejoined him last night, and I wondered what was wrong. Amelia, that quarrel. It couldn’t have been over money?”

  “It was—in a way.” Amelia turned her head to hide, the flush which leaped into her face.

  “You offered Tom the money he needed for his business, and he refused. Wasn’t that it? Oh, Amelia, it was good of you! Tom’s so stubborn.”

  Amelia nodded quickly. “Yes—he is. And that’s why I want you to have this.” Amelia produced the jewel, dangling at the end of its loop of gold chain. “I know the situation in which you find yourself with Tom, and I can’t see anything else I can do to help you. I hope this will cheer you up—even just a little. Will you wear it?”

  “Wear it?” Sue exclaimed. “Of course I will! It’s beautiful.” She fastened the chain about her throat, and the jewel glowed pinkish-red w against her white skin. She began to cry. “Amelia—you’re so good.”

  “There, there,” Amelia murmured soothingly. “Come now, get dressed and we’ll have breakfast.”

  That afternoon, Sue complained of not feeling well. By evening she had taken to bed, listless and weak.

  When Tom called, he was alarmed at Sue’s condition. “She’s sick,” he told Amelia. “I think we’d better call a doctor.”

  “Sue will be all right in the morning,” Amelia answered, with the assurance of one woman who understands the ills of another.

  But Tom continued to worry. He sat at the side of Sue’s bed until the hour grew very late. Finally he came down to the living room, where Amelia sat pretending to read. His face was white and grim.

  “Listen, this is serious,” he said. “We’ll just have to call a doctor.”

  Amelia looked at his determined face. She saw at once that argument was useless. “If you insist. But I really don’t think there’s anything very wrong with Sue.”

  “Perhaps not, but we’d better play safe,” Tom insisted.

  Amelia hid the swift rage which flamed within her. Hating Tom Vale for having forced her to do it, she put in a telephone call to Dr. Thayer.

  Thayer had been the Blanding family physician for many years, a short, ruddy-faced man, with thin strands of gray hair brushed carefully over the top of his head. He went up to see Sue as soon as he arrived. Amelia and Tom Vale followed, standing by silently while Thayer made his examination. Sue looked very thin and pale. Amelia noticed; with an inner glow of satisfaction, that the jewel was still hanging on its chain about the girl’s throat had deepened in color.

  At last, Thayer straightened up, removing a stethoscope from his ears. His jovial features were puzzled.

  “What is it, Doctor?” Tom Vale prompted. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “That’s just it,” Thayer responded; “I don’t know. Sue is a very sick girl—yet strangely she doesn’t show any recognizable symptoms. I’ve never ran across anything like this before.” Thayer pulled at his lower lip, frowning deeply. Finally he sat down in a chair beside the bed.

  Tom Vale began to pace the floor, face haggard, clenched hands working anxiously. Thayer watched Sue, the frown heavy upon his face.

  Amelia remained until she could bear the silent tension of the scene no longer. She went to her room and lay down, smiling exultantly into the, darkness. Her plan was working—working magnificently. The jewel, still sated from old Harriet, was working rather slowly but apparently just as thoroughly. It wouldn’t be long now until Sue was dead. And then. Amelia’s smile grew.

  * * * *

  Sunlight glaring into her closed eyes awakened Amelia. She sat up in bed, astonished to find that it was morning. She washed, changed her dress, and left the room. Out in the hall, she heard a buzz of voices from below. She began to descend the stairs. Almost at the same time, Tom Vale appeared at the bottom and began to mount quickly toward her.

  Amelia stopped at the head of the stairs. “Good morning, Tom. How’s Sue?”

  “Not much better,” he said. His face was grooved with lines of weariness, his hair and clothing disheveled.

  Amelia stared at him. Not much better. Something was wrong! Sue should have succumbed entirely to the jewel by now!

  “Thayer still doesn’t know what’s wrong, with Sue,” Tom went on. “He’s sent to the Coast for a specialist in rare diseases. The man is coming here by special plane.” Tom Vale’s gaze dropped to his hands. Abruptly he looked up, his ravaged features purposeful. “This is going to cost a lot of money. More than Sue has—or that I can hope to raise. I know you can’t be expected to pay the bill after, after what happened between us yesterday. But the money has to be obtained some way, and so—well, if your offer of marrying me still holds, I’ll accept if you’ll see that Sue is taken care of.”

  “You…you’d marry me—just for that?” Amelia gasped. Indignant rage rose within her.

  Tom vale nodded slowly. “Yes—and that’s why I want to return this to you.” From a pocket of his coat, he produced the jewel, swaying on its chain. “While Sue was able to talk last night, she told me why you gave this to her—because of me. I want you to take it back. I won’t be stubborn any more. I’ll do what’s right by both of you.”

  Tom held out the jewel to her. Amelia stared at it, feeling a
n abrupt surge of frustrated fury. Only dimly was she aware that he was speaking again.

  “I took this from Sue, because I didn’t want her wearing it as a symbol of my uselessness. I couldn’t have taken care of her, being penniless, and she wouldn’t have been happy. This is the best way…”

  Amelia shook with her anger. A red mist rose before her eyes. Sue! Always Sue! Everything he did was for Sue—even as to removing the jewel before it had done its deadly work. Suddenly, viciously, Amelia grabbed at the thing where it hung from his fingers.

  She had it. She felt it clutched tightly in her hand. And then, off balance, she flailed wildly at empty air. The next thing she knew, the stairs were leaping up crazily to meet her, and she was plunging down, down—falling just as she had always feared she would fall. There was a terrible shock—another. Then everything went black.

  * * * *

  Dr. Thayer looked down at Amelia where she lay in bed, and his round, ruddy face wore a curiously mingled expression of pity and disgust, Amelia’s head was swathed in bandages, but she didn’t seem to mind. She gazed back at Thayer with eyes that were bright and happy. Her mouth was open in a loose, vacuous smile, and a trickle of saliva ran down one corner of her angular chin.

  Dr. Thayer turned away. “There’s no doubt about it,” he said huskily. “That fall down the stairs did something to her brain. I’m afraid she’ll never be the same again.”

  “How awful!” Sue said. “Poor Amelia!” She buried her face in Tom Vale’s coat. Several days had passed since the accident, and Sue had swiftly grown strong enough to walk about unaided.

  “If Amelia doesn’t show any improvement, I’ll have to have her committed to a private sanatorium,” Thayer said. “She’ll receive proper care, there,” Suddenly he brightened. “I had a talk with lawyer Hurley. He told me, in the event that I was sure Amelia could be declared incompetent, that the Blanding estate would revert to Sue. Well, I’m quite sure.”

  Sue’s small face became radiant. “Tom!” she cried. “Do you know what that means?”

  Tom Vale nodded slowly. “And I promise not to be stubborn about it. I’ve caused enough trouble as it is.”

  On the bed, Amelia gurgled deep in her throat as if in response. Her hands toyed affectionately with the red jewel that hung from a gold chain about her neck.

  “She seems attached to that bauble,” Thayer observed. “You just can’t take it away from her. Well, if it’ll keep her happy, she can have it—”

  MIRAGE WORLD

  Originally published in Amazing Stories, December 1945.

  Conley insisted relentlessly, “I tell you, there’s no time to lose. We’ve got to land at once.”

  “But, Commander, there’s something in the way,” Ayers protested. “The radar set shows it—even if the viewscreen doesn’t.”

  “Then there’s something very wrong with the radar set,” Conley grunted, “You’ve tried landing four times so far—and each time the radar set indicated Something in the way. Apparently, though, there’s nothing wrong with the viewscreen. It’s dark out there, but I can see what seems to be level country.”

  Biting his lip in hesitation, Ayers leaned forward in his pilot chair, narrowed eyes probing the indistinct black and grey outlines which showed in the viewscreen. There was seemingly no obstacle in the path of the ship—yet each time he tried to land, the radar set buzzed its warning.

  Conley followed the direction of Ayer’s gaze and frowned in perplexity. There was something about this world, Adulonn—perhaps some freak atmospheric condition—which was raising hell with the instruments. Just a little over a half hour ago, both he and Ayers had glimpsed in the viewscreen the lighted outlines of a vast city on the surface of the planet. But when Ayers had sent the ship soaring down toward the city preliminary to landing, it had suddenly vanished. Now the radar set was warning of obstructions which to all appearances were not there.

  The Sol Star was floating on its normal-space antigravity drive some five hundred feet above the surface of Adulonn. It was night on this side of the planet, but there was sufficient light from the clustering stars overhead to make the surface mistily visible. From what Conley could make out in the viewscreen, there were no exceptionally tall trees or any other form of giant vegetation. The dim illumination of the stars showed the smooth expanse of a rolling prairie. There was clearly enough nothing at all at this height which would possibly be in the direct path of the ship.

  Conley straightened with abrupt impatience. “We’re wasting time,” he told Ayers. “You know the urgency of our mission. We’ve got to land and find that city we sighted a short time ago.”

  Ayers nodded his red head slowly. “I know that, Commander, but I don’t like the way the radar set is acting.”

  “It’s probably just due to some strange condition of the atmosphere,” Conley said. “Invisible low-lying semisolid masses of moisture or gas, or something of the sort. This world is as yet unexplored, and there’s no telling what weird properties it may have. The city we saw might actually have been much further away than it seemed due to some kind of atmospheric distortion. Since air masses are constantly in motion, the apparent disappearance of the city may have been due to the sudden removal of the distorting properties.”

  Ayers shrugged uneasily. “I still don’t like it,” he said. “I can’t explain my feelings exactly, but when you’ve been piloting ships as long as I have, you get strange hunches about such things as landings and take-offs.”

  “Whether you like it or not makes little difference,” Conley reminded crisply. “The fact remains that we have to land. We can’t wait until dawn. Every second counts.”

  Ayers glanced at Gage, who sat behind his astronavigator’s chart table at the rear of the control room. Gage lifted his slim shoulders in a shrug. “Commander Conley is in charge of the expedition, Jorg.”

  The control room door opened abruptly. Randolf Tillman strode in, his square, bluff face set in lines of exasperation. “What’s the matter here?” he demanded. “Why is it taking so long to land?”

  Behind him, other figures came crowding into the control room. Conley’s eyes passed over Stepan Osgood, Vane Morehouse, Naeda Russell, and Dav Thurmer, chief engineer of the Sol Star. Conley gazed a moment at Naeda Russell, and as her eyes met his, he saw those very special lights kindle in their warm brown depths.

  Randolf Tillman repeated his questions angrily. “What’s the matter? Why haven’t we landed?”

  Conley surveyed Tillman’s richly-attired, stocky form in annoyance. He wondered again how Tillman, so lacking in tact and patience, had been appointed ambassador to Adulonn by the Executive Council of the Terran Empire. It seemed to Conley that Tillman’s diplomacy consisted merely of making difficult situations even more difficult.

  Conley turned his thoughts to the matter at hand. He explained the odd behavior of the radar set and Ayer’s reluctance to land in the dark.

  Tillman frowned uncertainly. “I am fully aware, Commander, that it is imperative that we land immediately. But in view of what you have said, it might not be wise to act in haste. Every precaution must be taken so that we may return safely to Terra with a means of combating the Plague—provided, of course, that the Adulei have a means.”

  The people grouped behind Tillman gave murmurs of assent. Conley noted that Naeda Russell had remained silent. In her brown eyes he saw unquestioning faith in whatever decisions he might make. It gave him renewed confidence and determination.

  “We’re going to land at once,” Conley stated firmly. “Please return to your shock-seats until I give the all-clear signal.”

  Tillman shook his wiry gray head dubiously. The others merely shrugged. Muttering among themselves, they left the control room.

  Conley turned to Ayers. “All right, let’s get this over with. Land the ship—and ignore the radar set.”

  “Aye sir.” Ayers took a
deep breath and hunched over the control console.

  His practiced hands slid deftly over various switches and keys. The Sol Star slid smoothly into motion, angled down toward the surface of Adulonn.

  Conley watched the viewscreen, and a little of the tension of the past month began to leave him. One month of arduous travel, looping in and out of hyperspace. Going in “here” and coming out “there”—dozens of light-years away. Find your guide-stars, set your coordinates on the Drive, and go in. Then out at the end of the mapped time. Find your guide-stars all over again, set your coordinates all over again, and then in again. In and out, in and out—over and over. One month of that. One month that was one century of anxiety and apprehension, of dark, crawling fear that ate deep into your vitals like an acid.

  It wasn’t fear for himself or fear for Naeda or for anything close to him. It wasn’t personal. It was larger than that. It was something that encompassed the entire human race.

  Just three more months, Conley reminded himself for the hundredth time. Just three more months in which to find a serum or a drug—something, anything, that would stop the Plague.

  The Plague… In his mind’s eye, Conley saw the beginning of it and the two possible endings of it—and he shuddered.

  * * * *

  The beginning of it had been almost two years ago when in the course of its duties Mapping Expedition 14 had stumbled upon Adulonn. The Hyperspace Drive was a wonderful thing. You went in “here” and you came out “there,” dozens—even hundreds—of light-years away. But if you wanted to know where “there” was, you had to have fixed coordinates and an accurate mapped time. This so you could find a certain planetary system in the Milky Way without landing up instead in the Pleiades. Thus the Mapping Expeditions were in effect the trail blazers of the 31st Century.

  On Adulonn, Mapping Expedition 14 had found a highly advanced race of humanoid beings who called themselves the Adulei. Communication had been made possible by the fact that the Adulei possessed a high degree of telepathic ability, which enabled them to read the thoughts of the members of the mapping expedition and transmit thoughts of their own. The Adulei lived in a vast and beautiful city called Itarra. They had not yet achieved space travel, but in other scientific fields, they were closely on a par with Terran civilization.