The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 6 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  As a result of all this, I can envisage what I can only call a “peace bomb.” Enemy agents working within a particular nation, can assemble telechronic batteries, operate them until a case occurs in which the final unit dissolves. That battery can then be encased in a steel capsule and placed near a stream well above high-water mark. Twenty-four hours later, a disastrous flood is bound to occur, since only so can water reach the container. This will be accompanied by high winds since only so can the container be smashed.

  Damage will undoubtedly be as great in its way as would result from an H-Bomb blast and yet the telechronic battery would be a “peace bomb” for its use will not bring on retaliation and war. There would be no reason to suspect anything but an act of God.

  Such a bomb requires little in the way of technology or expense. The smallest nation, the smallest of revolutionary or dissident groups could manage it.

  Sometimes in my more morbid moment, I wonder if perhaps Noah’s flood—the prototype of which actually has been recorded in Mesopotamian sediments—was not brought about by thiotimoline experiments among the ancient Sumerians.

  I tell you, gentlemen, if we have one urgent task ahead of us now it is to convince our government-to press for international control of all sources of thiotimoline. It is boundlessly useful when used properly; boundlessly harmful when used-improperly.

  Not a milligram of it must be allowed to reach irresponsible hands.

  Gentlemen, I call you to a crusade for the safety of the world!

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  * * * *

  BEACH SCENE

  by Marshall King

  On all the frontiers, new and old, physical and speculative, the perils, and hardships of exploration (be it danger of death, deprivation, excommunication, or no more than academic hilarity) attract two very different kinds of men: those driven by curiosity and those drawn to conquest— the seekers of light and the searchers for might. Often the conflict between them is even sharper than the endless quarrel between the frontiersmen (of all kinds) and those less restless souls who hold up the established foundations from which the explorers go forth.

  This story is Mr. King’s first published fiction.

  * * * *

  Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the ocean at last.

  When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.

  “On your mark!” he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that some object might try to get a head start. “Get set!” he challenged the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. “Stop!” He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder how tall the trees really were.

  His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be: the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant, its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and nimbi.

  With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie hurried toward the ocean.

  If only the days weren’t so short he thought. There was so much to see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now, as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.

  He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this day just for him. And who could say it wasn’t? he thought. Wasn’t this his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and wouldn’t dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!

  “I’ll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!” As he passed one of the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.

  When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing. He chose to ignore the negative maxim that “small children who stop time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it.”

  He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends when they learned of his brave journey.

  The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.

  He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!

  He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his “Hurrah!” came out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth orange curls waiting to start that action.

  And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers of munching seaweed.

  “Hi there!” Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that he himself was “dead” to the living world: he was still in a zone of time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.

  “Hi there!” he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.

  He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped, not the world around him.

  He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the tripons who, to him, had
just come to life.

  “I can stand on my head!” He set down his lunch and balanced himself bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.

  The tripon thought Purnie’s feat was superb. It stopped munching long enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its repast.

  Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual “Hi there!” when he heard them making sounds of their own.

  “... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!”

  “My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in San Diego?”

  “Hi there, wanna play?” Purnie’s invitation got nothing more than a startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter. He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them, tagging along at their heels. “I’ve got my lunch, want some?”

  “Benson, you’d better tell your men back there to stop gawking at die scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn’t pay for this expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation.”

  The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in their heels.

  “All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it’s your money that put us here; it’s your expedition all the way. But you hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that’s just what I’ve done. My job isn’t over yet. I’m responsible for the safety of the men while we’re here, and for the safe trip home.”

  “Precisely. Arid since you’re responsible, get ‘em working. Tell ‘em to bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the ocean with a three-legged ostrich!”

  “Good God, man, aren’t you human? We’ve only been on this planet twenty minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little creatures that run up to us like we’re long-lost brothers. Let the men look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim.”

  “Bah! Bunch of damn children.”

  As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. “Benson, will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!” Purnie shrieked with joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position he got an upside-down view of them walking away.

  He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway? What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out his lunch. “Want some?” No response.

  Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.

  “Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the vicinity. He’s trying to locate it now.”

  “‘There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That’ll make eighteen, I believe.”

  “Radiation, bah! We’ve found low-grade ore on every planet I’ve discovered so far, and this one’ll be no different. Now how about that flag? Let’s get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque.”

  “All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes’s pennant raised and his claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively now!”

  When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.

  “Well, Benson, you won’t have to look far for materials to use for the base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.”

  “Can’t use them. They’re petrified logs. The ones on top are too high to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will slide down on top of us.”

  “Well—that’s your problem. Just remember. I want this flag pole to be solid. It’s got to stand at least—”

  “Don’t worry, Forbes, we’ll get your monument erected. What’s this with the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a flag.”

  “There is, there is. Much more. I’ve taken care of all requirements set down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it sentiment if you will.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t. I’ve seen real-estate flags before.”

  “Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal? What I’m doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering.”

  “Of course. And if I’m not mistaken, you’ve set up a neat little escrow system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them.”

  “I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man! It’s people like me who give your space ships some place to go. It’s people like me who pour good money into a chancy job like this, so that people like you can get away from thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?”

  “I imagine you’ll triple your money in six months.”

  When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to himself, content to be in their company.

  He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see the remainder of the group running toward them. “Captain Benson! Here’s the flag, sir. And here’s Miles with the scintillometer. He says the radiation’s getting stronger over this way!”

  “How about that, Miles?”

  “This thing’s going wild, Captain. It’s almost off scale.”

  Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box. Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. “Can you do this?” He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful noises, and he felt most satisfied.

  “Stand back, Captain! Here’s the source right here! This little chuckwalla’s hotter than a plutonium pile!”

  “Let me see that, Miles. Well, I’ll be damned! Now what do you suppose—”

  By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand-new trick: he stood on one leg.

  “Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box.”

  “Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—”

  “This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!”

  “With my crew as witness, I officially protest—”

  “Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radioactive animals! Why, they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of these creatures around here some place. And to think of those damn fools on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I’ll have investors flocking to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or doesn’t it?”

  “Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be great danger to the crew—”

  “Now look here! You had planned to put mineral specimens in a lead box, so what’s the difference? Put him in a box.”

  “He’ll die.”

  “I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and what’s more, you are on my property. Put him in a box.”

  Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for, the st
rain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their own tricks.

  He didn’t have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box. Purnie sat up to watch the show.

  “Hell, Captain, why don’t I just pick him up? Looks like he has no intention of running away.”

  “Better not, Cabot. Even though you’re shielded, no telling what powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope.”

  “I swear he knows what we’re saying. Look at those eyes.”