A Way Home

by Theodore Sturgeon

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  Text originally published in 1955 under the same title.

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  Publisher’s Note

  Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

  We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

  A WAY HOME:

  STORIES OF SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY

  BY

  THEODORE STURGEON

  Selected and with and Introduction by Groff Conklin

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Contents

  TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

  THE BEST STORIES OF A TOP WRITER OF SCIENCE FICTION 5

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR 6

  INTRODUCTION 7

  UNITE AND CONQUER 10

  SPECIAL APTITUDE 43

  MEWHU’S JET 56

  HURRICANE TRIO 87

  THE HURKLE IS A HAPPY BEAST 109

  THUNDER AND ROSES 116

  BULKHEAD 136

  TINY AND THE MONSTER 160

  A WAY HOME 187

  REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 193

  THE BEST STORIES OF A TOP WRITER OF SCIENCE FICTION

  UNITE AND CONQUER—Was he Saint or Devil—this man who forced our world into peace?

  SPECIAL APTITUDE—He was the fall guy on the third expedition to Venus, but he brought back the planet’s secrets.

  MEWHU’S JET—A friendly little guy from Mars shows up on earth and breaks up a marital quarrel.

  THE HURKLE IS A HAPPY BEAST—He enjoys his visit to earth greatly and innocently manages to shape the destiny of the world...

  These and other gripping and compelling stories will keep you enthralled from beginning to end....

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  THEODORE STURGEON’S novels and short stories have been startling, moving, and entertaining readers since 1939. They fit into no hard-and-fast category, and have in common only the power to give the reader the feeling of seeing something for the first time—whether the something is man, monster, or the Universe.

  INTRODUCTION

  OF RECENT YEARS, science fiction has been flowing in two main channels. The first, which is the one people who are unfamiliar with the genre associate most frequently with it, is the story based on super-science. It has been called “space opera,” and its essential structure is that of melodrama. In stories of this sort, the central aspect is adventure, whether the adventure be the exploration of a remote planet with almost inconceivably alien life-forms, or time-travel for the sake of excitement, or a great catastrophe such as the conquest of Earth by the inhabitants of a mad planet, or an outburst of fearful vulcanism, or any one of hundreds of other imaginative suppositions, frequently of an all-too-mechanical and arbitrary kind.

  The other, second channel is substantially different. The stories which flow down it are based on problems, and generally problems of a sociological or economic sort. The oldest stories of this kind are of utopias, but many of the modern ones employ the impact of alien cultures and races to make their points. Visitors from outer space arrive to improve humanity, or to wipe it out as a dangerous cosmic infection. An administrator confronts the necessity for forestalling a violent social collapse. Or hardening of the human social arteries has set in from too much mechanical perfection, and the central character must discover a way to restore the creative sense of life. These themes and many similar ones are more mature than the melodrama and gadgetry of the first channel, but they contain an inherent pitfall: their authors are frequently convinced that they have an answer, or even the answer, to the problems they pose. Much of the writing in this channel is somewhat oversupplied with Message.

  One of the stories included in this collection contains a merciless comment on this situation, framed in a pun of such oppositeness that the reader will never be able wholly to forget it. A science-fiction writer is described as having “sold his birthright for a pot of message.” A bad bargain. It is a sad but observable fact that few people read fiction, whether science or western or any other kind, for the purpose of having themselves improved. What they stubbornly insist upon is to be entertained rather than preached at.

  For a long time those of us who delight in science fiction and believe in it as a valid and living form of fiction have watched with pleasure Theodore Sturgeon’s development as a writer. Increasingly as he has matured he has learned to handle the dramatic sense of adventure derived from the first channel, and the sense of human importance from the second, without falling into the pits which lie in wait for the unwary or superficial storyteller. The kind of story he has been writing of late is, indeed, almost unique in the genre; he has always told a magnificent story, and recently—in the past five or six years—he has been telling it with more and more of what might be called “exterior impact,” an impact which often has a powerful meaning for the society of today and tomorrow.

  This is not all. Indeed, it is not even the major quality which has drawn more and more readers to follow Mr. Sturgeon’s work. That quality is the one which makes every form of fiction live, and the absence of which makes any fiction sterile. It is the sense of human character, the sense of people as people. For fiction is people—people in three dimensions, living, breathing, laughing, crying, thinking, and growing.

  With ever-increasing assurance, Mr. Sturgeon is becoming a master of the art of creating people instead of stick figures. His stories more and more flow out of the people in them, and in this development of his craft he is moving steadily closer to the living heart of all fiction, which is the depiction of individual man and his goals, of character and its development, of all the multitude of facets which make up any single human being. More than anyone else in recent years, he has worked at the problem and the art of making science fiction and fantasy a human experience. No matter how melodramatic his stories may appear on the surface, no matter how arbitrary the machinery which he may choose to use, his newer stories are all essentially concerned with people and their growth, or their dissolution if that happens to be the theme of the particular tale.

  It has not always been so. One of the earlier stories which established his reputation with the devotees of science fiction was his now famous—and superb—“Killdozer.” There are only a few human characters in it, and for the most part they are shadowy and almost unrealized as people. The center of the stage is occupied by the story’s plot gadget, a bulldozer that proves to be both sentient and malevolent. The author does a magnificent job of suggesting this malevolence, and the reader is totally convinced that the machine can think and hate and lust to kill. To the extent that all this seems real, the machine has become human, but by the very nature of the plot, the possibility of growth in character, of interaction between person and person, is excluded.

  By way of contrast, the reader will do well to look at the story in this collection called “Hurricane Trio.” The author has said that in its original form this story contained no element of science fiction, and perhaps some will consider that it should finally have been written that way. Mr. Sturgeon’s point, however
, is not that he used an alien deus ex—or rather, in—machina to resolve his plot, but rather to heighten the basic reality of the terrible human dilemma with which the story is concerned and its slow solution by the three people involved.

  Furthermore, there is one tale in this book that is not science fiction at all. The title story, “A Way Home,” originally appeared in a science-fiction magazine, but it is in reality a poignant study of boy psychology. Since boys and girls are by nature spinners of fantasy, dreamers by day as well as~ by night, the story carries with it an atmosphere of fantasy, but closer examination will reveal that it is a thoroughly real incident in a child’s development.

  Not that fantasy is something which Theodore Sturgeon avoids. He can turn out wonderful straight spoofs and flights of fantasy; “The Hurkle,” in this collection, is an example of this aspect of his talent. He has previously published two science-fiction collections. Without Sorcery and E Pluribus Unicorn, both of which contain many of his eerie, supernatural inventions. The intention of this present volume is to complement the earlier ones, and to display Mr. Sturgeon’s major gift as a writer of more orthodox science fiction. The nine stories included have been winnowed from a list of over fifty; a number of them have appeared in other anthologies. Mr. Sturgeon is one of the most widely anthologized of living writers in English, and it would be impossible to present a sound group of his best stories without using some which have appeared in other collections.

  None of the author’s early stories have been included. His first science fiction appeared in 1939, and the oldest tale in this book was published less than ten years ago, in 1946. The reader who wants to go on to the best of those earlier years will find Sturgeon stories in anthology after anthology. Meanwhile, within the limits of publishing space, here is a thoroughly representative collection of the author’s science fiction of more recent vintage. It bears eloquent witness to Theodore Sturgeon’s rank in his own field and in the wider field of contemporary fiction.

  GROFF CONKLIN

  New York City

  February 1, 1955

  UNITE AND CONQUER

  THEY WERE DIGGING THIS DRAINAGE CANAL, and the time-keeper drove out to the end where the big crane-dragline was working, and Called the operator down to ask a lot of questions about a half-hour of overtime. Next thing you know, they were going round and round on the fill. The young superintendent saw the fight and yelled for them to cut it out. They ignored him. Not wanting to dirty his new breeches, the super swung up into the machine, loaded three yards of sand into the bucket, hoisted it high, swung, and dumped it on the scrambling pair. The operator and the timekeeper floundered out from under, palmed sand out of their eyes and mouths, and with a concerted roar converged on the cab of the machine. They had the super out on the ground and were happily taking turns at punching his head when a labor foreman happened by, and he and his men stopped the fuss.

  The red-headed youngster put down the book. “It’s true here, too,” he told his brother. “I mean, what I was saying about almost all of Well’s best science fiction. In each case there’s a miracle—a Martian invasion in ‘War of the Worlds,’ a biochemical in ‘Food of the Gods,’ and a new gaseous isotope in ‘In the Days of the Comet.’ And it ultimately makes all of mankind work together.”

  The brother was in college—had been for seven months—and was very wise. “That’s right. He knew it would take a miracle. I think he forgot that when he began to write sociological stuff. As Dr. Pierce remarked, he sold his birthright for a pot of message.”

  “Excuse me,” said the dark man called Rod. He rose and went to the back of the café and the line of phone booths, while the girl with the tilted nose and the red sandals stared fondly after him. The Blonde arrived.

  “Ah,” she mewed, “alone, I see. But of course.” She sat down.

  “I’m with Rod,” said the girl with the sandals, adding primly, “He’s phoning.”

  “Needed someone to talk to, no doubt,” said the Blonde.

  “Probably,” said the other, smiling at her long fingers, “he needed to come back to earth.”

  The Blonde barely winced. “Oh well. I suppose he must amuse himself between his serious, moments. He’ll have one tomorrow night, you know. At the dance. Pity I won’t see you there. Unless, of course, you come with someone else—”

  “He’s working tomorrow night!” blurted the girl with the sandals, off guard.

  “You could call it that,” said the Blonde placidly.

  “Look, sunshine,” said the other girl evenly, “why don’t you stop kidding yourself? Rod isn’t interested in you and your purely local color. He isn’t even what you want. If you’re looking for a soulmate, go find yourself a wolfhound.”

  “Darling,” said the Blonde appreciatively, and with murder in her mascara. “You know, you might get him, at that. If you brush up on your cooking, and if he can keep his appetite by going blind—” She leaned forward suddenly. “Look there. Who is that floozy?”

  They turned to the back of the cafe. The dark young man was holding both hands of a slender but curve some girl with deep auburn hair. She was laughing coyly up at him.

  “Fancy Pants,” breathed the girl with the red sandals. She turned to the Blonde. “I know whereof I speak. Her clothesline’ is right under my window, and—”

  “The little stinker,” said the Blonde. She watched another pretty convulsion of merriment. “Clothesline, hm-m-m? Listen—I had a friend once who had a feud on with a biddy in the neighborhood. There was something about a squirt gun and some ink—”

  “Well, well,” said the girl in the sandals. She thought a moment, watching Rod and the redhead. “Where could I get a squirt gun?”

  “My kid brother has a water pistol. I got it for him for his birthday. Can you meet me here at seven o’clock?”

  “I certainly can. I’ll get the ink. Black ink. India ink!”

  The Blonde rose. “Be sweet to him,” she said swiftly, “so he won’t guess who fixed Fancy Pants.”

  “I will. But not too sweet. The heel. Darling, you’re wonderful—”

  The Blonde winked and walked away. And at a nearby table, a gentleman who had been eavesdropping shamelessly stuffed a soft roll into an incipient roar of laughter, and then began to choke.

  “Colonel Simmons,” said the annunciator.

  “Well, for pete’s sake!” said Dr. Simmons. “Send him in. Send him right in! And—cancel that demonstration. No...don’t cancel it. Postpone it.”

  “Until when, Doctor?”

  “Until I get there.”

  “But—it’s for the Army—”

  “My brother’s the Army, too!” snapped the physicist and switched off.

  A knock. “Come in. Leroy, you dog!”

  “Well, Muscles.” The colonel half ran into the room, gripped the scientist by the upper arm, scanned his face up, back, and across. Their eyes were gray, the colonel’s gray and narrow, the doctor’s gray and wide. “It must’ve been—” they said in unison, and then laughed together.

  “Eight years, anyway,” said the colonel.

  “All of that. Gosh, gosh.” He shook his head. “You and your shiny buttons.”

  There was a silence. “Hardly know where to begin, what to say, h-m-m?” grinned the colonel. “What’ve you been doing lately?”

  “Oh...you know. Applied physics.”

  “Hah!” snorted the colonel. “Question: Mr. Michelangelo, what are you doing? Answer: Mixing pigments. Come on, now; what since you invented magnefilm?”

  “Nothing much. Couple of things too unimportant to talk about, couple more too important to mention.”

  “Your old garrulous self, I see. Come on, Muscles. Security regulations don’t apply here, and between us especially.”

  That’s what you think, thought Dr. Simmons. “Of course not,” he said. “What branch are you with now?”

  “Publicly, the Air Corps,” said the colonel, indicating his wings. “Actually, I’m on the Board of St
rategy. This won’t be the kind of war which can be fought with semi-public conferences and decisions after advisement in the General Staff. The Board operates practically underground, without any publicity, and without any delay.”

  “Board of Strategy, eh? I’d heard only vaguely...and I’m in a position to hear plenty. Well now. When you say no delay, what do you mean?”

  “I mean this,” said the colonel. He put his hands behind him on a high lab table and lifted himself up on it. He crossed his bright boots and swung them. “We have plans...look; you know how M-Day plans work, don’t you?”

  “Certainly. The personnel of draft boards is all chosen, the questionnaires are printed and almost entirely distributed, the leases and domains of examination centers are arranged for, and so on and on. When mobilization is called, everything starts operating without a hitch. You hope,” he added with a grin. “Why?”

  “The Board operates the same way,” said his brother. “But where Selective Service has only one big problem to arrange for in detail we have—” he shrugged. “Name your figure. We have planned what to do if, for example, Russia attacks us, if we attack Russia, if France attacks Brazil, or if Finland takes a swing at Iraq. What’s funny?”

  “I was thinking of the legend about the emperor who tried to grant the reward asked for by a certain hero, who had stipulated simply that he be given some wheat, the amount to be determined by a hypothetical chessboard, putting one grain on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, eight on the fourth, and so on...anyway, it wound up with an amount equal to a couple of years’ world supply, and with the empire and all its resources in the hands of our hero. Your plans are like that. I mean, if one of the possibilities you mention should occur, but if you should lose the third battle instead of winning it as scheduled, why, you’ll have a whole new set of plans to make. And this applies to every one of your original master plans.”