Before The Golden Age - A SF Anthology of the 1930s

by Edited By Isaac Asimov

  His aim had been good. The flask was pierced at top and bottom, and a thin stream of water was jetting forth, trickling over the glassy rock toward us. It made a little pool at his feet, lipped over, and the double rank of tetrahedra drew back to let it pass. It formed another little pool, close to the base of their giant leader. He wasn’t taking bluffs! A flash of blinding energy and the pool was steam and the rock white-hot! Marston learned another word.

  “Water—dead! We—tetrahedra—Mercury and Earth!”

  Not so good! Marston tried another.

  “You—tetrahedra—Mercury. Water—tetrahedron—Earth!”

  An alarming idea that! Water the lord of Earth!

  “Water—no—dead!” Decided negation in the drum. He pointed. True enough, the steam was condensing and running down the smooth rock in little droplets. Water could not be killed! It always came back!

  “We—tetrahedra—water!”

  Phew! That was a statement! He proved it. He dabbled his fingers in the pool at his feet, took some up in his hand and slicked back his hair. I gave a thunderous grunt by way of attracting attention, uncapped the other canteen, and poured a long and very visible stream of water down my throat. Marston took the canteen and did the same, then sent me for more water, a pailful.

  “Water—tetrahedron—Earth!” he reiterated. He illustrated his point, dipped water from the pail with much splashing and poured it over my relief of the Earth, filling the hollows of the seas. He emphasized it, with a gloomy note in his drumming. “Water—tetrahedron—Earth. Water. Water!”

  He had another hunch, rolled Venus around its orbit. “What?” asked the drum. He was answered, glumly. He dipped Venus in the water. Venus was pumice and floated.

  “Water—tetrahedron—Venus?” Oh, decidedly. The purple giant was sure of that. Marston tried Mercury. Mercury sank. Time after time it sank. Water didn’t like Mercury.

  “You — tetrahedra — Mercury. Water—no —tetrahedron —Mercury.” A pause. Then slowly, ominously—”Water— tetrahedron—you!”

  And he was right. Water had them licked. I had a bright idea, and Marston moved camp to the brink of the lake, striding like a conqueror between the double file of tetrahedra. Arrived beside the water, with the giant fairly close and the army very much in the background, I stripped and dove in—”brought up bottom”—brought up a chunk of half-dissolved purple crystal! Marston rubbed it in, gleefully.

  “Water—tetrahedron—you!” They had to admit it. Now he tried to coin a word—pointed to the sky and shuffled syllables on the drum. “Up—up. Water—up.” The giant caught on and supplied the correct term. Marston coined a real one—a genial, murmurous “Thank-you”—on his drum. I tried my hand again, dipped up a bucket of water and doused Marston, then stepped toward the great tetrahedron with another. He retreated. I wallowed in it myself instead—childish, but convincing. By now the idea was definitely set that water was rank poison to the tetrahedra and a second home to us. Now for the real information!

  Marston drummed attention and reassurance, and the great leader glided back, carefully avoiding puddles. I could see that he floated about three inches clear of the ground. Perhaps, with the lesser gravitation of Mercury, he flew.

  I started demonstrating my little Solar System again, while Marston announced again that Earth was largely water—no fit place for tetrahedra —water that could be killed, but that came down again in rain. He drilled in the idea of rain, until he was sure he had made his point, securing various Mercutian expressions of disgust and dislike. He found a word for “rain”—really coined one, for it did not seem to exist in Mercutian. It was a combination of “water” and “up,” so as to be quite clear, with a double-ruffle of emphasis to characterize it. The etymology of the word was quite clear to all concerned. They knew what rain was, now.

  I had poked a hole through the soft, thin rock of Mercury’s orbit and put clay plugs in Earth’s orbit at diametrically opposite points. Now Marston demonstrated. He poured water on Mercury. It vanished.

  “Mercury—no—rain. No!” The entire host had crowded in, and there was a general murmur of assent

  Venus, on the other hand, being a deep groove, held plenty of water. “Venus—rain. Water—tetrahedron—Venus.”

  They got that, too. Weather of Venus is ideal for ducks and frogs—wot for tetrahedra.

  He moved out one planet, and I could feel a tensing. They knew what he was driving at! He was going to describe weather-conditions of Earth. Half Earth’s orbit held water to the brim. The other half was rather damp. He slowly moved Earth around her circles, showing that six months were wet and six not so wet. He took to the drum for emphasis.

  “Water—tetrahedron—Earth. We—tetrahedron—water. Water—tetrahedron—you.” A delicate inference. Then, slowly, emphatically, “Water—Venus. Water—Earth.” And now his final card.

  He set Mercury in its orbit, placed Venus almost opposite, paused. The giant assented. That was where the planets were at present. He skipped Earth and went to Mars, rolled it along its orbit, stopped it. Assent. All true, so far. And now I saw his point, for when he dropped Earth in place, very nearly in line between Mars and Mercury, it fell in the middle of the dry half of the orbit!

  A hundred tetrahedra slid back a yard or so in recoil. This rain which had drowned out practically all of their army of thousands, was an example of our dry season! By inference, our real wet weather must have been sheer Mercutian hell to every tetrahedron of them!

  But Marston was too good a diplomat to give them a hands off without suggesting an alternative. He slowly poured water on Mars. Mars apparently, and actually, had a hole in its bottom, for it drained bone dry. Mars, now, was very nice. But Earth was nasty and wet, as bad as Venus or worse. And it was inhabited by a race of super-intelligent fish, to judge from the impression he gave the tetrahedra. He picked up the drum for a last word.

  “Earth—rain. Mars—no—rain. We—Earth. You—no—Earth. You—Mars?” He dwelt on the question. “Mars? Mars???” He rolled out an endless question-mark, then suddenly quit, took a long, flashing drink of water from the flask, and dove into the lake, clothes and all. I followed him, and together we splashed to the other shore, making our mastery of the water very evident, then climbed out, waiting. If things worked out, all well and good. If they didn’t—well, we had the lake between us.

  And it did work! For a moment they stood motionless, the mighty sixteen-foot tetrahedron of royal purple and his eight-foot purple retinue, silent, considering. Then came a sudden command, and the hundred flowed in orderly motion to the spheres, entered. Their mighty master was alone. For an instant he hesitated, then swept forward to the very edge of the lake. From this towering peak beat the white lightnings, lashing the purple waters into great billowing clouds of steam that threw up a dense wall of mist between us! Through the hiss of the steam came his thunderous voice, in last comment upon the invasion of his tetrahedral race! Marston translated, softly:

  “Water—tetrahedron—Earth. You—tetrahedron—water. We—kill—water! You—Earth. We—Mars. Mars!” And a long, rolling assent, an infinitely underlined YES!”

  Water and Earth seemed to be synonymous, and we were perfectly at ease in that dangerous element. For all that, they, the tetrahedra of Mercury, could “kill” it, which, by inference, we could not. They weren’t going to admit defeat, by Man or water, but this was a big Solar System. We could have our soggy Earth! They were going to Mars!

  Up from behind the wall of “killed” water rose two great, glorious pearls, marvelously opalescent in the rays of the setting sun—up and up, smaller and smaller, until they vanished into the deepening blue above the Andes. Ironically, it began to rain.

  * * * *

  As you see, “Tetrahedra of Space” belongs in the same tradition as the stories of Meek. The setting is South America, and it is the Indians this time who are superstitious savages and clearly subhuman. When the half-breed, Valdez, is killed, the hero buries him saying
, “...all of him was human,” but also says, “...part of him was white.”

  P. Schuyler Miller has been the book reviewer for Astounding now for almost as many years as I have been writing, and I know him to be a liberal and humane person, one of the gentlest and most generous souls I have ever met. It is a measure of how far the unthinking stereotypes can penetrate and of how taken-for-granted they were in this type of adventure fiction, that even Miller could fall victim to them.

  What fascinated me in this story and what caused it to live on in my memory was the picture of extraterrestrials who were utterly non-human. This wasn’t often done in those days, or, for that matter, in the more primitive forms of science fiction even today. In so many cases, intelligent creatures are assumed to be quite human if they are virtuous, and distortedly human if they are villainous, as in “Submicroscopic.”

  There was, further, the picture of the tetrahedra spawning and of the final communication of the two intelligences, which was handled rather subtly, I thought then—and thought again recently, when I reread it.

  One other thing that occurs to me in connection with the story is the mere word “tetrahedra.” Miller doesn’t define the word anywhere in the story, but the illustrations by Frank R. Paul (one of them on the cover of the magazine) made it clear to me that they were solids with four, triangular faces.

  It was the first time I had ever heard the word, and, of course, I never forgot it. Any form of reading will improve one’s vocabulary, but science fiction automatically improves one’s scientific vocabulary.

  “Tetrahedra of Space,” incidentally, contains another common characteristic of early magazine science fiction: elephantiasis of the adjectives. Especially in the first portion of the story, every sentence carries a load of them that breaks it in two. Combine that with inverted word order and unnecessary italics, and you find yourself breathing heavily and losing track of the sense.

  To me in my younger days, and to others in theirs, and to some, I fear, in all their days, this thick layer of fatty adjectival froth seems to be a mark of good writing. And, indeed, adjectivitis was most common in the fantasy of the time and in such admired writers as A. Merritt, H. P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith (whom, however, I am afraid I never admired, even when I was young and might have been excused the error).

  Clark Ashton Smith, in particular, had a second interesting literary aberration. He used long and unfamiliar words as another way of impressing the naive with the quality of his writing. In the same issue with “Tetrahedra of Space,” for instance, there is Smith’s “Beyond the Singing Flame,” and since Sam Moskowitz had sent me the complete issue in this particular case, I looked at the Smith story for old time’s sake.

  In the very second paragraph, I found him using “veridical” when he meant “true,” and I read no further. Yes, “veridical” does mean “true,” but I cannot imagine any occasion (outside a certain specialized use among psychologists) when “true” is not very greatly to be preferred.

  In my early days, I tried to imitate these adjectival examples of writing. My style was most ornate in the days before I had published anything. Some of the fat had been steamed out by the time I was publishing, and my writing has grown progressively leaner with the years. I am not sorry.

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  * * * *

  During 1931, I reached the stage where my pleasure in science fiction had bubbled over and could not be confined. I began to retell the stories I had read. I did this, I remember, in distinct imitation of my storytelling friend of three years earlier. Now it was I who had the audience.

  Of course, the stories weren’t my own, but I made no pretense that they were. I carefully explained that I had read them in science fiction magazines. My classmates couldn’t afford to buy the magazines any more than I could and were glad to listen.

  As for myself, I discovered, for the first time in my life, that I loved to have an audience and that I could speak before a group, even when some of them were strangers to me, without embarrassment. (It was a useful piece of knowledge, for twenty years later I was to become a professional after-dinner speaker at what turned out to be, eventually, very respectable fees. The childhood experience and training helped, I am sure.)

  I well remember sitting at the curb in front of the junior high school with anywhere from two to ten youngsters listening attentively while I repeated what I had read, with such personal embellishments as I could manage.

  And the specific story that I most vividly recall telling was “The World of the Red Sun,” by Clifford D. Simak, which appeared in the December 1931 issue of Wonder Stories.

  * * * *

  THE WORLD OF THE RED SUN

  by Clifford D. Simak

  “Ready, Bill?” asked Harl Swanson. Bill Kressman nodded.

  “Then kiss 1935 good-bye!” cried the giant Swede, and swung over the lever.

  The machine quivered violently, then hung motionless in pitch blackness. In the snap of a finger the bright sunlight was blotted out and a total darkness, a darkness painted with the devil’s brush, rushed in upon the two men.

  Electric lights glowed above the instrument boards, but their illumination was feeble against the utter blackness which crowded in upon the quartz windows of the machine.

  The sudden change astounded Bill. He had been prepared for something, for some sort of change, but nothing like this. He half started out of his seat, then settled back.

  Harl observed him and grinned.

  “Scared,” he jested.

  “Hell, no,” said Bill.

  “You’re traveling in time, my lad,” said Harl. “You aren’t in space any more. You are in a time stream. Space is curved about you. Can’t travel in time when you’re still in space, for space binds time to a measured pace, only so fast, no faster. Curve space about you, though, and you can travel in time. And when you’re out of space there’s absolutely no light, therefore, utter darkness. Likewise no gravity, nor any of the universal phenomena.”

  Bill nodded. They had worked it all out before, many, many times. Double wall construction of a strength to withstand the vacuum into which the flier would be plunged at the move of the lever which would snatch it out of space into the time stream. An insulation to guard against the absolute zero that would rule where there could be no heat. Gravity grids at their feet so that they would still be able to orient themselves when flung into that space where there was no gravity. An elaborate heating system to keep the motors warm, to prevent the freezing of gasoline, oil and water. Powerful atmosphere generators to supply air to the passengers and the motors.

  It had represented years of work, ten years of it, and a wealth that mounted into seven figures. Time after time they had blundered, again and again they had failed. The discoveries they had made would have rocked the world, would have revolutionized industry, but they had breathed no word of it. They had thought of only one thing, time travel.

  To travel into the future, to delve into the past, to conquer time, to this the two young scientists had dedicated all their labors, and at last success lay beneath their hands.

  It was in 1933 they had at last achieved their goal. The intervening months were spent in experiments and the building of the combination flier-time machine.

  Miniature fliers were launched, with the miniature time machines set automatically. They had buzzed about the laboratory, to suddenly disappear. Perhaps at this very instant they were whirling madly through un-guessed ages.

  They managed to construct a small time machine, set to travel a month into the future. In a month’s time, almost to the second, it had materialized on the laboratory floor where it had dropped at the end of its flight through time. That settled it! The feasibility of time travel was proved beyond all doubt.

  Now Harl Swanson and Bill Kressman were out in the time stream. There had been a gasp of amazement from the crowd, on the street, which had seen the giant tri-motored plane suddenly disappear into thin air.

  Harl crouched
over the instrument board. His straining ears could distinguish the wheezy mutterings of the three motors as, despite the elaborate precautions taken to safeguard them, the inexorable fingers of absolute zero clutched at their throbbing metal.

  This was a dangerous way, but the only safe way. Had they remained on the surface to plunge into the time stream they might have halted to find themselves and their machine buried by shifting earth; they might have found a great building over them, they might have found a canal covering them. Here in the air they were safe from all that might occur beneath them in the passing centuries through which they sped at an almost unbelievable pace. They were being fairly hurled through time.

  Furthermore, the great machine would serve as a means of travel in that future day when they would roll out of the time stream back into space again. Perhaps it might serve as a means of escape, for there was no foreknowledge to tell them what they might expect a few thousand years in the future.