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

by Edited By Isaac Asimov

  Indeed, it is rather embarrassing as I look back on it now to realize how little I learned about writing through careful study and intelligent consideration of what I read, and how much I advanced through mere intuition. Until I was a published writer, I remained completely ignorant of the fact that there were books on how to write and courses on the subject one could take.

  Of course, I sometimes say, quite emphatically, that it is a good thing I never took courses or read books on how to write. I say that it would have spoiled my natural style, that it would have made me observe an artificial caution, that it would have hedged me about with rules that I could not have followed without wearing myself out.

  That, of course, may be simple rationalization designed to resign me to what was.

  Well, it was. Whatever the reason, that’s the way it was. I spent all my school time concentrating my real attention on the sciences (chemistry in particular) and mathematics, and paying very little attention to my English courses, which bored me. When it came to writing, I just followed where my intuition led me.

  <>

  * * * *

  Like the Clayton Astounding, Wonder Stories had an unexpected rebirth. It was sold to a chain of pulps that featured several magazines with the word “Thrilling” in the title. Therefore, after a three-month hiatus, Thrilling Wonder Stories reached the newsstand with the August 1936 issue. And it was only fifteen cents.

  It was rather a comedown. Wonder Stories had, to the end, shown a faded gentility, and the Paul covers, which had been tightly associated with science fiction for ten years, had continued to lend it glamour. Thrilling Wonder Stories, however, was entirely pulp—in its name, its stories, and even its art work. Indeed, its early covers featured extraterrestrial creatures with protruding eyes to such an extent that fans began to speak of “bug-eyed monsters,” a term quickly abbreviated to “bems,” as a way of deriding unsophisticated science fiction.

  And yet Thrilling Wonder Stories had occasional interesting stories in it, too. In its third issue, December 1936, there was “The Brain Stealers of Mars,” by John W. Campbell, Jr.

  * * * *

  THE BRAIN STEALERS OF MARS

  by John W. Campbell, Jr.

  Chapter 1 - Imitation of Life

  Rod Blake looked up with a deep chuckle. The sky of Mars was almost black, despite the small, brilliant sun, and the brighter stars and planets that shone visibly, Earth most brilliant of all, scarcely sixty million miles away.

  “They’ll have a fine time chasing us, back there, Ted.” He nodded toward the brilliant planet.

  Ted Penton smiled beatifically.

  “They’re probably investigating all our known haunts. It’s their own fault if they can’t find us -- outlawing research on atomic power.”

  “They had some provocation, you must admit. Koelenberg should have been more careful. When a man takes off some three hundred square miles of territory spang in the center of Europe in an atomic explosion, you can’t blame the rest of the world for being a bit skittish about atomic power research.”

  “But they might have had the wit to see that anybody that did get the secret would not wait around for the Atomic Power Research Death Penalty, but would light out for parts and planets quite unknown and leave the mess in the hands of a lawyer till the fireworks quieted down. It was obvious that when we developed atomic power we’d be the first men to reach Mars, and nobody could follow to bring us back unless they accepted the hated atomic power and used it,” argued Blake.

  “Wonder how old Jamison Montgomery Palborough made out with our claims,” mused Penton. “He said he’d have it right in three months, and this is the third month and the third planet. We’ll let the government stew, and sail on, fair friend, sail on. I still say that was a ruined city we saw as we landed.”

  “I think it was, myself, but I remember the way you did that kangaroo leap on your neck the first time you stepped out on the moon. You certainly saw stars.”

  “We’re professionals at walking under cockeyed gravities now. Moon -- Venus -- “

  “Yes, but I’m still not risking my neck on the attitude of a strange planet and a strange race at the same time. We’ll investigate the planet a bit first, and yonder mudhole is the first stop. Come on.”

  They reached the top of one of the long rolling sand dunes and the country was spread out below them. It looked exactly as it had been from the last dune that they had struggled up, just as utterly barren, utterly bleak, and unendingly red. Like an iron planet, badly neglected and rusted.

  * * * *

  The mudhole was directly beneath them, an expanse of red and brown slime, dotted here and there with clumps of dark red foliage.

  “The stuff looks like Japanese maple,” said Blake.

  “Evidently doesn’t use chlorophyll to get the sun’s energy. Let’s collect a few samples. You have your violet-gun and I have mine. I guess it’s safe to split. There’s a large group of things down on the left that look a little different. I’ll take them while you go straight ahead. Gather any flowers, fruits, berries or seeds you see. Few leaves -- oh, you know. What we got on Venus. General junk. If you find a small plant, put on your gloves and yank it out. If you see a big one, steer clear. Venus had some peculiarly unpleasant specimens.”

  Blake groaned. “You telling me. I’m the bright boy that fell for that pretty fruit and climbed right up between the stems of a scissor tree. Uhuh. I shoot ‘em down. Go ahead, and good luck.”

  Penton swung off to the left, while Blake slogged ahead to a group of weird-looking plants. They were dome-shaped things, three feet high, with a dozen long, drooping, sword-shaped leaves.

  Cautiously Blake tossed a bit of stone into the center of one. It gave off a mournful, drumming boom, but the leaves didn’t budge. He tried a rope on one leaf but the leaf neither stabbed, grabbed, nor jerked away, as he had half expected after his lesson with the ferocious plants of Venus. Blake pulled a leaf off, then a few more. The plant acted quite plant-like, which pleasantly surprised him.

  The whole region seemed seeded with a number of the things, nearly all about the same size. A few, sprinkled here and there, were in various stages of development, from a few protruding sword-leaves, to little three-inch domes on up to the full-grown plant. Carefully avoiding the larger ones, Rod plucked two small ones and thrust them into his specimen bag. Then he stood off and looked at one of the domes that squatted so dejectedly in the thick, gummy mud.

  “I suppose you have some reason for being like that, but a good solid tree would put you all in the shade, and collect all the sunlight going. Which is little enough.” He looked at them for some seconds picturing a stout Japanese maple in this outlandish red-brown gum.

  He shrugged, and wandered on, seeking some other plant. There were few others. Apparently this particular species throttled out other varieties very thoroughly. He wasn’t very anxious anyway; he was much more interested in the ruined city they had seen from the ship. Ted Penton was cautious.

  Eventually Blake followed his winding footsteps back toward the ship, and about where his footsteps showed he’d gathered his first samples, he stopped. There was a Japanese maple there. It stood some fifteen feet tall, and the bark was beautifully regular in appearance. The leaves were nearly a quarter of an inch thick, and arranged with a peculiar regularity, as were the branches. But it was very definitely a Japanese maple.

  Rod Blake’s jaw put a severe strain on the hinges thereof. It dropped some three inches, and Blake stared. He stared with steady, blank gaze at that perfectly impossible Japanese maple. He gawked dumbly. Then his jaw snapped shut abruptly, and he cursed softly. The leaves were stirring gently, and they were not a quarter of an inch thick. They were paper thin, and delicately veined. Further, the tree was visibly taller, and three new branches had started to sprout, irregularly now. They sprouted as he watched, growing not as twigs but as fully formed branches extending themselves gradually. As he stared harder at them they dwindled rapidl
y to longer twigs, and grew normally.

  * * * *

  Rod let out a loud yip, and made tracks rapidly extending themselves toward the point where he’d last seen Ted Penton. Penton’s tracks curved off, and Rod steamed down as fast as Mars’ light gravity permitted, to pull up short as he rounded a corner of another sword-leaf dome clump. “Ted,” he panted, “come over here. There’s a -- a -- weird thing. A -- it looks like a Japanese maple, but it doesn’t. Because when you look at it, it changes.”

  Rod stopped, and started back, beckoning Ted.

  Ted didn’t move.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said quite clearly, rather panting, and sounding excited, though it was a quite unexciting remark, except for one thing. He said it in Rod Blake’s voice!

  Rod stiffened. Then he backed away hurriedly, stumbled over his feet and sat down heavily in the sand. “For the love of -- Ted -- Ted, wh-what did you s-s-say?”

  “I don’t know wh-what to s-s-say.”

  Rod groaned. It started out exactly like his own voice, changed rapidly while it spoke, and wound up a fair imitation of Ted’s. “Oh, Lord,” he groaned, “I’m going back to the ship. In a hurry.”

  He started away, then looked back over his shoulder. Ted Penton was moving now, swaying on his feet peculiarly. Delicately he picked up his left foot, shook it gently, like a man trying to separate himself from a piece of flypaper. Rod moved even more rapidly than he had before. Long, but rapidly shrinking roots dangled from the foot, gooey mud dropping from them as they shrank into the foot. Rod turned again with the violet-gun in his hand. It thrummed to blasting atomic energy, and a pencil beam of ravening ultra-violet fury shot out and a hazy bail of light surrounded it.

  The figure of Ted Penton smoked suddenly, and a hole the size of a golf ball drove abruptly through the center of the head, to the accompaniment of a harsh whine of steam and spurts of oily smoke. The figure did not fall. It slumped. It melted rapidly, like a snow-man in a furnace, the fingers ran together, the remainder of the face dropped, contracted, and became horrible. It was suddenly the face of a man whose pouched and dulled eyes had witnessed and enjoyed every evil the worlds knew, weirdly glowing eyes that danced and flamed for a moment in screaming fury of deadly hate -- and dissolved with the last dissolution of the writhing face.

  And the arms grew long, very long and much wider. Rod stood frozen while the very wide and rapidly widening arms beat up and down. The thing took off and flapped awkwardly away, and for an instant the last trace of the hate-filled eyes glittered again in the sun.

  Rod Blake sat down and laughed. He laughed, and laughed again at the very funny sight of the melting face on the bat-bodied thing that had flown away with a charred hole in the middle of its grape-fruit-sized head. He laughed even louder when another Ted-Penton-thing came around the corner of the vegetable clump, on the run. He aimed at the center of its head. “Fly away!” he yelled as he pressed the little button down.

  This one was cleverer. It ducked. “Rod -- for the love of -- Rod, shut up,” it spoke.

  Rod stopped, and considered slowly. This one talked with Ted Penton’s voice. As it got up again he aimed more carefully and flashed again. He wanted it to fly away too. It ducked again, in another direction this time, and ran in rapidly. Rod got up hastily and ran. He fell suddenly as some fibrous thing lashed out from behind and wrapped itself unbreakably about his arms and body, binding him helplessly.

  Penton looked down at him, panting heavily.

  “What’s the trouble, Rod; and why in blazes were you shooting your gun at me?”

  Rod heard himself laugh again, uncontrollably. The sight of Ted’s worried face reminded him of the flying thing, with the melted face. Like an overheated wax figure. Penton reached out a deliberate hand and cracked him over the face, hard. In a moment Rod steadied, and Penton removed the noose from his arms and body. Blake sighed with relief.

  * * * *

  “Thank God, it’s you, Ted,” he said. “Listen, I saw you -- you -- not thirty seconds ago. You stood over there, and I spoke to you. You answered in my voice. I started off, and your feet came up out of the ground with roots on them, like a plant’s. I shot you through the forehead, and you melted down like a wax doll to a bat-thing that sprouted wings and flew away.”

  “Uhh -- “ said Penton soothingly. “Funny, at that. Why were you looking for me?”

  “Because there’s a Japanese maple where I was that grew while my back was turned, and changed its leaves while I looked at it.”

  “Oh, Lord,” said Penton unhappily, looking at Rod. Then more soothingly, “I think we’d better look at it.”

  Rod led the way back on his tracks. When the maple should have been in sight, it wasn’t at all. When they reached the spot where Rod’s tracks showed it should have been, it wasn’t there. There was only a somewhat wilted sword-bush. Rod stared blankly at it, then he went over and felt it cautiously. It remained placidly squatted, a slightly bedraggled lump of vegetation.

  “That’s where it was,” said Blake dully. “But it isn’t there any more. I know it was there.”

  “It must have been an -- er -- mirage,” decided Penton. “Let’s get back to the ship. We’ve had enough walking practice.”

  Rod followed him, wonderingly shaking his head. He was so wrapped up in his thoughts, that he nearly fell over Penton, when Ted stopped with a soft, unhappy, gurgling noise. Ted turned around and looked at Rod carefully. Then he looked ahead again.

  “Which,” he asked at length, “is you?”

  Rod looked ahead of Penton, over his shoulder. Another Rod was also standing in front of Penton. “My God,” said Rod, “it’s me this time!”

  “I am, of course,” said the one in front. It said it in Rod Blake’s voice.

  Ted looked at it, and finally shut his eyes.

  “I don’t believe it. Not at all. Wo bist du gewesen, mein Freund?”

  “Was sagst du?” said the one in front. “But why the Deutsch?”

  Ted Penton sat down slowly and thoughtfully. Rod Blake stared at Rod Blake blankly, slightly indignant.

  “Let me think,” said Penton unhappily. “There must be some way to tell. Rod went away from me, and then I come around the corner and find him laughing insanely. He takes a shot at me. But it looks, and talks like Rod. But he says crazy things. Then I go for a walk with him -- or it -- and meet another one that at least seems less insane than the first one. Well, well. I know German of course, and so does Rod. Evidently this thing can read minds. Must be like a chameleon, only more so.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Rod Blake. It doesn’t particularly matter which one.

  “A chameleon can assume any color it wants to at will. Lots of animals have learned to imitate other animals for safety, but it takes them generations to do it. This thing, apparently, can assume any shape or color at will. A minute ago it decided the best form for the locality was a swordbush. Some of these things must be real plants then. Rod thought of a maple tree, thought of the advantages of a maple tree, so it decided to try that, having read his mind. That was why it was wilted-looking; this isn’t the right kind of country for maple trees. It lost water too fast. So it went back to the sword-bush.

  “Now this one has decided to try being Rod Blake, clothes and all. But I haven’t the foggiest notion which one is Rod Blake. It won’t do a bit of good to try him on languages we know, because he can read our minds.

  I know there must be some way. There must -- there must -- Oh yes. It’s simple. Rod, just burn me a hole in that thing with your violet-gun.”

  Rod reached for his gun at once with a sigh of relief and triggered quickly. The phoney Rod melted hastily. About half of it got down into the boiling mud before Rod incinerated the rest with the intense ultraviolet flare of the pistol. Rod sighed. “Thank the Lord it was me. I wasn’t sure for a while, myself.”

  Ted shook himself, put his head in his hands, and rocked slowly. “By the Nine Gods of the Nine Planets, what a
world! Rod, for the love of heaven, stay with me hereafter. Permanently. And whatever you do, don’t lose that pistol. They can’t grow a real violet-gun, but if they pick one up, may God help us. Let’s get back to the ship, and away from this damned place. I thought you were mad. My error. It’s just the whole bloody planet that’s mad.”

  “I was -- for a while. Let’s move.”

  They moved. They moved hastily back across the sand dunes to the ship.

  * * * *

  Chapter 2 - The Secret of the Thushol

  “They’re centaurs,” gasped Blake. “Will you look at that one over there -- a nice little calico. There’s a beautiful little strawberry roan. What people! Wonder why the city is so dilapidated, if the people are still here in some numbers. Set ‘er down, will you, Ted. They haven’t anything dangerous, or they’d have a better city.”