Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  Garr Symm, absolute dictator of the galaxy, if he played his hand right.

  Garr Symm sat there for a long time, dreaming of power as no man before him on any world had ever dreamed of power . . .

  VARDIN rushed into the airlock of the Canopusian freighter in a state of excitement. At last they had given her something to do, and she had been successful at the outset. Specifically, Ramsey and the beautiful woman had given her a scintillation-counter and told her to prowl among the wrecks with it while they worked on the control board of the freighter, which the beautiful woman had named Enterprise.

  “I found it!” Vardin cried. “I found it!”

  She led a sceptical Margot Dennison outside while Ramsey continued working on the Enterprise. The two girls walked swiftly through the darkness between the wrecks. By this time they knew every foot of the Graveyard.

  “There,” Vardin said. “You see?”

  The scintillation counter was clicking and blinking. Margot smiled and went to work with a portable mechanical arm and a leaded bottle. In ten minutes, she had the slow-implosion capsule out of the hopper of a battered old Aldebaranese cargo ship.

  “I never saw one of those mechanical arms working before,” Vardin said.

  Margot smiled. She was delighted with the timid Vegan girl, with the cold night, with the way the wind blew across the Graveyard, with everything. They had their fuel. Tomorrow night the Enterprise would be ready for its dash into hyper-space. In thirty-six hours she might have her hands on the most valuable find in the history of mankind . . .

  When they returned to the Enterprise, she let Ramsey kiss her and tried to slip the telepathic tentacles of her mind behind his guard—

  Lewd libidinous fantasies, X stands for nothing for nothing for nothing, XXX—she got nowhere.

  What was X? What was Ramsey’s secret? Margot did not know, and wondered if she would ever find out.

  She smiled, reading Vardin’s mind. For Vardin was thinking: it must be so wonderful to have beauty such as she has, to melt the wills of strong handsome men such as Ramsey. It must be truly wonderful.

  For the first twenty-eight years of her life, Margot Dennison would have agreed, would have delighted in her own beauty. She still did, to a point. But beyond that point, she could dream only of proto-man and his secret.

  Beauty or power?

  She had beauty.

  She wanted power.

  IN the early hours of the following morning, behind the cover of what appeared to be a dense early morning fog but what actually was an artificially produced fog, a team of Irwadi technicians swarmed all over a battered Procyonian cruiser of three thousand tons. By mid-morning, working swiftly and with all the tools and spare parts they would need, they made the ship, called Dog Star, space-worthy.

  Later that day, but still two hours before nightfall, Ramar Chind arrived with a small crew of three Security Police. He had selected his men carefully: they knew how to handle a spaceship, they knew how to fight, they were quite ruthless. He thought Garr Symm would be pleased.

  Symm did not arrive until just before nightfall. He was very agitated when he came. Ramar Chind, too, was eager. What would happen within the next several hours, he realized, might be beyond his ken, but he still recognized its importance. And, being an opportunist, he would pounce on whatever he found of value to himself . . .

  Several hours after the setting of the Irwadi primary had ushered in the cold night, Margot Dennison, Ramsey and Vardin arrived at the Graveyard and made their way at once to the Enterprise. They went inside swiftly and in a very few minutes prepared the thousand-tonner for blastoff. Ramsey’s mouth was dry. He could barely keep the thoughts of proto-man from his mind. If Margot read them . . .

  “Centauri here we come,” he said, just to talk.

  “Centauri,” said Margot.

  But of course, she had another destination in mind.

  Several hundred yards across the Graveyard, watching, waiting, the occupants of Dog Star were armed to the teeth.

  Ramsey sat at the controls. Vardin stood behind him nervously. The space trip from Vega to Irwadi was probably the only one she had ever taken. Margot sat, quite relaxed, in the co-pilot’s chair.

  “I still can’t believe we’re not going to feel anything,” Vardin said in her soft, shy voice.

  “Haven’t you ever been through hyper-space before?” Margot asked the Vegan girl.

  “Just once.”

  “In normal space,” Ramsey explained, “we feel acceleration and deceleration because the increase or decrease in velocity is experienced at different micro-instants by all the cells of our body. In hyper-space the velocity is felt simultaneously in all parts of the ship, including all parts of us. We become weightless, of course, but the change is instant and we feel no pressure, no pain.”

  Ramsey was waiting until 0134:57 on the ship chronometer. At that precise instant in time, and at that instant only, blastoff would place them on the proper hyper-space orbit. And, before they could feel the mounting pressure of blastoff, the timelessness of hyper-space would intervene.

  “0130:15,” Margot read the chronometer for Ramsey. “It won’t be long now. 30:20—”

  “All right,” Ramsey said suddenly. “All right. I can read the chronometer.”

  “Why, Ramsey! I do believe you’re nervous.”

  “Anxious, Margot. A hyper-pilot is always anxious just before crossover. You’ve got to be, because the slightest miscalculation can send you fifty thousand light years off course.”

  “So? All you’d have to do is re-enter hyper-space and go back.”

  Ramsey shook his head. “Hyper-space can only be entered from certain points in space. We’ve never been able to figure out why.”

  “What certain points?”

  RAMSEY looked at her steadily. “Points which vary with the orbits of the three thousand humanoid worlds, Margot,” he said slowly. He watched her for a reaction, knowing that strange fact about hyper-space—perfectly true and never understood—dovetailed with her father’s letter about proto-man, an unknown pre-human ancestor of all the humanoid races in the galaxy, who had discovered hyper-space, bred variations to colonize all the inhabitable worlds, found or created the three thousand crossover points in space, and used them.

  Margot showed no response, but then, Ramsey told himself, she was a tri-di actress. She could feign an emotion—or hide one. She merely asked: “Is it true that there’s no such thing as time in hyper-space?”

  “That’s right. That’s why you can travel scores or hundreds or thousands of light years through hyper-space in hours. Hyper-space is a continuum of only three dimensions. There is no fourth dimension, no dimension of duration.”

  “Then why aren’t trips through hyper-space instantaneous? They take several hours, don’t they?”

  “Sure, but the way scientists have it figured, that’s subjective time. No objective time passes at all. It can’t. There isn’t any—in hyper-space.”

  “Then you mean—”

  Ramsey shook his head. “0134:02,” he said. “It’s almost time.”

  The seconds ticked away. Even Margot did not seem relaxed now. She stared nervously at the chronometer, or watched Ramsey’s lips as he silently read away the seconds. A place where time did not exist, an under-stratum of extension sans duration. An idea suddenly entered her mind, and she was afraid.

  If proto-man had colonized the galactic worlds between one and four or five million years ago, but if time did not exist for proto-man, then wasn’t the super-race which had engendered all mankind still waiting in its timeless home, waiting perhaps grimly amused to see which of their progeny first discovered their secret? Or must proto-man, like humans everywhere, fall victim to subjective time if objective time did not matter for him?

  Ramsey was saying softly: “Fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six . . . blastoff!”

  His hand slammed down on the activating key.

  An instant later, having felt n
o sensation of acceleration, they were floating weightlessly in the cabin of the little Enterprise.

  “THEY qualities of radar,” Garr Symm said, “exist in their totality in a universe of extension. Time, actually is a drawback to radar, necessitating a duration-lag between sending and receiving. Therefore, Ramar Chind, radar behaves perfectly in hyper-space, as you see.”

  “Yes,” Ramar Chind said, floating near the radar screen aboard the Dog Star. At its precise center was a bright little pip of light.

  The Enterprise . . .

  “But don’t we do anything except follow them?” Ramar Chind said after a long silence.

  Garr Symm smiled. “Does it really matter? You see, Chind, time actually stands still for us here. Duration is purely subjective, so what’s your hurry?”

  Ramar Chind licked his lips nervously and stared fascinated at the little pip of bright light.

  Which suddenly dipped and swung erratically.

  “WHAT is it?” Margot asked. “What’s the matter?”

  “Take it easy,” Ramsey told her.

  “But the ship’s swooping. I can feel it. I thought you weren’t supposed to feel movement in hyper-space!”

  “Relax, will you? There are eddies in hyper-space, that’s all. If you want an analogy in terms of our own universe, think of shoals in an ocean—unmarked by buoys or lights.”

  “You mean they have to be avoided?”

  “Yes.”

  “But this particular shoal—it’s midway between Irwadi and Earth?”

  “There isn’t any ‘midway’, Margot. That’s the paradox of hyper-space.”

  “I—I don’t understand.”

  “Look. In the normal universe, extension is measured by time. That is, it takes a certain amount of time to get from point A to point B. Conversely, time is measured by extension in space. On Earth, a day of time passes when Earth moves through space on an arc one three-hundred-sixty-fifth of its orbit around the sun in length. Since there isn’t any time to measure extension with in hyper-space, since time doesn’t exist here, you can’t speak of mid-points.”

  “But this—shoal. It’s always encountered in hyper-space between Earth and Irwadi?”

  Ramsey nodded. “Yes, that is right.”

  Margot smiled.

  The smile suddenly froze on her face.

  The Enterprise lurched as if an unseen giant hand had slapped it.

  At that moment Ramsey leaned forward over the controls, battling to bring the Enterprise back on course.

  And let down his mental guard.

  . . . precise place in hyper-space her father must have meant . . . home of proto-man . . . thinks I’m going to stop there, she’s crazy . . . heck, I’m no mystic, but there are things not meant to be meddled with . . .

  The ship swooped again. Ramsey went forward against the control panel head-first and fell dazed from the pilot chair. His head whirled, his arms and legs were suddenly weak and rubbery. He tried to stand up and make his way back to the controls again, but collapsed and went down to his knees. He crouched there, trying to shake the fog from his brain.

  With a cry of triumph, Margot Dennison leaped at him and bore him down to the floor with her weight. He was still too dazed from the blow on his head to offer any resistance when her strong hands tugged at his belt and withdrew the m.g. gun. She got up with it, backing away from him quickly toward the rear bulkhead as the ship seemed to go into a smooth glide which could be felt within it. Vardin stood alongside Ramsey, a hand to her mouth in horror. Ramsey got up slowly.

  “Stay where you are!” Margot cried, pointing the m.g. gun at him. “I’ll kill you if I have to. I’ll kill you, Ramsey, I mean it.”

  Ramsey did not move.

  “SO you knew about my father,” Margot challenged him.

  “Yeah. So what?”

  “And this shoal in hyper-space is a world, isn’t it?”

  Ramsey nodded. “I think so.”

  “O.K. Sit down at the controls, Ramsey. That’s right. Don’t try anything.”

  Ramsey was seated in the pilot chair again. His head was still whirling but his strength had returned. He wondered if he could chance rushing her but told himself she meant what she said. She would kill him in cold blood if she had to.

  “Bring the Enterprise down on that world, Ramsey.”

  He sat there and stubbornly shook his head. “Margot, you’ll be meddling with a power beyond human understanding.”

  “Rubbish! You read my father’s letter, didn’t you? That fear’s been implanted in your genes. It’s part of the heredity of our people. It’s rubbish. Bring the ship down.”

  Still Ramsey did not move. Vardin looked from him to Margot Dennison and back again with horror in her eyes.

  “I’ll count three,” Margot said. “Then I’ll shoot the Vegan girl. Do you understand?”

  Ramsey’s face went white.

  “One,” Margot said.

  Vardin stared at him beseechingly.

  Ramsey said: “All right, Margot. All right.”

  Five minutes later, subjective time, the Enterprise landed with a lurch.

  That they had reached a world in hyper-space there could be no doubt. But outside the portholes of the little freighter was only the murky grayness of the timeless hyper-space continuum.

  “THEY’VE gone down, sir!” Ramar Chind cried.

  Garr Symm nodded. For the first time he was really nervous. He wondered about the Dennison letter. Could his fear be attributed to ancestral memory, as Dennison had indicated? Was it really baseless—this crawling, cold-fingered hand of fear on his spine?

  There was no physical barrier. The Enterprise had established that fact. Then was there a barrier which Garr Symm, along with all humanoids, had somehow inherited?

  A barrier of stark terror, subjective and unfounded on fact?

  And beyond it—what?

  Power to chain the universe . . .

  Think, Garr Symm told himself. You’ve got to be rational. You’re a scientist. You’ve been trained as a scientist. This is their barrier, erected against you, against all humanoids, a million years ago. It isn’t real. It’s all in your mind.

  “Do you want me to follow them down?” Ramar Chind asked.

  Garr Symm envied the policeman. Naturally, Ramar Chind did not share his terror. You didn’t know the terror until you learned about proto-man; then the response seemed to be triggered in your brain, as if it had been passed to you through the genes of your ancestors, waiting a million years for release . . .

  Fear, a guardian.

  Of what? Garr Symm asked himself. Think of that, fool. Think of what it guards.

  Power—

  Teleportation or its equivalent.

  Gone the subjective passage of hours in hyper-space.

  Earned—if you were strong enough or brave enough to earn it—the ability to travel instantly from one humanoid world to another. Instantly. Perhaps from any one point on any humanoid world to any one point, precise, specific, exact, on another world.

  To plunder.

  Or assassinate.

  Or control the lives of men, everywhere.

  Sans ship.

  Sans fear.

  Sans the possibility of being caught or stopped.

  Sweating, Garr Symm said: “Bring the Dog Star down after them, Ramar Chind.”

  RAMSEY smiled without humor. “What now, little lady?” he said mockingly.

  “Shut up. Oh, shut up!”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I told you to shut up. I have to think.”

  “I didn’t know a gorgeous tri-di actress ever had to think.”

  “Let me see those figures again,” Margot said.

  Ramsey handed her the tapes from the Enterprise’s environment-checker.

  Temperature: minus two hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit.

  Atmosphere: none.

  Gravity: eight-tenths Earth-norm.

  “And we don’t have a spacesuit ab
oard,” Ramsey said.

  “But it can’t be. It can’t. This is the home of proto-man. I know it is. But if I went out there I’d perish from cold in seconds and lack of air in minutes.”

  “That’s right,” Ramsey said almost cheerfully. “So do I take the ship back up?”

  “I hate you, Jason Ramsey. Oh, I hate you!” Margot cried. Then suddenly: “Wait! Wait a minute! What was that you were thinking? Tell me! You must tell me—”

  Ramsey shook his head and tried to force the thoughts from his mind with doggerel. Ben Adam, he thought. Abou Ben Adam, Humpty Dumpty, hurry, hurry, hurry, the only two headed get yours here the sum of the square of the sides is equal to the square of the hyper-space, no, mustn’t think that mimsy were the borogroves and the momraths now what the heck did the momraths do anyhow absolute zero is the temperature at which all molecular activity . . .

  “What were you thinking, Ramsey?”

  His mind was a labyrinth. There were thousands of discrete thoughts, of course. Millions of them, collected over a lifetime. But all at once he did not know his way through that labyrinth and his thoughts kept whirling back to the one Margot Dennison wanted as if, somehow, she could pluck it from his mind.

  She stood before him, her brow furrowed, sweat beading her pretty face.

  And she was winning, forcing the thought to take shape in Ramsey’s mind—

  But if I went out there I’d perish from cold in seconds and lack of air in minutes.

  Cold, came the known and unbidden thoughts to Ramsey’s struggling mind. And lack of air. Attributes of extension, of space, but measured by duration, by time. And since time does not exist in hyper-space, the vacuum out there and the terrible, killing cold, could have no effect on you. You could go out there perfectly protected from the lethal environment by the absence of the time dimension.

  Margot smiled at him. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, Ramsey.”

  He was about to speak, but she added: “And don’t give me that stuff about a power we shouldn’t tamper with. I’m going out there. Now.”

  Ramsey nodded slowly. “I won’t stop you.”

  “But just so you don’t get any ideas of stranding me here—Vardin. Vardin’s going with me.”