The Best of Jack Williamson

by Jack Williamson

Very carefully, he slipped it out of the round wooden case and unrolled a little of the long parchment strip. It was very old, yellowed and cracked and faded. The mild brown eye squinted in a puzzled way at the dim strange characters. He wondered how much the blue one saw.

  “That filthy scribbling? That’s no book.”

  “It is older than printing,” he told her. “It is written with the secret wisdom of the Thirtankara Rishabha. It tells how souls may be guarded through their transmigrations and helped upward toward nirvana.”

  “Heathen lies!” She reached for it angrily. “I ought to burn it.”

  “No!” He hugged it in his skinny arms. “Please don’t! Because it is so powerful. I need it to aid my father and mother in their new lives. I need it to know Mira Bai when I find her again. I think you need it too, Aunt Agatha, to purge your own soul of the eight lands of karma—”

  “What?” The brown eye widened with shock and the blue one narrowed angrily. “I’ll have you know that I’m a decent Christian, safe in the heart of God. Now put the filthy scrawl away and wash yourself up. I guess that’s something your verminous monks forgot to teach you.”

  “Please! The holy men are very clean.”

  “Now you’re trying to aggravate me, poorly as I am.” She snuffled and her brown eye wept again. “I’m going to teach you a respectable religion, and I don’t need any nasty foreign scribblings to help me whip the sin out of you!”

  She was very sweet about it, and she always cried when she was forced to beat him. The exertion was really too much for her poor heart. She did it only for dear Lizzie’s sake, and he ought to realize that the punishment was far more painful to her than to him.

  She tried to teach him her religion, but Tommy clung to the wisdom of the kind old monks of Mahavira. She tried to wash the East out of him with pounds of harsh yellow soap, until his sunburnt skin had faded to a sickly yellow pallor. She prayed and cried over him for endless hours, while he knelt with numb bare knees on cruel bare floors. She threatened to whip him again, and she did.

  She whipped him when he covered up the big sheets of sticky yellow fly paper she put in his room, whipped him when he poured out the shallow dishes of fly poison she kept on the landing. But she seemed too much shaken to strike him, on the sultry afternoon when she found him carefully liberating the flies in the screen wire trap outside the kitchen door— a Kansas summer breeds flies enough.

  “You sinful little infidel!”

  Her nerves were all on edge. She had to sit down on the doorstep, resting her poor heart and gasping with her asthma. But her fat pink fingers seemed strong enough, when she caught him by the ear.

  She called the hired man to bring a torch dipped in gasoline, and held him so that he had to watch while she burned the flies that were left in the trap. He stood shivering with his own pain, quiet and pale and ill.

  “Now come along!” She led him up the stairs, by his twisted ear. “I’ll teach you whether flies have souls.” Her voice was like a saw when it strikes a nail. “I’m going to lock you up tonight without your supper, but I’ll see you in the morning.”

  She shoved him into the stifling attic room. It was bare and narrow as the monastery cells, with only his hard little cot and his precious teakwood chest. His tears blurred the painted carving on the chest—it was the blue snake of the deva Parshva, who had reached nirvana.

  She held him by the twisted ear.

  “Believe me, Thomas, this hurts me terribly.” She snuffled and cleared her throat. “I want you to pray tonight. Beg God to clean up your dirty little soul.”

  She gave his ear another twist.

  "When I come back in the morning, I want you to get down on your bended knees with me and confess to Him that all this rot about flies with souls is only a wicked lie.”

  “But it’s the truth!” He caught his breath, trying not to whimper. “Please, Aunt Agatha, let me read you part of the sacred book—”

  “Sacred?” She shook him by the ear. “You filthy little blasphemer! I’m going down now to pray for you. But when I come back in the morning I’m going to open up your box and take away that heathen writing—I declare it’s what gives you all these wicked notions. I’m going to burn it in the kitchen stove.”

  “But—Aunt Agatha!” He shivered with a sharper pain. “Without the secret book, I can’t guide anybody toward nirvana. I can’t help my father and mother, struggling under their load of karma. I won’t even know little Mira Bai, if I should ever find her.”

  “I’ll teach you what you need to know.” She let go his tingling ear, to box it sharply. “We’ll burn that book in the morning. You’11 forget every word it says, or stay in this room till you starve.”

  She locked the door on him and waddled down the stairs again, weeping for his soul and wheezing with her asthma. She had a good nip of whisky for her heart, and filled herself a nice plate of cold roast chicken and potato salad before she went up to her own room to pray.

  For a long time Tommy sat alone on the edge of the hard lumpy cot with his throbbing head in his hands. Crying was no use; old Chandra Sha had taught him that. He longed for his father and mother, those tanned happy wanderers he could barely remember, but the wheel had turned for them.

  Nothing was left, except the sacred parchment. When the ringing in his punished ear had stopped, he bent to unlock the teakwood chest. He unrolled the brittle yellow scroll.

  His pale lips moved silently, following the faded black-and-scarlet characters.

  The book, he felt, was more precious than all Kansas. He had to save it, to help his reborn parents, and to find Mira Bai, and even to aid his aunt—her poor soul was laden,, surely, with a perilous burden of karma, but perhaps the science of the book could find her a more fortunate rebirth.

  Trembling and afraid, he began to do what the holy men had taught him.

  It was the hired girl, next morning, who came up to unlock his room. She was looking for his Aunt Agatha.

  “I can’t understand it." Her twangy Kansas voice was half hysterical. “I didn’t hear a thing, all night long. The outside doors are locked up tight. None of her things are missing. But I’ve looked high and low. Your sweet little Auntie isn’t anywhere.”

  The boy looked thin and pale and drawn. His dark eyes were rimmed with grime, hollowed for want of sleep. He was rolling up the long strip of brittle yellow parchment. Very carefully, he replaced it in the painted ease.

  "I think you wouldn’t know her now.” His shy voice was sad. "Because the wheel of her life has turned again. She has entered another cycle."

  “I don’t know what you mean." The startled girl stared at him. "But I'm afraid something awful has happened to your poor old Auntie. I’m going to phone the sheriff.”

  Tommy was downstairs In the gloomy front room when the sheriff came, standing in n chair drawn up against the mantle.

  "Now don’t you worry, little man.” The sheriff boomed.

  “I’m come out to old Miz Grinn. . . just tell me when you seen her last.”

  "Here she is, right now," Tommy whispered faintly. "But if you haven’t been Instructed In the science of transmigration, I don’t think you’ll know her.”

  He was leaning over one of the big yellow sheets of adhesive fly paper that Aunt Agatha like to leave spread at night to catch flies while she slept, lie was trying to help a large, blue fly that was hopelessly tangled and droning in its last feeble fury.

  “Pore little young-un!” The sheriff clucked sympathetically. “His aunt told me he was full of funny heathen notions!” He didn’t even glance at the dying fly. But Tommy hadn’t found it hard to recognize. Its right eye was a furious, greenish blue, the left was a tiny bead of wet brown glass.

  Operation Gravity

  • • •

  It has long been contended that one of the true impossibilities expressed in science-fiction is the concept of an anti-gravity device. In the 1890's, the famous astronomer Garrett P. Serviss wrote a newspaper serial, entitled “
Edison’s Conquest of Mars,” in which he theorized that gravity was related to electricity and therefore could be short-circuited or neutralized. Einstein’s latest theory attempts to merge both forces into the same equation. Yet the truth is that at present we simply have no concept of the nature of gravity. If, as in this story. we should have the opportunity of studying gravity under special conditions, we may arrive at an understanding that will make science-fiction notions about gravitation apossibility.

  • • •

  He came aboard at Jupiter Station. A withered little old man, with nearsighted eyes and untidy white hair. He looked innocent enough, with his absent-minded smile, but the moment he opened his mouth I knew he was the sort of civilian egg-brain who always wants to wreck the fine old traditions of the Guard.

  “Barron?” He was squinting dimly at the captain’s insignia on my uniform, but he didn’t use my title. “Name’s Knedder. I want to look over your ship.”

  I was about to inform him that the Starhawk was a fighting vessel and not a museum for planet-hopping tourists, when I saw the armchair Admiral coming through the airlock behind him. I bit my tongue and saluted.

  “Relax, Captain.” The Admiral returned my salute with a disgracefully slack waggle of his arm, and nodded respectfully at the sloppy little civilian. “This is the Doctor Knedder.”

  I hadn’t known there were any Dr. Knedders at all, but I shook his limp hand and started to give him my standard tour for unavoidable civilians. No ship had a braver record than the Starhawk. Most people are impressed with the row of gold service awards on the bulkhead inside the lock, but Knedder wasn’t interested.

  “This one’s the Blue Nova,” I was saying. “We won it in the Martian War—”

  “Wars don’t matter.” He shrugged at the whole splendid history of the ship. “Let’s see your drive.” “Sorry, sir,” I told him. “But most of our machinery is still classified—”

  “Never mind that, Captain,” the Admiral interrupted. “Dr. Knedder’s out here to work with the Guard on a secret research mission. Operation Baby Giant. He has been fully cleared. Our orders are to give him all the help he asks for.”

  I didn’t want anything to do with such civilian nincompoops or their idiotic projects, but the Admiral was an Admiral. I led the way to the ship’s elevator. When we got to the reactor room, Knedder began prying into our equipment and asking questions.

  “And what’s your propellant mass, Captain?” “Ammonia in the tanks,” I told him. “It comes out broken down into nitrogen and hydrogen ions—” “Dr. Knedder knows all about that,” the Admiral cut in. “He designed our new ion accelerators.”

  “Very wasteful way to use atomic energy for flight through space;” Knedder shook his fluffy head regretfully, and asked another impertinent question. “Captain what’s your top payload?”

  “Depends entirely on the mission, sir.”

  “Of course.” He nodded patiently, and stopped to scratch something on a pad before his blue, shortsighted eyes came back to me. “Suppose your mission is to carry forty tons of equipment and three technicians to a point in space fifteen billion miles out from the sun?”

  “A crazy question.” I saw the Admiral’s face, and tried to moderate my tone. “What I mean, sir, the Starhawk wasn’t designed for interstellar flight-

  “No ion ship is good enough for that.” Knedder didn’t seem offended, but he was persistent. “But I understood that you could carry us fifteen billion miles out. Right?”

  “That’s about the limit of our cruising range.” I tried to be polite about it. “With no extra passengers and no extra load.”

  “Can’t trim another ounce off our impedimenta.” Knedder stood tugging at the leathery lobe of his outsized ear, with a dreamy look on his dried-up face. “But how many tons of weapons do you carry?”

  “That’s restricted—”

  The Admiral cleared his throat. “Please answer, Captain.”

  “Twelve point four mass-tons of mounted armament.” I tried hard to swallow my natural indignation. “Eighteen-point-seven tons of ammunition and missiles in all categories.”

  “Only thirty-one tons.” In a worried way, Knedder combed his knobby fingers back through his straggling mop of hair, without improving its appearance. “Something else will have to go.” He clapped his hands together. “How about your radar range finders ? ”

  Four point two mass-tons in the electronic detection gear.” I couldn’t help flinching. “Three-point-seven tons in the cybernetic fire control.”

  “One more to go.” He scowled and scribbled on his pad, humming through his nose in a way that annoyed me. “Let’s have a look in your ammunition room.”

  I saw what was coming, but there was nothing I could do about it but follow Knedder meekly through the ship and hold the end of a steel tape while he measured bulkheads and deck space. Finally he looked up at me, with a preoccupied nod.

  “Okay, Barron,” he said. “Your ship will have to do”

  “Do?” I forgot to be polite. “For what?”

  "You ought to feel honored, Captain,” the Admiral put in hastily. “Dr. Knedder is choosing the Starhawk for a mission that i$ certain to become a milestone in space history. We can tell you now that you are going out beyond the orbit of Pluto, to search for an undiscovered planet. We plan to name it Cerberus”

  I came very near exploding. The Guard was formed to protect and assist space commerce, not to chase down imaginary planets.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed,” I told Knedder, when I could trust myself to speak. “A dozen expeditions have gone out to look for trans-Plutonian planets since I’ve been in the Guard. Most of them never came back. The few that did hadn’t found a thing.

  “But I know what we’re looking for.” Knedder was impervious to common sense. “I know the approximate mass and position of Cerberus, calculated from the way it affects the orbits of Pluto and Neptune. “Hasn’t that been tried before?”

  “The planet’s heavier and farther away than anybody else has ever suspected,” Knedder said. “More massive than Jupiter. It has a highly eccentric orbit, inclined almost ninety degrees to the plane of the ecliptic. For a thousand years at a time, it’s too far off to have any measurable effect on the nearer planets. Now it’s back near perihelion.

  We were standing near the starboard turret, and Knedder turned to the Admiral with a restless gesture at the missile launchers and the long space rifles mounted there.

  “No time to waste,” he said. “Rip out that junk. “Junk?” Something choked me. I might have hit him, old and harmless as he looked, but the Admiral caught my arm.

  "Very well, sir,” he told Knedder. " We’ll have demolition crews on the job in an hour.”

  “Good,” Knedder said. “My equipment’s ready at the dock.”

  I felt relieved when I saw him pocket his tape and turn to go; I’d had just about all I could take from him.

  " And thank you, Barron.” He beamed at me stupidly. “We’re going to be seeing a lot of each other, and I want you to know that I’m happy to be in the hands of such a competent officer.”

  If he had actually been in my hands, I could have twisted his scrawny neck without a qualm. As things stood, I could only inquire just what he meant to do with his forty tons of cargo.

  Our special equipment is designed for special methods of search,” he said. “Others, as you know, have investigated every visible object bigger than Phobos, within twenty billion miles of the sun. It follows that the vast mass of Cerberus must be in some way invisible.

  “Invisible?” I stared at him. If it’s larger than Jupiter—”

  “My theory—” Knedder checked himself, looking mysterious.

  “Dr. Knedder’s theory is classified top secret,” the Admiral put in quickly." You are to be informed only about those details that appear to be essential to the efficient performance of your duties.”

  I escorted them off the ship, and went back to take a farew
ell look at the guns and missiles I loved, before the wreckers came.

  They carried out the ammunition, hoisted out the missiles, dismantled the launchers, ripped out the rifles, knocked out the bulkheads, cut out the gun decks, tore out all the radar and cybernetic gear that had been the keen eyes and the cold nerves and the fighting brain of a living ship. Saws whined and hammers crashed and cutting torches hissed until my own guts felt sick.

  Knedder’s two assistants came aboard with his secret equipment. Dr. Jefferson was a tall, trembling, dark-skinned skeleton. He looked too feeble to survive the ten-month round trip. I advised Knedder to send him back to an Earthside rest home, and find a younger helper.

  “Brain’s still good,” Knedder was irritatingly patient and stubbornly sure of himself. “Astrophysicist. Traced Cerberus across astronomical plates exposed a hundred years ago. Brilliant job. I want him with us.”

  I resigned myself to Dr. Jefferson, and asked how an invisible planet could have been photographed.

  “Wasn’t,” Knedder murmured gently. “Gravity field bends light rays. Displaces images of stars beyond it. Slight effect, but enough for Jefferson. Brainy. Can’t do without him.”

  Dr. Ming, the other assistant, was a plump Eurasian girl with thick-lensed glasses that seemed to magnify her sad black eyes. She was attractive: my crewmen whistled when they saw her come aboard. I called Knedder aside, and told him as courteously as possible that I couldn’t allow a woman passenger on the Starhawk.

  “Guess Ming is a woman.” He nodded absently, as if that fact had never occurred to him before and didn’t matter now. “Also the greatest mathematician alive. Better than all your cybernetic brains. Absolutely essential to the project.”

  I went to the Admiral. He made an unkind joke about my age, and advised me to make the best of her. That left me no choice, and I must admit that she was no trouble.

  As a matter of fact, I seldom saw her. The special equipment for Operation Baby Giant came aboard packed in heavy crates or thickly wrapped in opaque plastics, and Knedder posted keep outsigns outside all the compartments where he was setting it up. He and his people stayed inside, and kept all the doors secured with new combination locks.