Hell Stuff For Planet X

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  Maybe it was all sort of silly. But it was relief from that lonely stay on Io, where not a real thing grew any more, except some rock lichens. And I could enjoy luxuries I'd never had before.

  Sometimes I remembered—danger. But not till I was aware of the passage of time, as dream succeeded dream, literally in thousands. Weeks, maybe months, must have already been used up by now. And I'd never emerged from that curtain of rosy visions, which I realized was the result of a science of the mind developed by the last men of Io, for a purpose of their own.

  And I wondered: "Where am I really? Where is my actual body? How is it feeding itself? What is it doing? There are air-purifiers in its space suit, of course; but there are so many other things to consider!"

  I DIDN'T know how to answer these questions. So, in moments of panic, I tried to break the spell of dreams, and fight my way back to truth. It was then that I discovered that I was in a trap. I couldn't get rid of those visions—or if it was possible to do so, it would require a tremendous effort. And I didn't seem equal to that, now. Still, it didn't seem to trouble me much. "What of it?" I kept telling myself. "What of it?" So my visionary magic carpet continued to function.

  But I wondered about old Russ Abfall. How was he faring? Doubtless his situation was the same as mine. Doubtless he was lost in a web of dreams, too. What were they like? I was pretty sure I could guess. Old Russ, weary of the life of a space man, wanted to retire. He wanted to build himself a laboratory on Earth, and spend the rest of his days in research for the improvement of space craft. It had been a dream of his since he was a kid. He'd hoped to win enough money from his various ventures in out-of-the-way corners of the solar system, to finance his costly experiments. So doubtless, now, he was getting a kind of vivid if unsubstantial fulfillment to his ambitions, just as I was frequently imagining the success of that interplanetary tourist line I wanted to start, if I ever had the means. There'd be contacts, people, movement and color. I'd own ships. I wouldn't be just a space bum any more.

  Another thing about Russ. He'd had a wife once, when he was young. But she'd been killed, when they were married a year. Killed in the smash of a rocket-plane racer she was piloting. Rhoda, her name had been. Once in a great while, Russ used to rave about her. He'd show me her picture then. She'd been dark and snappy, and pretty. Perhaps Russ was imagining himself with her now, young again....

  I WAS on the bridge of a big Earth-Mars Liner, giving orders as its captain, when, finally, the break in the dream-curtain came. From out of nowhere, I knew that a hand was on my shoulder, shaking it with insistent violence.

  "Hey, Milt!" someone was calling, in tones as faint as if they originated a thousand miles away. "Good night! We've got to snap out of this! If we don't, it's our finish, sure!"

  It was Russ, of course. I knew that voice was truly his, and not another phantom. I couldn't see him, but I could tell how hoarse he was. When he stopped speaking, he began to cough. It was a hollow, horrible sort of cough, that made my blood run cold for a second. But terror starting up in me, caused me to make a mighty effort to win my way back to solid reality, and find out just what sort of a predicament we were in. I struggled furiously, using all the will I could muster. And the dream fought back.

  But at last those instruments on the control panels of my make-believe space liner began to grow faint and transparent. So did the comfortable fitting of the bridge. Sleek chromium fittings, and soft dark rugs and chairs, turned to ghosts, hovering at the vanishing-point. And around me, maintained only by force of will, was grim fact!

  I was in a deep, vertical shaft—a sort of well. Jagged walls of stone were around me, towering up toward a circle of daylight, far aloft. I was clad in a space armor again. Russ Abfall was there beside me, leaning weakly against the wall of the pit. Io, it was—the real Io—though I'd never seen this excavation before.

  Instead of feeling languid and comfortable, though in tip-top shape, as I had a moment ago, I felt rotten! I was sick, and worn out with work and half starvation. My hands and arms—my whole body, in fact—were so emaciated they fairly rattled inside my space armor. Still I didn't get the significance of all this—quite. Though I was pretty certain that, weak as I was, I could never climb out of this pit. I'd starve here—die of thirst.

  Naturally I looked to Russ for explanations—because he's smart, figuring things out. "What's it—all about, Russ?" I grumbled thickly, still battling to keep those comfortable visions out of my tired brain—visions I yearned for now in this hell-hole, as I had never yearned for anything before.

  Russ Abfall, probably because of his age, was in even worse shape than I was. His face, in his oxygen helmet, looked like the face of a corpse in a coffin. But he came through with the answers. He was too tired to be excited any more. But he spoke, swiftly, tensely, in his cracked and now hoarse voice, aware that we couldn't hold onto real things for long.

  "You know what reverie, or daydreaming is, Milt?" he asked. "Naturally you do, but let me give my own definition: It's a mental mechanism which enables one to escape from something unpleasant. If you've a routine kind of job that you don't like, you generally do it while think about something nice.

  "The phenomenon that has tricked us, is just a kind of reverie, enormously improved by artificial means. To understand its purpose here, you've got to understand the position of those last Ionians. The climate was bitterly cold. They had little food or water. The future prospect was hopeless. But still they wanted to keep going as long as they could—getting as much out of life as they could.

  "Some genius of a scientist found them the means. But in some respects, it's an old trick to us on Earth. In a crude way, drugs like opium and hashish accomplish the same thing—produce dreams of strange beauty and vividness.

  "But agents other than drugs might do this far more perfectly, without, in themselves, putting one's body out of kilter. We're both sick, but from different causes.

  "The brain responds to quite a number of stimuli. When one has a fever—when one's brain is being thrown off balance by heat—there's a tendency toward the hallucinations of delirium. Sun spot radiations have long been believed to cause mental and emotional excitement, producing wars and other forms of mass and individual violence. Music—sound waves, enriched by tone and mathematical rhythm—soothe the mind and emotions, generally.

  "We must be dealing with a form of radiation here, Milt. Something that beats on the nerve and brain cells. The sun-plant, you know, and that concealed apparatus its electricity is fed into. It detaches the visionary part of our minds from fact, and allows our imaginations to roam, free, while the mechanical portions of our brain, and our bodies, can go on with unpleasant tasks.

  "THAT'S the way I've doped it out, Milt. It's beautiful and insidious. But of course the mess we're in isn't the fault of the old Ionians—or their intention. We just got tangled with the Lethean influence they used on themselves, probably at the very last. We monkeyed with their sun-plant—and so, liberated again what might be called the drug of a hopelessly doomed and dying race."

  Russ Abfall stopped speaking. He was panting heavily. My will tensed against the blur of visions trying to envelope me once more. I was looking around. Some of Russ' explanation, I had worked out myself, when I had pondered in that dream region.

  I saw the walls of that deep well, around me, grey and stark. Tools—blast excavators, which we had brought from our ship, were lying in the thick dust. We'd been digging here—perhaps for months. In the wall of the pit, chinks were cut, one above the other—a kind of ladder, going up and up. We'd been out of the pit often, going back to the ship for supplies, driven by some perhaps subconscious urge like sleep-walkers. We'd been working here, using up our strength until we were no longer able to climb out of that deep hole which we'd been digging deeper from some ancient Ionian beginning. We'd even rigged up a system of buckets and cables to remove the dust our blast-excavators knocked loose from the rock.

  "Digging down for water," I grumbled. "Sub
terranean water which can't be there any more. The Ionians wanted water. The urge to get it was stamped in the radiations of their reverie machine and—we got a dose of it too...."

  "I think so," Russ commented.

  "But," I asked, "what was it that snapped you out of the dream-world in the first place? Did you just realize and fight your way out or—"

  Russ raised his right arm. I could see, even with the space suit sleeve around it, that it was badly swelled. "A falling rock dropped on my wrist," he told me. "And the pain was strong enough to get through to me. It almost woke me up, so to speak—showed me how things were. And I was scared enough to use every bit of will I had, to go the rest of the way...."

  Well, what were we to do now? Starvation and death in that pit was staring us in the face, if we couldn't climb out of that hole. We tried doing just this, using that crude ladder of chinks. But we could do only a few steps before dizziness, and the weakness in our muscles overcame us, and we had to drop back. Then, impelled by a forlorn idea, we staggered around, half-awake, searching for some sign of that Ionian reverie machine. We blasted into the walls with our excavators—but we found nothing tangible to smash—to fight. But in the dust under our booted feet, we stumbled on more mummified Ionian corpses, each elfin face smiling a happy smile which we understood now. Maybe we'd be like that soon—mummies. The tools of those Ionians were beside them—complicated, sharp-ended rods, which may have employed some powerful principle. But they were useless now.

  And as we plied the disintegrating flame of our excavators, our wills grew tired.

  The strain of hanging on to cold, uninviting facts, was too strong.

  "T'hell with it!" Russ croaked at last. And then he muttered a name—"Rhoda." His young wife, of long ago.

  "No, Russ!" I grated. "Don't slip! Try not to—think—"

  BUT my voice trailed off—and I was somewhere else—reminiscing. I was a kid again, reading a book. There was sunshine on the piano keys in the living room.

  And my brain was saying: "What's the difference? The Ionian scientist who made the dreams possible, was a great guy. His invention can give a beautiful, quiet death. Better than feeling starvation creeping on you, anyway. Better than seeing this hole, and that circle of stars, way up there...."

  Like that. I guess anyone can understand how it was with Russ and me, all right. We were exhausted physically from the strain of constant work. And Russ had been chasing an ambition in the void for more than forty years, seeking the funds to set up that lab he wanted. No one could criticize that tough old bird for lack of nerve because he had crumpled. The trail had been too long and too hard. Besides there was Rhoda, whom he could reach only in fancy.

  But suddenly I wanted things real, myself. The real Earth, and not these empty phantoms. I wanted the real people I had known. It would be the same with Russ, if he had the chance. And he was my pal.

  So, after a little while I gained some strength back. I didn't know whether it would accomplish any good, but I brought my will into play again, for all I was worth. The well materialized around me, with its grey, volcanic stone. I felt as ill as before. And I thought desperately: "What'll I do? What'll I do?"

  There was adrenalin in the emergency pack of my space suit. I'd of course remembered all the time that it was there, but I hadn't thought that injecting some of this powerful gland extract into my blood, would do much good. Nor did I think so now. I just hoped.

  Everything was swaying and blurred around me. But I got out the emergency pack. Filling a hypodermic syringe with that powerful, treacherous fluid, was no snap, since my fingers were trembling like castanets. And always I had to keep those visions out of my eyes, and those softening dream-sounds of music and wind and water, out of my ears. It was like balancing on a tightrope, when you're a novice.

  Grimly I unfastened the wrist-band of my space suit sleeve, exposing part of my arm to the cold half-vacuum. Quivering, I jabbed the needle home, and pressed the plunger. Then I fumbled to refasten the wrist-band.

  Russ was lying there, half imbedded in the dust, like a drunken sot. I kicked him in the ribs to try to bring him around, but it was no good. So I had to doctor him without his assistance. Never before had I had to fight so hard to concentrate on a purpose. But after some minutes I got an adrenalin shot into him too.

  BY THE time I was finished with him, the gland extract was beginning to take effect on me. My heart was pounding until I thought it would burst itself wide open. But otherwise I felt a little more competent. Maybe that was an illusion produced by the adrenalin. My arms waved crazily, as if to push back, by physical action, the mental phantasms of Ionian mind magic, still hammering in my imagination. They seemed to cling around me like smoke, trying to develop solidity again.

  Suddenly, though, I was more sure than ever that all my efforts were going to fail. I was certain that the adrenalin wouldn't do any good—that I couldn't have taken enough to have the needed effect of combating the weakness in my body, and that, still, I had injected too much into my veins—enough to kill me.

  Then I heard Russ in my helmet phones. I looked around. He had staggered to his feet, braced to that extent by the adrenalin.

  "What—?" he stammered thickly.

  "I gave you a shot in the arm," I told him. "Now come on—quick! Let's try again to climb out of this hole!"

  "How?" he questioned. "Don't be dumb, Milt! Don't be crazy!"

  But he came forward anyway. I put his foot in the first step of the chink-ladder, and boosted him—one step up. Oh, it looked like a futile business, all right! He slipped on that first chink, and whacked his shin. He cursed with the pain of the jolt. I was nearly thrown off my feet, as his body came down upon me.

  Then, however, all at once, his face took on a furious, mad brightness. "That's it, Milt!" he growled weakly, coughing a little. "That's our one chance! Get angry—think of things to make us angry. Concentrate on hating! It's wonderful what emotions like that can do to strengthen an enfeebled carcass! Come on, boy! Hate! Hate Io! Hate the cold of it, and the loneliness! Hate the circumstances that are killing us! Hate those damned dreams! Hate the sun-plant, working up there! We've got to smash it! Let your blood boil with just that one idea! Don't think about life or death. Think of the fun we're going to have, blasting that ugly contraption to bits! Come on Milt! If it's the last thing we do...."

  LIKE half-starved cats we clawed our way over the lip of the well. Madness was in us, filming dreams tried to enfold us again. We were exhausted there on the cold plain among the hills. But our job wasn't finished yet. We couldn't delay, because if we did we'd slip back into the clutch of that Ionian mind magic that had enslaved us, making us work beyond our limits. And if we did slip, there never would be another chance. We had to hang on—somehow.

  We hardly knew where we were. We didn't remember being in this spot before. Getting oriented properly took more time, there in the confusing labyrinth of passes between the hills and mountains. But our tracks in the dust, made when we were like sleep-walking robots, finally offered a solution. Following them, we found our way to the sun machine, a quarter-mile distant.

  The thing's flywheel still spun steadily. Peering at it with blurred, wobbly vision, I saw the secret grin on the face of the boiler image. Then Russ and I raised our pistols. As twin dynamium capsules struck the machine, there was a thin, distant-sounding, though mighty, explosion. Iron, reflector fragments, and bits of the generator, boiler, steam condenser and turbine, flew in every direction. And there was a white puff of steam that expanded quickly into rainbow frost crystals there in the weak sunshine.

  It wasn't quite over even yet—for there was that unknown thing underground, and still active, for it stored electricity. Without speaking, we fired more dynamium capsules, until we had a hole fifty feet deep blasted in the crust of Io. In it there were just a few pieces of metal and other materials that could tell little about the miracle that had been concealed there, throwing off strange radiations. Bits of wire, there wer
e. Some pitchy, insulating substance, and glass. The latter may have been part of a storage battery.

  Russ gave one look down into the hole. Then he sagged to his knees and rolled over on the rocky ground. When I tried to rouse him, he grumbled sleepily: "All over, Milt. Beat it. Nuts!" In the next instant the plucky old devil was snoring, and I had to drag him back to the ship as best I could. I was sleepy as hell. Maybe we'd slept on our feet before, but it couldn't have been quite natural sleep.

  I guess that's about all. Our trade in Ionian relics was a financial success. We're back on Earth. Russ has the lab he wanted all these years—testing space craft principles. And I'm negotiating to buy some ships for my interplanetary tourist line....

  The End

  *********************************

  Death and the Dictator,

  by Raymond Z. Gallun

  Science Fiction Oct. 1940

  Short Story - 4607 words

  Why not destroy London and Paris immediately, in one fell swoop?—

  thought the Great Dictator—then his people, thrown into war, would

  have to remain loyal. But the fear of treason kept him buried under the

  Earth in a steel-protected room, until the hatred of two decades closes

  in upon him!

  ONCE again, after twenty-five years, the world stood still—breathless. Once again, in great cities, men climbed ladders and put little metal shields around the lights along the streets and boulevards. Paint was daubed on electric bulbs, one by one, swiftly, unobtrusively, until, at night, the motif was blue—a faint, soft, low-penetrant glow, that a few hundred feet of hazy air could mask completely. Not quite blackout yet....