Then and Now: Another Collection of Science Fiction

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  “That’s what it must be—the spirit of death! Those ships that blew up when they got too close to Paxtonia— Some smart people think that maybe there’s an intelligent agent here who did that by exploding the old-type rocket fuel. But there’s nothing here that anybody can find, except the ruins of buildings and machines, and a lot of empty silence! Still, a week ago there were twelve men in this expedition—and now there are only three of us left alive. Please! There isn’t any sense in our staying on Paxtonia! We’ve got to get out of this devil’s paradise—at once!”

  “Shut up, MacDowd!” Pilot Al Kerny, big and bearlike and brave, but not possessing the mental keenness of a scientist, growled emphatically. “You joined this outfit of your own free will, to help do a job that’s got to be done! Until we find out what makes Paxtonia so dangerous, and until some way is figured out to combat this condition, no space ships that come into this vicinity will be safe, in spite of the new, and less easily detonated, rocket fuel. Our lives don’t balance against thousands of other lives. Dr. Rolf and you and I are sticking, MacDowd!”

  Dr. Kurt Rolf, wispy old savant, and since the passing of his superiors, chief of the Montridge expedition, was about to add a few words of his own to Kerny’s fierce declarations, when tragedy was repeated.

  MacDowd gave an anguished start. He gasped, and his gloved hands clutched and clawed at the chest plates of his space suit. Then he slumped to the floor of the conning tower.

  As in the case of previous tragedies, there hadn’t been the slightest visible or audible warning of the approach of danger. But when Kerny and Rolf bent over the crumpled body, it was a corpse. MacDowd was the tenth victim of the unknown, the incomprehensible.

  For a moment Al Kerny’s massive form seemed to wilt with weariness and discouragement. His head sagged forward inside his helmet, as he looked out over the plain on which the space ship rested. Paxtonia, which, when it was drifting into the solar system, an astronomer named Paxton had discovered with his telescope, was shaped like a crude wedge, or like a bomb fragment. The plain was the top of the wedge, and was a segment of the surface of the world that had been shattered.

  Its airless expanse was crusted with utterly dry loam, baked and gray under the merciless sun of the void. Here were visible the remnants of ancient vegetation. And Kerny could see, here, things which would have thrilled the heart of any archaeologist—vast, broken domes of hewn stone, which might once have imprisoned air and water in their interiors, and gigantic, moveless engines and machines—all of them belonging to an age of incredible antiquity.

  ON THE DOMES, carved in bas-relief, were many representations of the people who had created all these wonders. The carven figures stood erect, like men, but they were very slender and attenuated. Their eyes, set in their triangular heads, were large and protruding. But like the things around them, the members of this graven host were lifeless and incapable of inflicting harm—impassive denials of the fact that somewhere among the debris of a wrecked civilization there was a malefic something that seemed to possess the powers of black magic.

  “I’m sorry, MacDowd,” Kerny muttered to the corpse. “I guess you were right. We should have got out of here. Even wearing space suits all the time doesn’t seem to help. We—”

  Dr. Rolf gripped Kerny’s arm in sudden realization. “Al!” he cried harshly, and the small radios, or ether phones, by which spacemen communicate when sealed in vacuum armor, transmitted his voice to his companion. “Observe that gauge, please! The air pressure—it is falling! They—it—whatever the cause of so much murder may be—has invaded the ship—pierced a slight opening in the hull, somehow! It is not that the air is leaking out that should worry us, for there is plenty in the reserve drums. It is that the unknown threat is here, around us and invisible, at this very instant doubtless making ready to strike us down! MacDowd was the first man to die inside the ship. That is additional proof!”

  “Shall we leave Paxtonia, then?” Kerny questioned anxiously.

  The scientist’s thin face was working with emotion. He yanked a proton pistol from the belt around his bulky attire, and sent a blue cone of flame belching from its maw.

  “No!” he shouted, as he continued to battle the unseen foe which he knew was near. “There is not a chance to do that! It is doubtful that we could even get the ship into space before we were killed. We must stay and try to think of a plan! The war turret ahead— We must go there and lock ourselves inside! There’s ten-inch dural steel on roof and floor and walls. If the hidden ones can bore through the hull of the ship they can doubtless penetrate that armor, too, but doing so will doubtless take considerable time.”

  Al Kerny, big and powerful, was not capable of the intricate thinking and deliberate action which characterizes some men. Yet his mind could work with lightning rapidity, and his responses were swift and cool. What his more erudite companion had just said brought him realization.

  The things he did now he seemed to do all at once, efficiently and without lost motion. He jerked his proton pistol from his holster, and, emulating Rolf, sent its fiery cone spraying and bobbing in every direction.

  At the same time he stooped and jerked the body of MacDowd, which had little weight here on tiny Paxtonia, up under one arm. To this burden he added a chest, about a yard long and two feet broad, which had reposed on a steel rack over the intricate control mechanisms of the space ship.

  Dr. Rolf and he rushed from the conning tower and along a corridor which led to the war turret forward, with their proton pistols active. What narrow escapes they had in their flight to this refuge, they could not have observed or guessed. Inside the turret, they swung the ponderous, airtight door shut and worked the locking mechanism.

  HERE all was heavy, tomb-like quiet, which seemed to magnify the throb of their speeding pulses. A great rocket-torpedo projector, ugly and capable when pitted against a tangible foe, gleamed slumberously before the sealed firing port in the curved wall. Bars of sunshine, slanting from small bull’s-eye windows, armored with ten-inch glass almost as hard as diamond and as tough as Damascus steel, made golden paths through the dust floating in the air.

  Nothing could appear more harmless than those lazily eddying motes; yet at sight of them both Rolf and Kerny were gripped by a vague, cold suspicion that among those specks might drift the instruments of sudden, ghastly extinction. How could one be sure that, during the instant that the massive door was open, the impalpable essence of death had not slipped through, into the war turret?

  The two men, possessed of the same thought, which had come to them both by a process of parallel reasoning, acted in an identical manner. Their proton beams flared out, lashing the dust particles into violent motion, and reducing them to fragments too fine to be visible, even if magnified a thousand diameters. The entire atmosphere within the war turret was submitted to the sterilizing action of the beams. Any living thing in the paths of the protonic storms from the pistols, must surely have been destroyed.

  “Perhaps for the present we are safe,” Kurt Rolf panted in his usual stilted manner of speech. "We must have missed by only a very little the same fate that came to MacDowd.”

  Al Kerny had lowered the chest he carried, and the body of MacDowd, to the floor. Together, he and his companion stripped the space suit and clothing from the corpse. Except for a tiny hole, which must have been made by something much finer than a needle, the vacuum armor was intact. This puncture penetrated the heavy metal chest plating of the suit.

  MacDowd’s flesh was livid. There was a minute, reddish pin prick over his heart. That was all. He had died as had the others before him. Delicate tests of the blood of previous victims had revealed the nature of the killing agent. It was a protein poison related to the venom of snakes, though many times more virulent. But beyond that, except for the vague evidences of punctured armor and flesh, there was nothing tangible to work on in an effort to solve the mystery of Paxtonia. From these sketchy hints little could be concluded except that some weapon, unse
en because of its smallness, was involved, that it was under intelligent control, and that the purpose of that intelligence was hostile.

  THE TWO MEN looked at each other. Both were aware that they were prisoners aboard their own ship, for to venture out of the war turret was to court instant death. For a time, protected by the thick and terrifically stout turret armor as they were, they were safe; but they felt sure that not to make active use of that time would be fatal. The Paxtonian menace had doubtless spent days digging surreptitiously through the hull of the ship, and progress would be slower against the turret shell. Nevertheless, once a small, and not easily discoverable hole had been driven through it, subtle invisibility could be relied upon to defeat, in the end, whatever protection proton pistols might provide.

  Rolf and Kerny could not safely reach the radio room at the rear of the conning tower to send out an SOS call, even if to do so would accomplish any good. It would be pointless to signal a puny freight or passenger craft, and even a war rocket would be almost helpless. Now that the invisible foe was much more on the alert than it had been at the time of the Montridge expedition’s arrival, dozens of men from a war rocket might be killed in trying to effect a rescue.

  “Well?” said Dr. Rolf at last. The tone of the word was enough to show that, for the moment at least, he was in doubt as to what might be done.

  Al Kerny had an opportunity now to explain the scheme of which he had thought. He glanced at the chest resting beside MacDowd’s body, and then back at Rolf.

  The big pilot spoke hesitantly, for he knew his limits where the higher brackets of science and mechanics were concerned.

  “I believe you’ll agree with me, Doc,” he began, “that it’s almost certain that what made those tiny wounds in MacDowd and the rest of the men were some kind of solid objects—poisoned projectiles so small that they’re out of sight. The thing to do is to get down to their level of smallness, magnify them so we can fight them in their own size plane and thus spoil their advantage. That way we’ll be able to tell what they are and what’s running them!”

  “Yes indeed!” Rolf commented sarcastically. “But how are we to ‘get down to their level of smallness’? A microscope, you will say, is the answer, and perhaps an ultra-sensitive microphone. But have not both been tried without results? Did not Professor Montridge even probe the pin-prick wounds of the first victims, only to find nothing? We could never examine all the air in this ship with a microscope. Ending what we seek, that way, would be like finding one special grain of sand on a beach! Nor are our best microphones delicate enough to pick up whatever sounds the—the danger here might make!” Kurt Rolf’s tone was bitter.

  “You don’t understand,” said Al Kerny. “Wait!”

  He stood the chest up on end and opened its front. Within was the intricate switchboard of a radio-robot control. There was a radiovision screen here, by means of which the operator could see what the mechanical eyes of the robot saw. And there was a diaphragm which would reproduce in amplified form the sounds heard by its mechanical ears. More intricate were the keyboard controls, the visible portion of which resembled the keyboard of a typewriter. By manipulating properly the banked rows of keys here, one transmitted radio impulses into the ether, which, when received by the robot, were translated into the desired action of its various limbs and parts.

  From a small box inside the chest—carefully lined with felt, like a jewel casket—Al Kerny took a minute mechanism. He held it in his glove palm. The mechanism looked like a beetle made of metal. Its length was only about a quarter of an inch; but it had legs like a living beetle. It was provided with a tiny rocket, and a gravity screen, like a space ship. Moreover, it possessed a pair of appendages meant for grasping and handling. These were fitted with metal fingers finer than human hair.

  THE DEVICE was a micro-robot, or, if the trade name was to be used, a Scarab. The task of constructing such a tiny and incredibly intricate fabrication was a matter involving infinite skill, patience and precision. The most powerful microscopes had to be used, and the most delicate of tools. The nervous waver of a finger, during the process, was enough to ruin much of the fragile workmanship that had so far been completed.

  However, in spite of all the difficulties of their manufacture, Scarabs, or micro-robots, had proved very useful since their invention. First, because they could go almost anywhere and spy on almost any activity; they had been employed in detective work. But their utility had since broadened into other fields. Mechanics inspected the not easily accessible interiors of great engines with them, and they were of value in scores of other ways. No expedition to a strange place would have felt itself adequately equipped, unless it possessed a micro-robot.

  Al Kerny held the tiny miracle where Dr. Kurt Rolf could see it. “Maybe I’m crazy, Doc,’’ he said hesitantly. “But I’m a kind of optimist.”

  “I do not grasp at all what you mean,” Rolf stated in puzzlement. “We have used the Scarab to explore the deep crevices of Paxtonia. Professor Montridge worked its controls on the first day, before he was killed. Then there were others—Ted Rose, Boris Andriev—both dead now—and myself. We learned nothing of what it is that makes Paxtonia dangerous. The Scarab, small though it is, is not small enough to deal with the unknown.”

  “Agreed,” Kerny admitted. “But look! You’re smart that way. You know all about these micro-robots. If you could make another one, the size of a grain of sand, it should be able to see just what the menace is!”

  Rolf gave a start of sheer consternation. For once his intellectual face looked almost stupid. It was seconds before he could manage to speak.

  “Splendid,” he croaked feebly. “That is, if it was possible. How could you expect me—any one—to build a Scarab no bigger than a sand grain? Are you—”

  “Insane?” Kerny questioned with a mild grin. “Well, I suggested that I might be. But you haven’t got all of my idea yet, Doc. I don’t mean that you should construct this ultra-micro-robot with your own fingers, of course—at least not directly. I mean that you should manipulate the robot control, making our Scarab do the work. In the television screen you would see the magnified images of what its eyes saw. As far as vision and handling goes, the whole size scale would be raised, so that the job would be almost like working with stuff of the usual dimensions.”

  Again Rolf registered extreme surprise, as the boldness of the idea struck home. But when he spoke once more, his voice was calm. Inspiration had been given to him; and now, in his methodical way, he was testing it mentally, to discover whether or not it was sound and practical.

  “Substance,” he mused. “You would think that the parts of a machine so very small would break under the strain of their mere operation. But no, that is not true. The strength of material, in proportion to size, increases as size is diminished. This scientific fact is easy to demonstrate: Under Earthly gravitational conditions, a lump of soft putty a foot in diameter will flatten with its own weight if set on a solid surface; while a lump of the same putty, if only an inch in diameter, will not flatten.”

  ROLF was silent for a moment. Then fierce eagerness gripped him. “It is a magnificent thought, Al Kerny!” he shouted. “We will make use of it! Or, anyway, we will try to make use of it! Under more favorable circumstances I could really do it justice, by working—how should I say?—in steps downward. With the Scarab as big as a beetle, I could make a Scarab as big as a sand grain. This second Scarab could build a miniature of itself, as big as a dust grain. The third Scarab could construct a fourth, bearing the same proportions as the first to the second, or the second to the third. And so on, down, to the limit imposed by the ultimate indivisibility of the atoms themselves!

  “The only difficulty would be in maintaining radio control of the smaller Scarabs—the waves they would emit and respond to would be so very fine and faint! But I think this obstacle could be surmounted in steps—upward and down! A large radio transmitter would send its signals to a small receiver, to which was attached a tran
smitter of the same size scale. This second transmitter would contact a still smaller receiver. And so the relaying process would continue, using finer and finer impulses all the time. Upward the process would work just as well, a small transmitter contacting a larger, though sufficiently sensitive, receiver. The radios, which are part of each Scarab, in both diminishing and increasing order of size, would complete the chain. Thus I might be able to explore a truly miniature environment, in which the most minute microbes would appear as colossal monsters!”

  “Hold on!” Kerny advised, to check the scientist’s hurtling thoughts, and to keep them within the bounds of practical necessity. “Most likely the building of one Scarab of sand-grain dimensions will be a tough enough job for now.”

  Rolf’s expression sobered. “Yes,” he mumbled in realization. “A tough job. There is great need for hurry, and so much to do, and so much care to be exercised! Almost everything must be made from scratch, so to speak—even many of the tools for our present Scarab. Then it must devise wires almost as fine as the cilia of a microbe, and tiny electromagnets and photo-electric cells, and lens of microscopic size, not to mention scores of other things as intricate! But from the complete set of spare parts, available in the supply compartment of the chest here for the repair of any breakdown of our present Scarab, we can at least draw the necessary substances: steel foil and floss, copper, sodium, tantalum, tungsten, quartz, and so forth. And we have the little atomic repair furnace to supply heat.”

  “Then your job starts now, Doc,” said Kerny. “I'm sorry I can’t help you much.”

  His words were mild and apologetic. But his feelings were loaded with stark, burning lust for vengeance against the nameless horror that had murdered his friends.