Svan rose, panting, stared around. No one else was in sight, save the petrified five and the ground car. Svan glared at them contemptuously, then reached down and heaved on the senseless body of the guard. Over the shoulder of the road the body went, onto the damp swampland of the jungle. Even while Svan watched the body began to sink. There would be no trace.
Svan strode back to the car. "Hurry up," he gasped to the girl. "Now there is danger for all of us, if they discover he is missing. And keep a watch for other guards."
Venus has no moon, and no star can shine through its vast cloud layer. Ensign Lowry, staring anxiously out through the astro-dome in the bow of the Earth ship, cursed the blackness.
"Can't see a thing," he complained to the Exec, steadily writing away at the computer's table. "Look—are those lights over there?"
The Exec looked up wearily. He shrugged. "Probably the guards. Of course, you can't tell. Might be a raiding party."
Lowry, stung, looked to see if the Exec was smiling, but found no answer in his stolid face. "Don't joke about it," he said. "Suppose something happens to the delegation?"
"Then we're in the soup," the Exec said philosophically. "I told you the natives were dangerous. Spy-rays! They've been prohibited for the last three hundred years."
"It isn't all the natives," Lowry said. "Look how they've doubled the guard around us. The administration is cooperating every way they know how. You heard the delegation's report on the intercom. It's this secret group they call the Council."
"And how do you know the guards themselves don't belong to it?" the Exec retorted. "They're all the same to me. . . . Look, your light's gone out now. Must have been the guard. They're on the wrong side to be coming from the town, anyhow. . . ."
Svan hesitated only a fraction of a second after the girl turned the lights out and stopped the car. Then he reached in the compartment under the seat. If he took a little longer than seemed necessary to get the atomite bomb out of the compartment, none of the others noticed. Certainly it did not occur to them that there had been two bombs in the compartment, though Svan's hand emerged with only one.
He got out of the car, holding the sphere. "This will do for me," he said. "They won't be expecting anyone to come from behind the ship—we were wise to circle around. Now, you know what you must do?"
Ingra nodded, while the others remained mute. "We must circle back again," she parroted. "We are to wait five minutes, then drive the car into the swamp. We will create a commotion, attract the guards."
Svan, listening, thought: Ifs not much of a plan. The guards would not be drawn away. I am glad I can't trust these five any more. If they must be destroyed, it is good that their destruction will serve a purpose.
Aloud, he said, "You understand. If I get through, I will return to the city on foot. No one will suspect anything if I am not caught, because the bomb will not explode until the ship is far out in space. Remember, you are in no danger from the guards."
From the guards, his mind echoed. He smiled. At least, they would feel no pain, never know what happened. With the amount of atomite in that bomb in the compartment, they would merely be obliterated in a ground-shaking crash.
Abruptly he swallowed, reminded of the bomb that was silently counting off the seconds. "Go ahead," he ordered. "I will wait here."
"Svan." The girl, Ingra, leaned over to him. Impulsively she reached for him, kissed him. "Good luck to you, Svan," she said.
"Good luck," repeated the others. Then silently the electric motor of the car took hold. Skillfully the girl backed it up, turned it around, sent it lumbering back down the road. Only after she had traveled a few hundred feet by the feel of the road did she turn the lights on again.
Svan looked after them. The kiss had surprised him. What did it mean? Was it an error that the girl should die with the others?
There was an instant of doubt in his steel-shackled mind, then it was driven away. Perhaps she was loyal, yet certainly she was weak. And since he could not know which was the one who had received the marked slip, and feared to admit it, it was better they all should die.
He advanced along the midnight road to where the ground rose and the jungle plants thinned out. Ahead, on an elevation, were the rain-dimmed lights of the Earth ship, set down in the center of a clearing made by its own fierce rockets. Svan's mist-trained eyes spotted the circling figures of sentries, and knew that these would be the ship's own. They would not be as easily overcome as the natives, not with those slim-shafted blasters they carried. Only deceit could get him to the side of the ship.
Svan settled himself at the side of the road, waiting for his chance. He had perhaps three minutes to wait; he reckoned. His fingers went absently to the pouch in his wide belt, closed on the slip of paper. He turned it over without looking at it, wondering who had drawn the first cross, and been a coward. Ingra? One of the men?
He became abruptly conscious of a commotion behind him. A ground car was racing along the road. He spun around and was caught in the glare of its blinding driving-light, as it bumped to a slithering stop.
Paralyzed, he heard the girl's voice. "Svan! They're coming! They found the guard's rifle, and they're looking for us! Thirty Earthmen, Svan, with those frightful guns. They fired at us, but we got away and came for you. We must flee!"
He stared unseeingly at the light. "Go away!" he croaked unbelievingly. Then his muscles jerked into action. The time was almost up—the bomb in the car—
"Go away!" he shrieked, and turned to run. His fists clenched and swinging at his side, he made a dozen floundering steps before something immense pounded at him from behind. He felt himself lifted from the road, sailing, swooping, dropping with annihilating force onto the hard, charred earth of the clearing. Only then did he hear the sound of the explosion, and as the immense echoes died away he began to feel the pain seeping into him from his hideously racked body. . . .
The Flight Surgeon rose from beside him. "He's still alive," he said callously to Lowry, who had just come up. "It won't last long, though. What've you got there?"
Lowry, a bewildered expression on his beardless face, held out the two halves of a metallic sphere. Dangling ends of wires showed where a connection had been broken. "He had a bomb," he said. "A magnetic-type, delayed-action atomite bomb. There must have been another in the car, and it went off. They—they were planning to bomb us."
"Amazing," the surgeon said dryly. "Well, they won't do any bombing now."
Lowry was staring at the huddled, mutilated form of Svan. He shuddered. The surgeon, seeing the shudder, grasped his shoulder.
"Better them than us," he said. "It's poetic justice if I ever saw it. They had it coming. . . ." He paused thoughtfully, staring at a piece of paper between his fingers. "This is the only part I don't get," he said.
"What's that?" Lowry craned his neck. "A piece of paper with a cross on it? What about it?"
The surgeon shrugged. "He had it clenched in his hand," he said. "Had the devil of a time getting it loose from him." He turned it over slowly, displayed the other side. "Now what in the world would he be doing carrying a scrap of paper with a cross marked on both sides?"
Double-Cross was the last story I published during the war. By the tune the war was over and I was back to civilian affairs again the world was a different place.
So this is a good place to close.
Yesterday I had lunch with Isaac Asimov, who was part of the Futurian scene in those ancient days and has been a good friend for pushing four decades. I told him what I was writing. It was only fair; after all, his The Early Asimov broke ground for this book. Sitting next to Isaac in the University Club in New York, along with Betsy Lester, Warren Preece, Carl Sagan and other admirable people, those teenage days of excitement and uncertainty seemed very remote. The luncheon was for contributors to the new Encyclopaedia Britannica,* the surroundings were plush . . . and none of us were seventeen any more.
I thought of dedicating this book to Isaac. We have done
so much of our growing up together (and listen, Isaac, I think we'll make it yet) that surely I should acknowledge so many years of close association, both as colleagues and as friends.
But in this book in particular it seems there are more debts incurred than I know how to pay. Not only Isaac Asimov. Not only all of the others who are mentioned here, the editors and the writers, the friends and the fans. Not only the entire membership of the Brooklyn Science Fiction League, the Independent League for Science Fiction, the International Scientific Association and of course the Futurians . . . not only editors, bookdealers, proprietors of secondhand magazine stores who endured my browsing for hours on end, and artists . . . but so many others that I cannot even count them.
And so there are only three names on the dedication page. They were all dear to me, and they all died too young.
Dear reader, at the end of this book let me level with you.
I'm not a particularly modest person, you know. It seems to me that I've had enough in the way of awards and money and celebrity to temper the agonies of adolescent ambition. And out of the large number of things I've written there are some stories—maybe a dozen, maybe not quite that many—that strike me as being about as good as anyone could ever have made those particular stories. Some were written decades ago. The most recent is one I am just finishing now. So in a sense I am not discontented with my life so far.
But everyone who spends his life trying to create something knows that there is no such thing as enough success or enough satisfaction. The story I am just finishing strikes me as very good. But I know perfectly well that after it is out of my hands and I start another, what will pass through my head is, "Okay, Pohl, that one was all right, but can you do it again?"
I know this is not just a personal hangup of mine. I've lived closely enough with other writers, and with artists and musicians and the more adventurous kinds of scientists, to know something of what happens in their heads, too. A couple of years ago I ran into some bad times and, for the first time in my life, visited a psychoanalyst. He was a pleasant, intelligent man. At one time he took me back into my early professional life—much the sort of thing I've been talking about in these notes—and asked me what I felt about myself. I said, "Well, the Futurians were a mighty bright, talented bunch. I feel pretty good about the fact that I've accomplished more than most of them—all but one, anyway." And Sigfrid von Shrink asked, "How do you feel about that one?" and quick as can be I said, "I hate his guts."
It happened that the next day I had lunch with that one ex-Futurian, who was Isaac Asimov. He mentioned that he had just sold a book for some kind of crazy money like a $50,000 advance, a lot more than I get, so naturally I told him the story about my conversation with my shrink. Isaac laughed.
* My own contribution was the essay on the Roman emperor Tiberius, in case you were wondering.
and laughed. "When I signed the contract for fifty G," he said, "it was as ashes in my mouth, because I had just heard that Michael Crichton had signed one for half a million."
I don't really hate Isaac. He is my water brother, as long as we both live. But he will understand when I say that at the same time I really do, too.
W. H. Auden talked about that once. He said, "No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who has ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted." And I think that if with some part of your head you cannot believe that, at least for a moment now and then, then you really should not waste your time being a poet or a novelist, but get a job writing advertising copy or pick up the torch thrown down by Jacqueline Susann.
Reminiscing about the days when I was writing the stories in this volume has put me in a rueful, half-amused, half-sentimental mood. So I would like to say something sentimental at the end, an act of courage one seldom permits oneself in public.
Immodest as I am, I am also fifty-five years old. It's pretty clear that I've done more up to now than I am likely to do from now on. Not necessarily better. But, just in terms of the simple arithmetic of the calendar, more.
I spend a great deal of time with college audiences and fan groups. There is no such assembly that does not contain a few young people who want very much to write science fiction. Now and then you see some who clearly are going to do what they want, and do it very well.
They are my water brothers, too. When I can see how, I help them. When I can't, at least I wish them well. I admire them. I love them. And I also hate their guts a little bit, now and then.
For my sins, I have been elected president of the union of our trade, the Science Fiction Writers of America. I've always spent a good deal of my time with other writers. Now there are weeks when it seems I do nothing else. Most of the several hundred members of SFWA are still learning the business. Some perhaps never will learn it. But among them are the Clarkes and the Heinleins of tomorrow. What I have found out over the years is that all science-fiction writers are water brothers. It has nothing to do with language, country of origin, age, talent or experience. The Bradburys help the beginners. The beginners know and trust the stars.
All of us are vain enough to believe that maybe we are the only ones who matter. But we are even vainer than that, in a way that Auden didn't mention. The agenbite of our inwits is such that we are not satisfied merely to compete. We have to give our competitors a helping hand from time to time, in order to make the competition fair.
Everything considered, the world of science fiction is not a bad place to live.
So if I could go back in time to that first meeting with Dirk Wylie at Brooklyn Tech in those grimy early months of 1933, and have the chance to do it over, knowing everything I know now about the pains and the problems, the disappointments and the slow-coming rewards . . . I would do it exactly the same way, and exult at the chance.
Frederik Pohl
Red Bank, New Jersey
January 1975
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