Star Science Fiction 6 - [Anthology] Read online

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  Star Science Fiction 6

  Edited By Frederik Pohl

  Proofed By MadMaxAU

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  Contents

  Danger! Child at Large, C. L. Cottrell

  Twin’s Wail , Elizabeth Mann Borgese

  The Holy Grail , Tom Purdom

  Angerhelm , Cordwainer Smith

  The Dreamsman , Gordon R. Dickson

  To Catch an Alien, John J. McGuire

  Press Conference , Miriam Allen deFord

  Invasion from Inner Space , Howard Koch

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  C. L Cottrell is a career Army officer at present manning the perimeter in Korea—a place which even the Koreans find moderately unattractive, and one where he works under conditions hardly conducive to writing science fiction. Or anything else. All the more marvel, then, that from the rocks of the Korean mountains and the duckboards-and-drillfields of an Army base he should have drawn Inspiration to write a moving and sympathetic story of a little girl, eternally lost, in-

  DANGER! CHILD AT LARGE

  by C. L. Cottrell

  I

  Jill stood back in the shadows as the cars sped swiftly by. She could hear the sound of sirens in the distance between the noise of the cars that zipped by on the road. Each car had lots of people in it, and the cars seemed to be in an awful hurry. She wondered for just a moment where they all were going.

  It was almost nighttime and Jill was getting tired and hungry. She had played and explored in and around the woods, and the game no longer interested her. She knew the road led to a town ahead, for she had heard Dr. Prann speak of it many times. She thought that she remembered having been there once, too. And there she would find people and food and sleep. Besides, it was no longer any fun to be away from the school. She felt somehow that she ought to go back, but she wasn’t quite sure which way to go. Right now she thought it might be better if she got to the town and got something to eat.

  She started to walk along the edge of the highway facing the traffic. It was still coming, only there were not so many cars now. And the policemen on the noisy motorcycles did not come along so very often. Lots of the cars and trucks were stopped along the road as if they were waiting for something. She walked suspiciously off the edge of the road in the shelter of the trees, occasionally cocking an eye at the sun to see if it had gone below the trees yet. It was almost down. She did not want the people along the road to see her or speak to her. Not now, anyway.

  It was fun walking under the trees, thought Jill. Only it was slow. And it was getting darker. She didn’t like the dark. Above the trees it was lighter.

  She floated to a level just above the trees, until she came to the edge of the town. She halted, silent, easing back into the branches of a large tree, the air like a pillow under her feet. There were lots of trucks on the road ahead. And they were not moving. Lots of men and women and children were close to them. And there were other men standing silently in little groups. Some were spread out in a kind of loose chain. And all of them had guns.

  Jill was afraid of guns. They made loud noises, and could hurt you. She wanted to go into the town and get something to eat, but she was afraid of the men with the guns. And there was no way to go into the town without the men seeing her, and she just had to get into town. There was no way except . . . except . . .

  ... so she got into town.

  Jill was thrilled by all the lights in the town. She had never before seen such a variety of colors and flashing lights. It was awfully quiet, though. She seemed to sense, rather than consciously realize, the absence of the normal noises of a community. She walked along the street and looked for people. But there didn’t seem to be anyone at all. She saw a dog and ran toward it, but it slunk away out of sight, suspicious and afraid. Turning her head, she caught sight of a store window and squealed with delight, her moment of loneliness vanishing in her new discovery. Dolls! And toys! Just look at them!

  She pressed her face to the window and stared at them longingly, feasting her eyes on the biggest and most beautiful doll she had ever seen. Suddenly she wanted that doll. She was going to get it.

  Jill went to the door and tried the latch. It must be stuck, she thought, as she clenched her little fist around it. She squeezed the handle hard, but it would not give under the pressure of her grip. She went away from the door, disappointed and almost in tears. Once again she looked at the doll in the window and a little wave of anger swept in on her. She was going to have that doll!

  She tried the door again, gave it a wrench with her hand, and thought it had better come open, or...

  The door jerked open and almost jerked her inside with it. She quickly ran inside and stopped short. Oh! Oh! There were so many toys! Even guns, like the men on the outside had. And teddy bears and games, and— everything.

  She walked among them in wonder, her hunger and sleepiness completely forgotten in this wonderful discovery. She hugged one of the teddy bears to her; it squeaked, and she laughed. Then she climbed into a little red wagon, and made it go fast down the lane between the toys until it bumped into a rocking horse and upset it. She flung a toy airplane in the air, where it soared to the ceiling and down across the glass counter, sweeping off small stuffed animals with its wing.

  “I can fly, too,” she cried, “onlybetter.“

  Jill began to feel the hunger again and she thought she better go to one of the stores where there are things to eat, and she would eat.

  She left the store with three dolls under her arms, forgetting the big beautiful doll from the window.

  Jill walked down the street alone, looking for a store that had something to eat in it, vaguely wondering why everything was so quiet and why there were no people. She was a little bit afraid. She walked on, looking apprehensively around her.

  She was only eight years old.

  * * * *

  II

  Gordon began to get suspicious for the second time after the little group had pulled up in front of the cordon guard, at the edge of the town. There was nothing special or noticeable this time either, except the way the major in charge examined the passes of each of the men a little too carefully. The major then said, “Pass on, sir,” to the colonel. The two vehicles proceeded on into the deserted town. The twilight was beginning to deepen when the two vehicles stopped just inside the town, across the bridge. Colonel Battin, in command, got out. He signaled for everyone else to get out of the two vehicles.

  When everyone was gathered in front of him, he said: “Lieutenant Jory and his two men will take the truck and trailer to where the bomb was dropped.” Addressing the lieutenant he said, “Load it carefully on the trailer and get it out of the town as fast as possible. I’ll take the command car and cruise around town. There might be some looters that we haven’t heard. Don’t wait for me. As soon as you have the bomb on the trailer, head directly for the desert. You know what you have to do there. And take it easy. You’ll have a dangerous bundle behind you. And remember, don’t give the cordon commander permission to let anyone into town until you hear from me personally! Keep your radio receiver on at all times. And if you see or hear anything unusual, let me know immediately.” The colonel looked at Gordon. “Mr. Gordon, you will accompany Lieutenant Jory.” And back at the group: “That’s all.”

  And that was the third suspicious event. Gordon wondered why the colonel was going to search the town for possible looters instead of letting a subordinate do a job like that. Why also should he take two civilian “experts” with him and only two airmen, neither of them an air police? And further, just really who were the two men, Prann and Forbes? He made a mental note to look up
their professional backgrounds as soon as he got back.

  Gordon hopped in the truck in the back alongside a corporal. The corporal grinned at him, offered a cigarette, and said, “Expert?”

  Gordon declined the smoke. “Not on dropped bombs. Nor on anything else for that matter, I guess,” he replied.

  “Do I get two more guesses?” the corporal asked.

  “I don’t like mysteries either,” said Gordon. “I’m a newsman.”

  “The colonel didn’t seem too happy about having you along.”

  “I noticed that too. Another mystery.”

  “Considering how relatively unimportant this job is, I guess it is.”

  Gordon said, “Unimportant? Do you consider removing a radioactive dust bomb unimportant?”

  “I said relatively unimportant.” The corporal threw his partly smoked butt in the street after mashing it out on file sole of his shoe. “It’s a bit out of the ordinary for a full colonel who is the commanding officer to do a job like this. I was kind of wondering why. At first I thought maybe he wanted the personal publicity. But after seeing how he treated you, it can’t be that.”

  The colonel had been openly hostile to Gordon. He had said to Gordon after the latter had presented the press pass issued to him personally by the governor, expressly to cover the story, “You’re not welcome, Mr. Gordon. I want you to know that from the start. You will take orders from me directly, and any violation of my orders on your part will be dealt with by the federal government—state governor be damned!”

  It had been emphatic enough for Gordon. But he couldn’t see that the assignment was important enough for him to want to violate any orders. And suspicious act number one had come after he had said to the colonel, “In a matter of as little importance as this, Colonel?” And the colonel had glared at him, shoved his cigar in his mouth and walked away.

  Was it, Gordon had wondered, really a matter of little importance? A delayed-action bomb containing a short half-life radioactive dust had been dropped accidentally on the town. In a matter of six hours the town had been completely evacuated, and a National Guard cordon had been stretched around the perimeter of the town to prevent the return of people prematurely, and to prevent possible looting—if someone was crazy enough to want to loot a town that was likely to have radioactive dust blown over it at any time. Besides, the bomb had been dropped in the afternoon and the Air Forces had promised to have it out by midnight.

  True, it could be a touchy matter for the military. They were responsible for the bomb dropping on the town; they must suffer the embarrassment of the incident. Maybe the colonel was on edge because the plane that had dropped the bomb had been from a squadron he commanded. The publicity wouldn’t do his command much good.

  The truck sped on up the street, around corners, and past all traffic lights regardless of color. There was no other traffic. There were very few cars or other vehicles in town. Occasionally here and there one would be parked with a flat tire, or standing with the hood open, or with a door open as an owner had abandoned it for surer and faster methods of transportation out of the town.

  But outside the town, the cars, buses and trucks were lined up along the road by the hundreds. People were waiting impatiently for the Air Force to remove the cause of their discomfort and inconvenience. Dogs and cats were chasing noisily around the vehicles, adding to the confusion. Occasionally a child could be seen squatting behind a car while embarrassed parents stood by. An icecream truck stood near with the driver looking longingly at the crowds, then back at his empty truck. A peanut vendor was selling his last bag of peanuts, and a bakery truck driver was counting his money, whistling. Not all were unhappy.

  The truck pulled up to the intersection of two streets and stopped. Gordon looked out and saw the bomb. It lay half in the entrance of a filling station. The oversized parachute, still attached, fluttered feebly in the breeze. He saw a guard surreptitiously reach out with one foot and step on a still smoking butt. The lieutenant chose to overlook the infraction of regulations. “Relax, Sergeant. We’ve come to remove your charge,” he said to the guard.

  The sergeant saluted, grinned, and said, “Kinda lonesome here in the city, Lieutenant. Never knew a city could be so dead.”

  “Put your rifle in the truck, Sergeant, and give us a hand.”

  The lieutenant and the sergeant uncoupled the trailer from the truck while the corporal swung the winch in position. Gordon stepped up to help but the officer motioned him away. He stood idly watching while the corporal backed the truck into position and lowered the chain hoist to a point just above the bomb. Then he fastened heavy straps around the body of the bomb, in front and in back, and lowered the hook until it could be slid under the chain connecting the straps. In the meantime the officer and the sergeant had moved the bomb carrier in a position so that the hoist could be raised and the bomb swung around and lowered carefully onto the carrier. While the sergeant and the corporal guided the bomb onto its cradle, the lieutenant operated the hoist by hand. When the bomb finally rested in its cradle, the corporal fastened it with other straps to the floating bed of the trailer. The sergeant rolled the flapping parachute into as compact a ball as he could, stuffed it in a canvas bag and threw the bag in the back of the truck. The officer then swung the truck around until the hitch of the carrier and the hinge on the truck were properly lined up. Then the corporal dropped in the pin and fastened the safety chain in place. The entire operation hadn’t taken longer than twenty minutes.

  When everything was secure, the lieutenant motioned to Gordon to get in the truck. When Gordon was seated, the officer said, “I don’t know what all the fuss was about. The bomb wasn’t armed.”

  “And that hokum they gave us,” said the corporal, “about the tamper-proof mechanism. That’s used only during actual combat maneuvers! And there are no maneuvers going on around here.”

  “Isn’t it possible,” asked Gordon, “for the commanding officer of the air base to be ignorant of those two facts?”

  “Could be,” said the sergeant. “He’d have to find out for sure from the squadron armament officer.”

  The lieutenant said, “The bombs are armed by the pilot just before they are dropped.” He hesitated. “It wouldn’t have done any good to arm this bomb anyway. The bomb is empty.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Gordon, puzzled by what was being said.

  “The thing doesn’t weigh enough to have a charge,” said the officer.

  Was that what the colonel was afraid he’d find out? wondered Gordon. If so, why hadn’t the colonel taken him along with him instead of letting him go alone to learn of the deception? Was the colonel aware that it was a deception? And what could he possibly be trying to cover by such a deception?

  “Before you go, Lieutenant,” said the sergeant who had been on guard at the bomb, “I think I should tell you that I think I saw looters.”

  “What?” said the lieutenant loudly.

  “Yes, sir. At least there were some strange noises. And I thought I saw one of them. I guess there must have been more than one.”

  “You guess why, Sergeant?”

  “I saw a kid, Lieutenant.”

  “A kid?”

  “Yes, sir. Just a kid. Couldn’t have been more than eight or ten years old, I’d say. Couldn’t tell for sure, but I think it was a girl.”

  “Now what would a little girl be doing in a deserted town?” scoffed the corporal.

  “Where did you see this child?” asked the officer.

  “ ‘Bout four blocks down the road, walking the other way. Was getting dark. It was pretty hard to make out details.” The sergeant pointed down the street toward the west. “The sun was right in my eyes.”

  The lieutenant thought a moment, then reached over and picked up the microphone and squeezed the transmitter button. “Colonel Battin.”

  The colonel answered from the speaker almost immediately. “Jory?”

  “Lieutenant Jory here, sir. The sergeant on guard here
says he thinks he heard some looters. Or at least a looter.”

  “Where?”

  The officer named the general location then added, “The sergeant says he thought he saw a little girl.”

  From the speaker a surprised and startled, “Put him on!”

  The sergeant took the microphone. He repeated what he had told the lieutenant. Then he handed the microphone back to the officer at the request of the colonel.

  “Lieutenant Jory, take the bomb out to the desert. And remember, don’t let the major in charge of the cordon let anyone in or out of this town unless he hears from me directly.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s all, sir? Out.” He hung up the mike and said, “All right, you heard what the colonel said. Let’s go.”

  Gordon hesitated, then said, “Lieutenant, I’m not going with you.”