Star Science Fiction 5 - [Anthology] Read online

  The history of the gallant battle of Boston to retain its essential dignity would, alone, make up a large work. The story of how the intrepid citizens of this venerable city refused to surrender their rights, choosing mass suicide rather than submission is a tale of enduring courage and majestic struggle against insurmountable odds.

  What happened after the movement was contained within the boundaries of the United States (a name soon discarded) is data for another paper.

  A brief mention, however, may be made of the immense social endeavor which became known as the “Bacon and Waffles” movement, which sought to guarantee $250 per month for every person in Los Angeles over forty years of age.

  With this incentive before the people, state legislatures were helpless before an avalanche of public demand. Within three years, the entire nation was a part of Los Angeles. The government seat was in Beverly Hills and ambassadors had been hastened to all foreign countries within a short period of time.

  Ten years later the North American continent fell, and Los Angeles was creeping rapidly down the Isthmus of Panama. Then came that ill-fated day in 1974.

  On the island of Pingo Pongo, Maona, daughter of Chief Luana approached her father.

  “Omu la golu si mongo?” she said.

  (Anyone for tennis?)

  Whereupon her father, having read the papers, speared her on the spot and ran screaming from the hut.

  <>

  * * * *

  COMPANY STORE

  by Robert Silverberg

  Robert Silverberg does not type with his toes as well as both hands, it only seems that way. Certainly few science-fiction writers, old or new, can match the incomparable productivity of this bright young star in STAR’s firmament. He has mastered the men’s adventure field, the general magazines and nearly every other facet of the writing world; but always he comes back to science fiction— where stories like Company Store make him eternally welcome.

  Colonist Roy Wingert gripped his blaster with shaky hands. He took dead aim at the slimy wormlike creatures wriggling behind his newly-deposited pile of crates.

  They told me this planet was uninhabited, he thought. Hah!

  He yanked back the firing stud. A spurt of violet light leaped out.

  His nostrils caught the smell of roasting alien flesh. Shuddering, Wingert turned away from the mess before him, in time to see four more of the wormlike beings writhing toward him from the rear.

  He ashed those. Two more dangled invitingly from a thick-boled tree at his left.

  Getting into the spirit of the thing now, Wingert turned the beam on them, too. The clearing was beginning to look like the vestibule of an abattoir. Sweat ran down Wingert’s face. His stomach was starting to get queasy, and his skin was cold at the prospect of spending his three-year tour on Quellac doing nothing but fighting off these overgrown night-crawlers.

  Two more of them were wriggling out of a decaying log near his feet. They were nearly six feet long, with saw-edged teeth glistening in Quellac’s bright sunlight. Nothing very dangerous, Wingert thought grimly. Ho! He recharged the blaster and roasted the two newcomers.

  Loud noises back of him persuaded him to turn. Something very much like a large gray toad, seven or eight feet high and mostly mouth, was hopping toward him through the forest. It was about thirty yards away now. It looked very hungry.

  Squaring his shoulders, Wingert prepared to defend himself against this new assault. But just as he started to depress the firing stud, a motion to his far right registered in the corner of his eye. Another of the things—approaching rapidly from the opposite direction.

  “Pardon me, sir,” a sharp crackling voice said suddenly. “You seem to be in serious straits. May I offer you the use of this Duarm Pocket Force-Field Generator in this emergency? The cost is only—”

  Wingert gasped. “Damn the cost! Turn the thing on! Those toads are only twenty feet away!”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Wingert heard a click, and abruptly a shimmering blue bubble of force sprang up around them. The two onrushing pseudo-toads cracked soundly into it and were thrown back.

  Wingert staggered over to one of the packing-cases and sat down limply. He was soaked with sweat from head to foot.

  “Thanks,” he said. “You saved my life. But who the hell are you, and where’d you come from?”

  “Permit me to introduce myself. I am XL-ad41, a new-model Vending and Distributing Robot manufactured on Densobol II. I arrived here not long ago, and, perceiving your plight—”

  Wingert saw now that the creature was indeed a robot, roughly humanoid except for a heavy pair of locomotory treads. “Hold on! Let’s go back to the beginning.” The toad-things were eyeing him hungrily from outside the force-field. “You say you’re a new-model what?”

  “Vending and Distributing Robot. It is my function to diffuse through the civilized galaxy the goods and supplies manufactured by my creators, Associated Artisans of Densobol II.” The robot’s rubberized lips split in an oily smile. “I am, you might say, a mechanized Traveling Salesman. Are you from Terra, perhaps?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I thought as much. By comparing your physical appearance with the phenotype data in my memory banks I reached the conclusion that you were of Terra origin. The confirmation you have just given is most gratifying.”

  “Glad to hear it. Densobol II is in the Magellanic Cluster, isn’t it? Lesser or Greater Cloud?”

  “Lesser. One matter puzzles me, though. In view of your Terran origin, it seems odd that you didn’t respond when I mentioned that I am a traveling salesman.”

  Wingert frowned. “How was I supposed to respond? Clap my hands and wriggle my ears?”

  “You were supposed to show humor-response. According to my files on Terra, mention of traveling salesmen customarily strikes upon a common well of folklore implanted in the subconscious, thereby inducing a conscious humor-reaction.”

  “Sorry,” Wingert apologized. “I’m afraid I never was too interested in Earth. That’s why I signed on with Planetary Colonization.”

  “Ah, yes. I had just concluded that your failure to show response to standard folklore indicated some fundamental dislocation of your position relative to your cultural gestalt. Again, confirmation is gratifying. As an experimental model, I’m subject to careful monitoring by my makers. I’m anxious to demonstrate my capability as a salesman.”

  Wingert had almost completely recovered from his earlier exertions. He eyed the two toad-beings uneasily and said, “That force-field generator—that’s one of the things you sell?”

  “The Duarm Generator is one of our finest products. It’s strictly one-way, you know. They can’t get in, but you can still fire at them.”

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me that long ago?” Wingert drew his blaster and disposed of the toad-creatures with two well-placed shots.

  “That’s that,” he said. “I guess I sit inside this force-field and wait for the next ones, now.”

  “Oh, they won’t be along for a while,” the robot said lightly. “The creatures that attacked you are native to the next continent. They’re not found here at all.”

  “Then how’d they get here?”

  “I brought them,” the robot said sunnily. “I collected the most hostile creatures I could find on this world, and left them in your vicinity in order to demonstrate the necessity for the Duarm Force-Field Generat—”

  “You brought them?” Wingert rose and advanced on the robot menacingly. “Deliberately, as a sales stunt? They could have killed and eaten me!”

  “On the contrary. I was controlling the situation, as you saw. When matters became serious I intervened.”

  “Get out of here!” Wingert raged. “Go on, you crazy robot! I have to set up my bubble. Go!”

  “But you owe me—”

  “We’ll settle up later. Get going, fast!”

  The robot got. Wingert watched it scuttle off into the underbrush.

 
He tried to control his rage. Angry as he was, he felt a certain amusement at the robot’s crude sales-tactics. It was clever, in a coarse way, to assemble a collection of menacing aliens and arrive at the last minute to supply the force-field. But when you poison a man in order to sell him the antidote, you don’t boast about it afterward to the victim!

  He glanced speculatively at the forest, hoping the robot had told the truth. He didn’t care to spend his entire tour on Quellac fighting off dangerous beasts.

  The generator was still operating; Wingert studied it and found a cam that widened the field. He expanded it to a thirty-yard radius and left it that way. The clearing was littered with alien corpses.

  Wingert shuddered.

  Well, now that amusement was over, it was time to get down to business. He had been on Quellac just an hour, and had spent most of that time fighting for his life.

  The Colonists’ Manual said, “The first step for a newly-arrived colonist is to install his Matter-Transmitter.” Wingert closed the book and peered at the scattered pile of crates that were his possessions until he spied the large yellow box labeled Matter-Transmitter, Handle With Care.

  From the box marked Tools he took a crowbar and delicately pried a couple of planks out of the packing-crate. A silvery metallic object was visible within. Wingert hoped the Matter-Transmitter was in working order; it was his most important possession, his sole link to far-off Terra.

  The Manual said, “All necessities of life will be sent via matter-transmitter without cost.” Wingert smiled. Necessities of life? He could have magneboots, cigars, sen-so tapes, low-power short-range matter-transmitters, dream pellets, bottled Martinis and nuclear fizzes, simply by requisitioning them. All the comforts of home. They had told him working for Planetary Colonization was rugged, but it was hardly that. Not with the Matter-Transmitter to take the sting out of pioneering.

  Unless, Winger thought gloomily, that lunatic robot brings some more giant toads over from the next continent.

  Wingert opened the packing crate and bared the Matter-Transmitter. It looked, he thought, like an office-desk with elephantiasis of the side drawers; they bulged grotesquely, aproning out into shovel-shaped platforms, one labeled “Send” and the other “Receive.”

  An imposing-looking array of dials and meters completed the machine’s face. Wingert located the red Activator Stud along the north perimeter and jammed it down.

  The Matter-Transmitter came quiveringly to life.

  Dials clicked; meters registered. The squarish device seemed to have taken on existence of its own. The view-screen flickered polychromatically, then cleared.

  A mild pudgy face stared out at Wingert.

  “Hello. I’m Smathers, from the Earth Office. I’m the company contact man for Transmitters AZ-1061 right through BF-80. Can I have your name, registry number, and coordinates?”

  “Roy Wingert, Number 76-032-10f3. The name of this planet is Quellac, and I don’t know the coordinates offhand. If you’ll give me a minute to check my contract—”

  “No need of that,” Smathers said. “Just let me have the serial number of your Matter-Transmitter. It’s inscribed on the plate along the west perimeter.”

  Wingert found it after a moment’s search. “AZ-1142.”

  “That checks. Well, welcome to the Company, Colonist Wingert. How’s your planet?”

  “Not so good,” Wingert said.

  “How so?”

  “It’s inhabited. By hostile aliens. And my contract said I was being sent to an uninhabited world.”

  “Read it again, Colonist Wingert. As I recall, it simply said you would meet no hostile creatures where you were. Our survey team reported some difficulties on the wild continent to your west, but—”

  “You see these dead things here?”

  “Yes.”

  “I killed them. To save my own neck. They attacked me about a minute after the Company ship dropped me off here.”

  “They’re obviously strays from that other continent,” Smathers said. “Most unusual. Be sure to report any further difficulties of this sort.”

  “Sure,” Wingert said. “Big comfort that is.”

  “To change the subject,” Smathers said frigidly, “I wish to remind you that the Company stands ready to serve you. In the words of the contract, ‘All necessities of life will be sent via Matter-Transmitter.’ That’s in the Manual too. Would you care to make your first order now? The Company is extremely anxious that its employees are well taken care of.”

  Wingert frowned. “Well, I haven’t even unpacked, you know. I don’t think I need anything yet—except—yes! Send me some old-fashioned razor-blades, will you? And a tube of shaving cream. I forgot to pack mine in, and I can’t stand these new vibro-shaves.”

  Smathers emitted a suppressed chuckle. “You’re not going to grow a beard?”

  “No,” Wingert said stiffly. “They itch.”

  “Very well, then. I’ll have the routing desk ship a supply of blades and cream to Machine AZ-1142. So long for now, Colonist Wingert, and good luck. The Company sends its best wishes.”

  “Thanks,” Wingert said sourly. “Same to you.”

  He turned away from the blank screen and glanced beyond the confines of his force-field. All seemed quiet, so he snapped off the generator.

  Quellac, he thought, had the makings of a darned fine world, except for the beasts on the western continent. The planet was Earth-type, sixth in orbit around a small yellow main-sequence star. The soil was red with iron-salts, but looked fertile enough, judging from the thick vegetation pushing up all around. Not far away a sluggish little stream wound through a sloping valley and vanished in a hazy cloud of purple mist near the horizon.

  It would be a soft enough life, he thought, if no more toads showed up. Or worms with teeth.

  The contract specified that his job was to “prepare and otherwise survey the world assigned, for the purpose of admitting future colonists under the auspices of Planetary Colonization, Inc.” He was an advance agent, sent out by the Company to smooth the bugs out of the planet before the regular colonists arrived.

  For this they gave him $1,000 a month, plus “necessities of life” via Matter-Transmitter.

  There were worse ways of making a living, Wingert told himself.

  A lazy green-edged cloud was drifting over the forest. He pushed aside a blackened alien husk and sprawled out on the warm red soil, leaning against the Matter-Transmitter’s comforting bulk. Before him were the eight or nine crates containing his equipment and possessions.

  He had made the three-week journey from Earth to Quellac aboard the first-class liner Mogred. Matter-transmission would have been faster, but a Transmitter could handle a bulk of 150 pounds, which was Wingert’s weight, only in three 50-pound installments. That idea didn’t appeal to him. Besides, there had been no Matter-Transmitter set up on Quellac to receive him, which made the whole problem fairly academic.

  A bird sang softly. Wingert yawned. It was early afternoon, and he didn’t feel impatient to set up his shelter. The Manual said it took but an hour to unpack. Later, then, when the sun was sinking behind those cerise mountains, he would blow his bubble-home and unpack his goods. Right now he just wanted to relax, to let the tension of that first fierce encounter drain away.

  “Pardon me, sir,” said a familiar sharp voice. “I happened to overhear that order for razor blades, and I think it’s only fair to inform you that I carry a product of much greater face-appeal.”

  Wingert was on his feet in an instant, glaring at the robot. “I told you to go away. A-W-A-Y.”

  Undisturbed, the robot produced a small translucent tube filled with a glossy green paste. “This,” XL-ad41 said, “is Gloglam’s Depilating Fluid, twelve units—ah, one dollar, that is—per tube.”

  Wingert shook his head. “I get my goods free, from Terra. Besides, I like to shave with a razor. Please go away.”

  The robot looked about as crestfallen as a robot could possibly look. “You d
on’t seem to understand that your refusal to purchase from me reflects adversely on my abilities, and may result in my being dismantled at the end of this test. Therefore I insist you approach my merchandise with an open mind.”

  A sudden grin of salesman-like inspiration illuminated XL-ad41’s face. “I’ll take the liberty of offering you this free sample. Try Gloglam’s Depilating Fluid and I can guarantee you’ll never use a blade-razor again.”

  The robot poured a small quantity of the green fluid into a smaller vial and handed it to Wingert. “Here. I’ll return shortly to hear your decision.”