Great Stories of Space Travel Read online

  I’m all right now. Come on back, monkey; it’s all right.”

  Slim let his partner go and nodded at Lhin. “Sure, come back, fella. Fats has some funny ideas about nonhumans, but he’s a good-hearted sort, on the whole. Be a good doggie and he won’t kick you—he might even scratch your ears.”

  “Nuts.” Fats was grinning, good nature restored. He knew Slim meant it as a crack, but it didn’t bother him; what was wrong with treating Marshies and monkeys like what they were? “Whatcha got there, monkey? More pictures that mean nothing?”

  Lhin nodded in imitation of their assent gesture and held out the roll to Slim; Fats’ attitude was no longer unfriendly, but he was an unknown quantity, and Slim seemed the more interested. “Pictures that mean much,

  I hope. Here is Nra, twenty-nine, under sodium.” “Periodic table,” Slim told Fats. “At least, it looks like one. Get me the handbook, will you? Hm-m-m. J Under sodium, No. 29. Sodium, potassium, copper. And it’s No. 29, all right. That it, Lhin?”

  Lhin’s eyes were blazing with triumph. Grace to the Great Ones. “Yes, it is copper. Perhaps you have some? Even a gram, perhaps?”

  “A thousand grams, if you like. According to your notions, we’re lousy with the stuff. Help yourself.”

  Fats cut in. “Sure, monkey, we got copper, if that’s the stuff you’ve been yelling about. What’ll you pay for it?”

  “Pay?”

  “Sure, give in return. We help you; you help us. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

  It hadn’t occurred to Lhin, but it did seem fair. But what had he to give? And then he realized what was in the man’s mind. For the copper, he was to work, digging out and purifying the radioactives that gave warmth and light and life to the crater, so painfully brought into being when the place was first constructed, transmuted to meet the special needs of the people who were to live there. And after him, his sons and their sons, mining and sweating for Earth, and being paid in barely enough copper to keep Earth supplied with laborers. Fats’ mind filled again with dreams of the other Earth creature. For that, he would doom a race to life without pride or hope or accomplishments. Lhin found no understanding in it. There were so many of those creatures on Earth—why should his enslavement be necessary?

  Nor was enslavement all. Eventually, doom was as certain that way as the other, once Earth was glutted with the radioactives, or when the supply here dropped below the vital point, great as the reserve was. He shuddered under the decision forced upon him.

  Slim’s hand fell on his shoulder. “Fats has things slightly wrong, Lhin. Haven’t you, Fats?”

  There was something in Slim’s hand, something Lhin knew dimly was a weapon. The other man squirmed, but his grin remained.

  “You’re touched, Slim, soft. Maybe you believe all this junk about other races’ equality, but you won’t kill me for it. I’m standing pat—I’m not giving away my copper.”

  And suddenly Slim was grinning, too, and putting the weapon back. “O. K., - don’t. Lhin can have my share. There’s plenty on the ship in forms we can spare, and don’t forget I own a quarter of it.”

  Fats’ thoughts contained no answer to that. He mulled it over slowly, then shrugged. Slim was right enough about it, and could do as he wanted with his share. Anyhow— “O. K. Have it your way. I’ll help you pry it off wherever it is, or dig it out. How about that wire down in the engine locker?”

  Lhin stood silently watching them as they opened a small locker and rummaged through it, studying the engines and controls with half his mind, the other half quivering with ecstasy at the thought of copper—not just a handful, but all he could carry, in pure form, easily turned into digestible sulphate with acids he had already prepared for his former attempt at collecting it. In a year, the crater would be populated again, teeming with life. Perhaps three or four hundred sons left, and as they multiplied, more and yet more.

  A detail of the hookup he was studying brought that part of his mind uppermost, and he tugged at Slim’s trouser leg. “That. .. that... is not good, is it?” “Huh? No, it isn’t, fella. That’s what brought us here. Why?”

  “Then, without radioactives, I can pay. I will fix it.” A momentary doubt struck him. “That is to pay, is it not?”

  Fats heaved a coil of wonderful-smelling wire out of the locker, wiped off sweat, and nodded. “That’s to pay, all right, but you let those things alone. They’re bad enough, already, and maybe even Slim can’t fix it.” “I can fix.”

  “Yeah. What school did you get your degree in electronics from? Two hundred feet in this coil, makes fifty for him. You gonna give it all to him, Slim?” “Guess so.” Slim was looking at Lhin doubtfully, only half watching as the other measured and cut the wire. “Ever touched anything like that before, Lhin? Controls for the ion feed and injectors are pretty complicated in these ships. What makes you think you can do it—unless your people had things like this and you studied the records.”

  Lhin fought for words as he tried to explain. His people had had nothing like that—their atomics had worked from a different angle, since uranium was almost nonexistent on the Moon, and they had used a direct application of it. But the principles were plain to him, even from what he could see outside; he could feel the way it worked in his head.

  “I feel. When I first grew, I could fix that. It is the way I think, not the way I learn, though I have read all the records. For three hundred million years, my people have learned it—now I feel it.”

  “Three hundred million years! I knew your race was old when you told me you were born talking and reading, but—galloping dinosaurs!”

  “My people saw those things on your world, yes,” Lhin assured him solemnly. “Then I shall fix?”

  Slim shook his head in confusion and handed over a tool kit without another word. “Three hundred million years, Fats, and during almost all that time they were farther ahead than we are now. Figure that one out. When we were little crawling things living off dinosaur eggs, they were flitting from planet to planet— only I don’t suppose they could stay very long; six times normal gravity for them. And now, just because they had to stay on a light world and their air losses made them gather here where things weren’t normal, Lhin’s all that’s left.”

  “Yeah, and how does that make him a mechanic?” “Instinct. In the same amount of time, look at the instincts the animals picked up. He has an instinct for machinery; he doesn’t know all about it, probably, but he can instinctively feel how a thing should work. Add to that the collection of science records he was showing me and the amount of reading he’s probably done, and there should be almost nothing he couldn’t do to a machine.”

  There wasn’t much use in arguing, Fats, decided, as he watched what was happening. The monkey either fixed things or they never would leave. Lhin had taken snips and disconnected the control box completely; now he was taking that to pieces, one thing at a time. With a curious deftness, he unhooked wires, lifted out tubes, uncoupled transformers.

  It seemed simple enough to him. They had converted energy from the atomic fuel, and they used certain forces to ionize matter, control the rate of ionization, feed the ions to the rocket tubes, and force them outward at high speed through helices. An elementary problem in applied electronics to govern the rate and control the ionization forces.

  With small quick hands he bent wires into coils, placed other coils in relation, and coupled a tube to the combination. Around the whole, other coils and tubes took shape, then a long feeder connected to the pipe that carried the compound to be ionized, and bus bars to the energy intake. The injectors that handled the feeding of ions were needlessly complicated, but he let them alone, since they were workable as they were. It had taken him less than fifteen minutes.

  “It will now work. But use care when you first try it. Now it makes all work, not a little as it did before.” Slim inspected it. “That all? What about this pile of stuff you didn’t use?”

  “There was no need. It was very poor. Now it is good.”
As best he could, he explained to Slim what happened when it was used now; before, it would have taken a well-trained technician to describe, even with the complicated words at his command. But what was there now was the product of a science that had gone beyond the stumbling complications of first attempts. Something was to be done, and was done, as simply as possible. Slim’s only puzzle was that it hadn’t been done that way in the first place—a normal reaction, once the final simplification is reached. He nodded.

  “Good. Fats, this is the business. You’ll get about 99.99% efficiency now, instead of the 20% maximum before. You’re all right, Lhin.”

  Fats knew nothing of electronics, but it had sounded right as Lhin explained, and he made no comment. Instead, he headed for the control room. “O. K., we’ll leave here, then. So long, monkey.”

  Slim gathered up the wire and handed it to Lhin, accompanying him to the air lock. On the ground as the locks closed, the Moon man looked up and managed an Earth smile. “I shall open the doors above for you to go through. And you are paid, and all is fair, not so? Then—so long, Slim. The Great Ones love you, that you have given my people back to me.”

  “ ’Dios,” Slim answered, and waved, just before the doors came shut. “Maybe we’ll be back sometime and see how you make out.”

  Back at the cave, Lhin fondled the copper and waited for the sounds the rockets would make, filled with mixed emotions and uncertainties. The copper was pure ecstasy to him, but there were thoughts in Fats’ mind which were not all clear. Well, he had the copper for generations to come; what happened to his people now rested on the laps of the Great Ones.

  He stood outside the entrance, watching the now-steady rocket blast upward and away, carrying with it the fate of his race. If they told of the radioactives, slavery and extinction. If they remained silent, perhaps a return to former greatness, and passage might be resumed to other planets, long deserted even at the height of their progress; but now planets bearing life and intelligence instead of mere jungles. Perhaps, in time, and with materials bought from other worlds with ancient knowledge, even a solution that would let them restore their world to its ancient glory, as they had dreamed before hopelessness and the dark wings of a race’s night had settled over them.

  As he watched, the rocket spiraled directly above him, cutting the fight off and on with a shadow, like the beat of wings from the mists of antiquity, when winged life had filled the air of the Moon. An omen, perhaps, those sable wings that reached up and passed through the roof as he released the slides, then went skimming out, leaving all clear behind. But whether a good omen or ill, he had not decided.

  He carried the copper wire back to the nursery.

  And on the ship, Slim watched Fats wiggle and try to think, and there was amusement on his face. “Well, was he good? As good as any human, perhaps?”

  “Yeah. All right, better. I’ll admit anything you want. He’s as good as I am—maybe he’s better. That satisfy you?”

  “No.” Slim was beating the iron while it was hot. “What about those radioactives?”

  Fats threw more power into the tubes, and gasped as the new force behind the rockets pushed him back into his seat. He eased up gently, staring straight ahead. Finally he shrugged and turned back to Slim.

  “O. K., you win. The monkey keeps his freedom and I keep my lip buttoned. Satisfied?”

  “Yeah.” Slim was more than satisfied. To him, also, things seemed an omen of the future, and proof that idealism was not altogether folly. Some day the wings of dark prejudice and contempt for others might lift from all Earth’s Empire, as they were lifting from Fats’ mind. Perhaps not in his time, but eventually; and intelligence, not race, would rule.

  “Well satisfied, Fats,” he said. “And you don’t need to worry about losing too much. We’ll make all the money we can ever spend from the new principles of Lhin’s hookup; I’ve thought of a dozen applications already. What do you figure on doing with your share?”

  Fats grinned. “Be a damned fool. Help you start your propaganda again and go around kissing Marshies and monkeys. Wonder what our little monkey’s thinking.”

  Lhin wasn’t thinking, then; he’d solved the riddle of the factors in Fats’ mind, and he knew what the decision would be. Now he was making copper sulphate, and seeing dawn come up where night had been. There’s something beautiful about any dawn, and this j was very lovely to him.

  Jerome Bixby - THE HOLES AROUND MARS

  This is not one of those science fictions which you should automatically assume may be likely to happen. Of course, nothing of its sort can actually be proved to be impossible; and the Universe is, indeed, full of extraordinary things. In view of the theoretically “real” nature of collapsed matter in certain types of stars (see any moderately advanced book on modem astronomy 1 ), I suppose Mr. Bixby’s concept has to be filed among those that "might be.” In any event, the author has written about it in such a convincing way that it does seem thoroughly real— and that is what makes it fun to read.

  Spaceship crews should be selected on the basis of their non-irritating qualities as individuals. No chronic complainers, no hypochondriacs, no bugs on cleanliness—particularly no one-man parties. I speak from bitter experience.

  Because on the first expedition to Mars, Hugh Allenby damned near drove us nuts with his puns. We finally got so we just ignored them.

  But no one can ignore that classic last one—it’s written right into the annals of astronomy, and it’s there to stay.

  Allenby, in command of the expedition, was first to set foot outside the ship. As he stepped down from the airlock of the Mars I, he placed that foot on a convenient rock, caught the toe of his weighted boot in a hole in the rock, wrenched his ankle and smote the ground with his pants.

  Sitting there, eyes pained behind the transparent shield of his oxygen-mask, he stared at the rock.

  It was about five feet high. Ordinary granite—no special shape—and several inches below its summit, running straight through it in a northeasterly direction, was a neat round four-inch hole.

  “I’m upset by the hole thing,” he grunted.

  The rest of us scrambled out of the ship and gathered around his plump form. Only one or two of us winced at his miserable double pun.

  “Break anything, Hugh?” asked Burton, our pilot, kneeling beside him.

  “Get out of my way, Burton,” said Allenby. “You’re obstructing my view.”

  Burton blinked. A man constructed of long bones and caution, he angled out of the way, looking around to see what he was obstructing view of.

  He saw the rock and the round hole through it. He stood very still, staring. So did the rest of us.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Janus, our photographer. “A hole.”

  “In a rock,” added Gonzales, our botanist.

  “Round,” said Randolph, our biologist.

  “An artifact ” finished Allenby softly.

  Burton helped him to his feet. Silently we gathered around the rock.

  Janus bent down and put an eye to one end of the hole. I bent down and looked through the other end. We squinted at each other.

  As mineralogist, I was expected to opinionate. “Not drilled,” I said slowly. “Not chipped. Not melted. Certainly not eroded.”

  I heard a rasping sound by my ear and straightened. Burton was scratching a thumbnail along the rim of the hole. “Weathered,” he said. “Plenty old. But I’ll bet it’s a perfect circle, if we measure.”

  Janus was already fiddling with his camera, testing the cooperation of the tiny distant sun with a light-meter.

  “Let us see weather it is or not,” Allenby said. Burton brought out a steel tape-measure. The hole was four and three-eighths inches across. It was perfectly circular and about sixteen inches long. And four feet above the ground.

  “But why?” said Randolph. “Why should anyone bore a four-inch tunnel through a rock way out in the middle of the desert?”

  “Religious symbol,” said
Janus. He looked around, one hand on his gun. “We’d better keep an eye out— maybe we’ve landed on sacred ground or something.” “A totem hole, perhaps,” Allenby suggested.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Randolph said—to Janus, not Allenby. As I’ve mentioned, we always ignored Allen-by’s puns. “Note the lack of ornamentation. Not at all typical of religious articles.”

  “On Earth,” Gonzales reminded him. “Besides, it might be utilitarian, not symbolic.”

  “Utilitarian, how?” asked Janus.

  “An altar for snakes,” Burton said dryly.

  “Well,” said Allenby, “you can’t deny that it has its holy aspects.”

  “Move your hand, will you, Peters?” asked Janus.

  I did. When Janus’s camera had clicked, I bent again and peered through the hole. “It sights on that low ridge over there,” I said. “Maybe it’s some kind of surveying setup. I’m going to take a look.”

  “Careful,” warned Janus. “Remember, it may be sacred.”

  As I walked away, I heard Allenby say, “Take some scrapings from the inside of the hole, Gonzales. We might be able to determine if anything is kept in it...” One of the stumpy, purplish, barrel-type cacti on the ridge had a long vertical bite out of it ... as if someone had carefully carved out a narrow U-shaped section from the top down, finishing the bottom of the U in a neat semicircle. It was as flat and cleancut as the inside surface of a horseshoe magnet.

  I hollered. The others came running. I pointed.

  “Oh, my God!” said Allenby. “Another one.”

  The pulp of the cactus in and around the U-hole was dried and dead-looking.

  Silently Burton used his tape-measure. The hole measured four and three-eighths inches across. It was eleven inches deep. The semicircular bottom was about a foot above the ground.

  “This ridge,” I said, “is about three feet higher than where we landed the ship. I bet the hole in the rock and the hole in this cactus are on the same level.” Gonzales said slowly, “This was not done all at once. It is a result of periodic attacks. Look here and here. These overlapping depressions along the outer edges of the hole—” he pointed— “on this side of the cactus. They are the signs of repeated impact. And the scallop effect on this side, where whatever made the hole emerged. There are juices still oozing—not at the point of impact, where the plant is desiccated, but below, where the shock was transmitted—”