Space Pioneers Read online

  Table of Contents

  WILL THE SPACE OCEAN HAVE GEMS? by Hank Davis

  THIRD STAGE by Poul Anderson

  BECALMED IN HELL by Larry Niven

  DELILAH AND THE SPACE-RIGGER by Robert A. Heinlein

  EXPEDITION by Fredric Brown

  NOT YET THE END by Fredric Brown

  SUPERWEAPON by David Drake

  IN FROM THE COMMONS by Tony Daniel

  HOME FRONT by Sarah A. Hoyt & Jeff Greason

  INCIDENT ON CALYPSO by Murray Leinster

  ALL THE TRAPS OF EARTH by Clifford D. Simak

  THE CAVE OF NIGHT by James E. Gunn

  HE FELL INTO A DARK HOLE by Jerry E. Pournelle

  WHAT’S IT LIKE OUT THERE? by Edmond Hamilton

  THE MAN WHO LOST THE SEA by Theodore Sturgeon

  THE PARLIAMENT OF OWLS by Christopher Ruocchio

  QUIETUS by Ross Rocklynne

  MEN AGAINST THE STARS by Manly Wade Wellman

  OVER THE TOP by Lester del Rey

  KYRIE by Poul Anderson

  AUTHORS’ BIOGRAPHIES

  Space Pioneers

  Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio

  Final Frontiers: an anthology of stories from classic and contemporary masters that explores the wide-open frontier that may await humanity when we take to the stars.

  DON'T YOU KNOW YOUR FUTURE IS IN SPACE?

  Since the dawn of time, humankind has felt the urge to explore the four corners of our globe. To push at the boundaries of our world and discover what lies over the horizon. And since the dawn of science fiction, writers have wondered about the next frontier: the one that lies Out There.

  Here then, a generous collection of stories that reach out into the unknown void, finding awe, wonder, other minds—even terror. But always going beyond the world we know to explore a universe strange beyond the outermost limits of human imagination. Stories of brave men and women who risk all to explore, colonize, and settle the vast reaches of space.

  As e. e. cummings put it, “listen: there’s a hell of a good universe next door; let’s go.” Well said, but there’s a hell of a big, strange universe right here. And it’s waiting for us all!

  Great tales of space exploration and pioneering by David Drake, Sarah A. Hoyt, Theodore Sturgeon, Edmond Hamilton, and more.

  MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE?

  We were being invaded and it was impossible.

  I know it happens all the time on Earth. We studied history and I’ve read and watched movies about invasions and wars and countries fighting each other. Dad was in the military, before he got his degree and came to the Moon. He said there was hardly ever a time when some place on Earth wasn’t at war with some other place.

  But we were on the Moon. There were only twenty adults and five of us kids, The adults were all scientists, and none of them military.

  Mom said it was a chance at a new beginning, a clean break with the old Earth rivalries. That with infinite space there would be less war.

  My first hint that something was wrong came when I was exercising in the centrifuge room. Okay, it wasn’t a room exactly. The entire place we live in is a vast cavern, a tube really, created by lava flow. We had the type of centrifuges where you lay on your back and are centrifuged to get your muscles used to Earth gravity. I—Robert Anson MacDonald—was the first baby born on the Moon, so I was used to being spun to simulate higher gravity.

  In the centrifuge, I used to go into my head and design space ships. In six months, I was going to go to Earth to study aerospace engineering. I’d gone through most of what I could learn long-distance. So, I was lying there and designing a space ship. Which I think is why I was the only one to hear the shots.

  The first one sounded odd, and I thought it was just some lab equipment malfunctioning.

  Then there was another one, and this time I was sure it was a shot.

  —Sarah A. Hoyt and Jeff Greason

  “Home Front”

  BAEN BOOKS EDITED BY HANK DAVIS

  The Human Edge by Gordon R. Dickson

  The Best of Gordon R. Dickson

  We the Underpeople by Cordwainer Smith

  When the People Fell by Cordwainer Smith

  The Technic Civilization Saga

  The Van Rijn Method by Poul Anderson

  David Falkayn: Star Trader by Poul Anderson

  Rise of the Terran Empire by Poul Anderson

  Young Flandry by Poul Anderson

  Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire

  by Poul Anderson

  Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight of Terra

  by Poul Anderson

  Flandry’s Legacy by Poul Anderson

  The Best of the Bolos: Their Finest Hour

  Created by Keith Laumer

  A Cosmic Christmas

  A Cosmic Christmas 2 You

  In Space No One Can Hear You Scream

  The Baen Big Book of Monsters

  As Time Goes By

  Future Wars . . . and Other Punchlines

  Worst Contact

  Things from Outer Space

  If This Goes Wrong . . .

  Space Pioneers with Christopher Ruocchio

  Overruled! with Christopher Ruocchio (forthcoming)

  Time Troopers

  with Christopher Ruocchio (forthcoming)

  SPACE PIONEERS

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4814-8360-5

  eISBN: 978-1-62579-675-2

  Cover art by Bob Eggleton

  First Baen printing, November 2018

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Electronic Version by Baen Books

  www.baen.com

  Story Copyrights

  Introduction: “Will the Space Ocean Have Gems?” © 2018 by Hank Davis

  “Third Stage” by Poul Anderson first appeared in Amazing Stories, February 1962 © 1962 by Ziff-Davis Publishing. Reprinted by permission of the Lotts Literary Agency, Inc. for the author’s estate.

  “Becalmed in Hell” by Larry Niven first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July, 1965. © 1965 by Mercury Press. Reprinted by permission of the Spectrum Literary Agency.

  “Delilah and the Space-Rigger” by Robert A. Heinlein, originally appeared in The Blue Book, December 1948 © 1948 by McCall Corporation. Reprinted with the permission of the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust, and the Spectrum Literary Agency.

  “Expedition” by Fredric Brown, originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 1957. © 1957 by Fantasy House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Barry Malzberg for the author’s estate.

  “Not Yet the End” by Fredric Brown, originally appeared in Captain Future, Winter 1942. © 1942 by Better Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Barry Malzberg for the author’s estate.

  “Superweapon” by David Drake originally appeared in the anthology Star Destroyers, Baen Books, 2018, © 2018 by David Drake. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “In From the Commons” by Tony Daniel first appeared in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine October-November 1999 © 1999 by Tony Daniel. Published by

  permission of the author.

  “Home Front” by Sarah A. Hoyt and Jeff Greason appears here for the firs
t time. © 2018 by Sarah A. Hoyt and Jeff Greason. Published by permission of the authors.

  “Incident on Calypso” by Murray Leinster originally appeared in Startling Stories, Falll 1946 by Better Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the Virginia Kidd Literary Agency, agent for the author’s estate.

  “All the Traps of Earth” by Clifford D. Simak, originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March 1960, © 1960 by Mercury Press. Reprinted by permission of David Wixon, agent for the author’s estate.

  “The Cave of Night” by James E. Gunn originally appeared in Galaxy, February 1956. © 1956 by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “He Fell into a Dark Hole” by Jerry E. Pournelle first appeared in Analog, March 1973. © 1973 by Conde Nast, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Spectrum Literary Agency, agent for the author’s estate.

  “What’s It Like Out There?” by Edmond Hamilton first appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1952. © 1952 Better Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Spectrum Literary Agency, agent for the author’s estate.

  “The Man Who Lost the Sea” by Theodore Sturgeon originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science-Fiction, October 1959, © 1959 by Mercury Press. Reprinted by permission of Noel Sturgeon for The Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust and the Lotts Literary Agency.

  “The Parliament of Owls” by Christopher Ruocchio appears here for the first time.

  © 2018 by Christopher Ruocchio. Published by permission of the author.

  “Quietus” by Ross Rocklynne first appeared in Astounding Science-Fiction,

  September 1940.

  “Men Against the Stars” by Manly Wade Wellman originally appeared in Astounding Stories, June 1938. Reprinted by permission of David Drake, agent for the author’s estate.

  “Over the Top” by Lester del Rey Originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, November 1949. Copyright © 1949 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc; copyright renewed in 1980 by Conde Nast Publications, Inc.

  “Kyrie” by Poul Anderson first appeared in The Farthest Reaches, 1968 Trident Press © 1968 by Poul Anderson. Reprinted by permission of the Lotts Literary Agency, Inc. for the author’s estate.

  WILL THE SPACE OCEAN HAVE GEMS?

  by Hank Davis

  Let’s get Columbus out of the way first. But don’t worry, he’ll be back for a curtain call.

  Two things: first, Columbus did not decide, against the prevailing thinking of his day, that the Earth was round and go off in three little ships to find a new route to Asia. (Speaking of which, is there still anyone who thinks that Columbus set off to discover America, or even a new land? In the seventh grade, I actually had a social studies teacher write that on the blackboard and had to correct her–but then she was fresh out of college, this was her first teaching job, and she realized I was right and took it well [in spite of my being a snotty little brat back then], which was a relief since she was certainly the prettiest teacher in the school at the time. Ah, puberty.)

  In fact, the Greeks, as usual, were there first. At least as early as the sixth century, B.C., the spherical shape of the world had supporters, and the notion was considered proven fact by the third century, B.C. Plato and his star pupil Aristotle considered the spherical world in the “well, of course” category. (However they were quite sure that the Earth was the center of the “universe” and the Moon, planets, and “fixed” stars all revolved around it. Can’t win ’em all. . . .)

  The second thing about Columbus is that he was very, very lucky that he was ever heard from again. Like most people back then, he was sure the world was round, but he had somehow gotten a prepostrous figure for its circumference, thinking it was far smaller than was the reality, and if there hadn’t been a continent unknown to Europeans, between him and Asia, he would never have reached land before his supplies of food and drinking water were exhausted. Keep that in mind the next time you hear someone complaining about America being named after Amerigo Vespucci when it should have been named Columbia instead. (Nevertheless, it certainly is the gem of the ocean.) Vespucci concluded, correctly, that the land he had reached was a new, unknown continent while Columbus continued to insist that he had reached Asia. And unlike Columbus, Vespucci was working from a far superior figure for the circumference of the world that was only fifty miles off. Finally, Vespucci did reach the Americas, as they would later be named, while Columbus, on his first trip, only reached the Bahamas. Sorry, Chris baby, but you were a dope, as someone once put it in a different context.

  Of course, I haven’t noticed a national holiday named Vespucci Day . . .

  Okay, the long-suffering reader may say, so an explorer’s life (or pioneer’s life—I’ll be using the terms somewhat interchangeably, so sue me!) is not always a success story, and as space exploration of the Solar System continues, hopefully not always by robot probes, and reaches beyond (keeping in mind that the Solar System is a lot bigger and more complicated than we used to think), maybe history, or a garbled version thereof, may be unfair to real achievers. Got it—but can we get on to space pioneers now?

  Well, one more point: before you can go somewhere, you have to know that there’s somewhere to go.

  So far, I have referred to “the world,” but haven’t called it a planet. That’s because the word planet comes from a Greek word (yes, we’re back to the Greeks; s’matter, you got something against gyro sandwiches?) for “wanderer,” and Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn—the planets visible to the naked eye—were called that because they moved, unlike the “fixed” stars which slowly moved in a mass across the sky with the seasons, but did not change location in the sky with respect to each other. They, the planets, all five of them that the Greeks could see, did change location. Some of those wanderers would even come to a halt in the sky, then go backwards from their previous motion. This is easily explained if you know that the Earth is itself a planet/wanderer, going around the sun with the rest of the planets, in the same direction but at different speeds, and the Earth, like a faster race horse, overtakes the slower outer planets so that an observer will think they slow down, then go into reverse gear. With the exception of Aristarchus (and maybe a few now-forgotten disciples of his), who argued that the Earth went around the sun, the Greeks bet on all the “fixed” stars being attached to a gigantic crystal sphere around the (spherical but stationary) Earth, while each planet was on a different, separate crystal sphere, each rotating differently from the others and, yes, sometimes stopping, then reversing course.

  Since the Greeks came up with this idea, they were doomed to never come up with a pulp like Planet Stories, pardon me, Wanderer Stories. Win some, lose some. How can you travel to the Moon if it’s attached to a crystal sphere, let alone take a trip to the planets, which must be even farther away because they sometimes are seen to go behind the Moon, and so their crystal spheres must be outside of the Moon’s sphere. Besides, the opinion seems to have been divided on whether those lights in the sky are named after gods, or actually are gods. If a Pegasus knock-off were available, maybe he could be ridden to the moon (they had no idea that the space above the Earh was not filled with air), but remember what happened when Bellerophon (not to be confused with a wrecked starship in Forbidden Planet) tried to drop in on Mt. Olympus and say, “Hey, Zeus, baby, what’s shakin’?” Those gods can be touchy about trespassers on their home turf, and the heavens might be a worse test case than was buzzing Olympus.

  Do I hear objections? (I don’t, of course, but it’s a useful rhetorical fiction.) Why all this ancient history, and, even worse, ancient mythology? The Greek gods never existed, and we can reach the planets and even the stars using time dilation at relativistic speeds, or generation ships, if nothing better is available.

  Maybe . . . but, on the other hand, are you certain there are no gods, or at least godlike beings out there? If Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s famous quip that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic” is true, then won’t any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrials be indistinguishable from gods? Suppose they’re touchy about the savages (or worse, the monkeys, or even mice) dropping in on them uninvited.

  As for that technology . . . if the speed of light is indeed an absolute limit, with no way to dodge or detour around it, traveling close to that speed to take advantage of time dilation might still be unworkable. Back in the sixties, a card-carrying scientist wrote an essay in a book on interstellar communication, which he thought demonstrated that the propulsion required to travel close to lightspeed required technology that was not only beyond anything we might build, ever, it was impossible by the mathematics of the thing. The essay was quoted at length in a review in Scientific American of the book it appeared in. The magazine’s reviewer cited the article with an unholy glee, writing that “this will send the idea of the starship back to the cereal box, where it belongs.” (And this was back when Scientific Amerikan, pardon me, American, was worth reading, a situation that ended several years ago!) Other writers with comparable credentials have attacked the premises and reasoning of that article, but even so, we can’t assume that time dilation will give us the stars.

  And there have been arguments why a generation ship of less than planetoid size would soon become unlivable, aside from the gene pool of the crew being too small to prevent genetic deterioration; and if the ship were planetoid size, the reaction mass to propel it would be beyond anything we can imagine.