Amazing Vignettes Page 12

  “Well,” I asked, “what caused the suicide? What was the actual reason? He must have had one.”

  The officer shrugged. He tapped his head. “You know these crazy geniuses. They go off the deep end every now and then.” He handed me a typewritten outline of Wynward’s brief life and signified that our little talk was over.

  But I wasn’t satisfied. It seemed that there was something more. I’d have to do a little scouting on my own.

  I ended up at the bar of the Flamingo, the hotel, that afternoon and it wasn’t long before I managed to get into a conversation with a tall thin man who was nursing a tall thin drink.

  One thing led to another and soon we were exchanging the usual conversational chit-chat. He was a computer scientist too but when I mentioned Wynward, he clamped up like a fish. I didn’t mention the suicide again until we were both feeling pretty mellow. Then he began to talk—after he’d drawn me to a side booth. He puffed nervously on a cigarette.

  When he started to talk he sounded almost like a guilty boy instead of a competent scientist.

  “. . . Wynward,” he said, “was a good man. But like all of us, he spent too much time with that damn machine. Computers are funny things. They’re almost alive and when a man deals with a living machine, it gets him after a while. Even Wynward.” I didn’t say anything but let the man talk. He said that Wynward was doing some conventional research on projectiles, most of which required him to feed problems to the machine and take answers out. He used a lot of technical gobbledeegook but I got the general pitch.

  “Monday afternoon,” the scientist went on, “Wynward was working as usual. He ran into a rather tough problem and he kept the mechanical ‘brain’ humming. Finally he shot a very critical complex problem into the keyboard, gave the machine power and waited some twenty minutes for the answer to appear on the usual teletypewriter output. The answer came out all right.”

  Here the man pulled a small scrap of paper from his pocket and began toying with it. His hands were shaking.

  “Wynward read the answer—up until where it stopped—it was just a chain of numbers, ceded and complex which would have to be changed to the decimal form.

  “But the answer broke off abruptly—and there were some words on the paper!”

  The scientist took another pull at his. drink and tossed the scrap of paper to me. I unfolded it. Most of it was a maze of numbers in nice even rows and columns, and so far as I was concerned utterly incomprehensible. But in the middle of sheet the numbers had stopped and there was a sentence!

  My eyes did a double-take. I had to realize that this paper was the output of a mechanical brain, a computing machine into which one fed problems and from which answer should come. But this sentence was impossible. Machines don’t write English.

  It said: What is life?

  I shuddered.

  “See what I mean?” the scientist asked. “Wynward read this, showed it to me a few hours later. I knew he was shocked and I tried to tell him that someone must have played a practical joke. But he knew that even I didn’t believe that. He went to his room and shot himself. That’s all.”

  He got up, staggering a little, and started to walk away. He paused for a moment, turned and looked at me. “I’m quitting today.” Then walked away.

  I sat there staring at the scrap of paper. I took a deep drink. And somehow I knew that the end wasn’t coming through an A-bomb or an H-bomb. The evil was crawling out of the computing laboratories.

  My story said “nervous strain causes young scientist to commit suicide.” But it’s getting so bad I hate to use even a slot machine for a handful of peanuts. It might be thinking . . .

  The Tomb Tappers

  Leo Brady

  THE ANNOUNCEMENT was made quietly. Video commentators mentioned it briefly and newspapers located it in the back pages. Nor did it say much. But it implied a lot.

  “Pursuant to executive instructions, Public Law 103 is hereby nullified and capital punishment through electrocution is reinstated. This change has been made by the Chief Executive upon the advice of the Triplanetary Council.”

  What a tale of complexity and intrigue revolves around that statement! It requires the tracing of a section of interplanetary history. Forty years ago when Man was spreading through the Solar System—some say like a plague!—lawlessness and disorder hit a new peak as is almost always the case when unfettered pioneering expansion takes place. And because the Solar System is so vast men—many of them—assumed crime would be a source of easy pickings—and it was. In the vast reaches of the system what was to prevent piracy and robbery, murder and treachery? Nothing of course, and so crime blossomed.

  Finally things became so bad, with spacecraft hardly daring to make a simple Lunar hop without a military escort, that the Tri-Planets clamped down with an enormous organization of security police armed to the teeth and on the continual hunt for pirates and lawbreakers.

  But it was when the Triplanetary Council devised regulation or Public Law 103, that the campaign against lawlessness had its real effect.

  The law stated that any persons involved in piracy or interplanetary crime were to be executed. This severe punishment carried a death sentence of horror. The criminal was placed in a metal cylinder of shining white, equipped with facilities for living almost indefinitely. He was shot into space to die alone. To permit him to die by his own hand if he so desired, a pistol was given him. Entombed in his little coffin, he drifted through the System eventually into the outer reaches of the limits.

  This horrible fate actually had the effect of detering crime and criminals. Only those who have been in the vastness of space can appreciate the hideousness of such a death, the utter abysmal loneliness, the despair and fear. This apparently inhumane punishment brought results however. Crime dropped off rapidly as the law was put into effect.

  But unfortunately it worked only for a time which is why the announcement of the rescinding of Law 103 was made. Pirates began making a point of tracking down and rescuing the occupants of the doomed cylinder, adding to their crews.

  And so, right now, the Solar System stands in a position of great danger. Pirate activities will multiply manifold. It would seem that crime is almost becoming an organized system of its own rather than a phenomenon of the socially maladjusted.

  We don’t know how the System Patrol will combat the new danger, but it will. A terrific fight lies ahead though, since even the threat of such a horrible fate as that provided by law one oh three has been unable to eliminate the danger of crime throughout the System . . .

  Tomorrow’s Hero

  Jon Barry

  HE SHIFTED the weight of the rifle higher on his shoulder. The chill Mongolian wind swept in vicious gusts across the plain, but he didn’t notice it. Beneath his armpits he could feel the cold sweat of icy nervousness trickling down his sides.

  He walked slowly and in the half-light of dawn the monstrous picture was clearly outlined before his eyes. As far as he could see the flat plain, dotted with blocks of concrete, was a forest of ninety foot cylinders. High in the air they towered, waiting like the insentient machine they were until the pulses should energize their rockets and send them hurtling across the vast gulf of space and time that separated Asia from the Americas.

  Private Drugagovich walked his beat slowly and his eyes were like twin swords as his racing heart and brain told him that this was the time. For Private Drugagovich might have been identified as Jerry Brannon, OSS agent extraordinary. The little dot of dye beneath a fingernail of his left hand could fluoresce and identify him under the right conditions.

  Drugagovich-Brannon cursed softly in the Slavic tongue now as native to him as his own—after these last three years. For on this Mongolian plain, the fate of a world was to be decided—and that lay directly in his hands.

  Brannon stopped near one of the atomicheaded war-rockets. He dropped his rifle knowing that the half-dark concealed his action, grubbed in his capacious pockets and his hands emerged with a
small metal box. With one swift motion he placed the box near the base of the rocket and touched a switch. Near four rockets he repeated this strange action.

  Every move he made was confident and knowing. The fruits of three months of practice were beginning to tell. Brannon picked up his rifle and started to walk swiftly toward the small airfield a quarter of a mile away.

  Yes, he thought, there they were, four jets standing on the field. He glanced at his watch. In three minutes the mechanics would start their engines and in another five, the patrol pilots would come out of the operations office and take off. Oh, but they wouldn’t this time, Jerry thought ironically.

  He reached the limit of the field and started toward the nearest jet. Even as he expected, the sentry called halt. “It is not permitted,” he shouted, “step back or I’ll call the officer of the guard.” Almost without noticing, Jerry shot him twice. The man’s face glazed with surprise and he tumbled to the ground.

  In seconds, Jerry was in the cockpit of the Commie jet. Its motor was hissing smoothly and memory and study had made its plan as familiar as his face.

  The non-com mechanic stepped to the side of the plane and saw the unfamiliar face and uniform. He started to protest. Jerry did not even look. The canopy shot close and he touched the throttle. With a violent whoosh the jet was air-borne in minutes.

  Jerry glanced into the sky. It would be only minutes—perhaps already—before the incoming patrol jets would be alerted. Holding the ground near to him, Jerry opened wide the throttle of the jet and let her roar. He had approximately fifteen minutes in which to get out of the vicinity and he had no intention of staying around. By now, he knew the rockets were as good as gone. While he had fused four of them with his little bomb, the entire lot of hundreds would go.

  Still hugging the ground Jerry let the jet have her nose. He knew where he was going and how he was going to be picked up by Intelligence.

  The minutes passed and then suddenly the sky behind the plane became lit with a rosy red as if a new sun had risen in the west. Then Jerry slumped in the seat. He had succeeded.

  And behind him four hundred and eleven atomic bomb-headed war-rockets went off almost simultaneously, leaving nothing on the face of that section of the Earth save a gigantic scar . . .

  Thank God, breathed Jerry, there won’t be war for a long time to come. I’ve scotched their firebrand . . .

  They Didn’t Walk Away . . .

  Charles Recour

  WE WERE standing in the observation dome watching the rocket come into Copernicus City. It’s always a thrilling sight, even to hardened old space-hands—after all, men have been on the Moon only a dozen years—and well worth the two credit fee.

  Ordinarily you only hear the radar men talking with the craft after they pick it up. This is for effect and the public goes for the business-like conversation in a big way. Then you see the pinpoint of light against the backdrop of space and unlike the stars, it’s moving.

  Quickly it comes in, grows larger and soon is visible as a steel needle. Skillfully the pilot will cut his velocity and bring the rocket toward the burnt and pocked field, balancing it on its tail, holding its nose vertical with the gyros and bucking Lunar gravitation with the rockets. Then at the right moment the rocket settles with a shaking thump, right smack on its tail. The flames die and the rocket’s in . . . ordinarily.

  We watched this one, one of the new “Fletchers” a big hundred and fifty foot job, follow through. It came in toward the port beautifully. The pilot was “Hot Rocket” Wilson, an old hand at the game—he claimed he’s landed more rockets than anyone of Spaceways Inc.

  He came in smoothly, almost braking to a stop with his nose rockets. We waited eagerly, breathlessly, for him to spin the rocket around on its gyros. The ship seemed to quiver for a moment. And there was much too long a time-lag between the breaking and the spinning. In fact, the rocket never completed the spin-around.

  It hung a mile or so in the airless space above the pumice surface of the landing field. It hung there briefly.

  One of the radar men’s voices came screaming over the P. A. system, “My God! He’s going to drop!” The voice broke off in a gasp, as almost of personal agony.

  And it happened. Even slowly, it seemed to our unbelieving eyes, the rocket started to fall. In seconds in reality—though it seemed like hours—the rocket fell Luna-ward.

  There was a vast column of Pumice sent high into the air, and the rocket shook as her fuel went off like apyrotechnic display.

  We watched the emergency crews speed for the inferno—but we knew it was too late. Anyone still alive after the crash would certainly die in the flare of fuel.

  We were a sober and shaken crowd when we left the observation dome. It’s hard to see people die two hundred and fifty thousand miles from home . . .

  Satellite Greed

  William Karney

  BILL NELSON stared for a long while at the empty metal box. The lid was up and where seven kilos of glittering, sparkling flamestones should have been, was emptiness!

  Bill Nelson sat down heavily at the compact astrogating table in the little spaceboat and held his head in his hands. The arduous, back-breaking labor of four months was wasted—all his plans gone and vanished—into thin space.

  He should have known, he thought, that there was something wrong about Blake. It was easy to see why Blake had insisted on their working alone, it was clear why Blake had been “at work” on his lode for such a long time and at such odd intervals. The sly devil must have cached a space-boat somewhere, hidden it thoroughly in the billion and one crevices which dotted the surface of Luna—and then struck. Why had he been such a trusting fool!

  By now, Nelson thought, Blake will be well on his way to Careen or another of the major lunar dome-cities, and then in a few hours, safely bound for Earth.

  For a long time, Bill struggled in his mind, tempted to forget working the lode which still had rather rich deposits, and go after Blake with all he had. But reason took command. Catching the faithless partner was hopeless. The main thing was to get to work.

  Wearily, reluctantly, Bill climbed into a space-suit, went through the lock of the little space-boat and started off across the gritty pumice-surface. The thought suddenly struck him—at least see where Blake cached the second space-boat.

  After a good hour’s work, Bill stumbled on a canyon-like crevice. He rounded a huge layer of jutting rocky formation—and then saw it! Perched unmoving, well-hidden from above, was a small powerful type-L106 “flitter”, its rockets silent. Bill drew a blaster from his capacious suit and made his way slowly and cautiously toward the space-boat, taking advantage of every out-cropping to protect himself.

  But no motion was apparent. If Blake was in the ship, he was mighty slow about moving. Bill keyed the lock and went in slowly. There was not a sign of the errant partner.

  Puzzled, he left the little vessel and started to search the surrounding terrain. Then he came upon Blake!

  Blake would never play the treacherous partner again. His body, clad in its bulky space-suit, lay sprawled out on a little pumice rise. A hundred feet behind it lay the bag of flame-stones. Blake’s blaster was in his hand, and the right foot of the spacesuit was a gaping hole.

  Bill studied the scene carefully. It was easy to reconstruct the event Blake had gotten his foot caught in a crevice, lined with razor-sharp stone. The tough fabric of the suit hadn’t given before his violent struggle. In his mind’s eye, Bill saw the desperate man, thinking of how he had to get away, struggling furiously to disengage his foot. Finally, failing to break loose, he must have decided to chance a blast shot at the rock. He succeeded all right—but he nipped the suit in the process. Despite the loss of air, he must have made a powerful struggle to cover the hundred odd feet to the shelter of the air-lock. But a man in an empty space-suit, struggling in a vacuum, doesn’t get far . . .

  Bill carried the dead-weight of Blake’s body to the boat. But he was strangely sober. It is not easy to
be over-joyed at knowing how a man dies in a vacuum . . .

  Gone But Not Forgotten

  Sandy Miller

  THE COCKTAIL party for the new author had degenerated—as all of them do—into little groups and cliques of people, boring each other with drab shop talk and stale anecdote.

  Larry McKean picked up a fresh drink from a serving tray and wandered through the french doors onto the terrace. The cool night air felt good after the overheated warmth of the apartment. The sky was alive with a million stars. Larry looked up and sighed. Time and space, he thought, what are you.

  “Pardon me,” he managed to get out hastily as he almost knocked the drink from the hand of a person whom he stumbled against in the darkness. He stepped back.

  “That’s all right,” a musical voice laughed. Larry saw that it was a girl, a striking beauty with long black hair, unbowed to the fashion, wearing a low-cut evening gown and looking altogether utterly charming.

  “It was my fault,” she said laughing, “when I come out for air I should look where I’m going.”

  “Uh-huh,” Larry disagreed. “But I think this is a perfect way to meet. I’m Larry McClean, English department at State. And you—?”

  “Martha Freeman, math department at State.”

  “Why haven’t we met before?” Larry asked, steering her toward the rail on the parapet.

  “Evidently you people find math too boring,” the girl said, humor in her eyes.

  “Not any more,” Larry came back, “tell me all about the fourth dimension. I’ll listen for hours.”

  He saw the girl suddenly stiffen at his mention of the phrase “fourth dimension.” The smile went from her face.