Amazing Vignettes Page 16

  They didn’t expect to find much on the sunless world of Loki to whom the sun was a mere pinpoint a little brighter than the stars. But there was chance for mineral development and the System Council was missing no bets. Already they’d upped the resources a million-fold when the rich veins of Plutonian mineral sources were tapped.

  It was only a matter of hours before Mark brought the ellipsoid in for the landing. The bleak dark surface beneath him was not reassuring but with the skill borne of much practice in the plus grav landings on Jupiter, Mark eased the vessel soundly to the “terrain”.

  Fenner made the first exodus. “I’ll make a prelim check, Mark,” he told him, “then maybe we both can get out. I’m armed with a hot beam too. Keep me on twenty megacycles and don’t ever lose touch. I don’t want to rot inside my can in some stinking crevice!”

  “Got it. Fen!”

  As Fenner slipped through the airlock, Mark called: “Shake it up, boy. I want some of the glory too!”

  Fenner laughed.

  Fenner walked the barren surface, as grim and empty as an asteroid. No liquids flowed in these temperatures there were only traces of gases. To all intents and purposes Loki appeared as forlorn and lifeless as the Moon.

  Stony ridges and powdery hills made up the planet’s terrain. No instruments clicked for the Geigers registered only radioactives. That was out. What good was this planet, Fenner thought, but periodically he chipped a wav specimens. Copper-bearing ores would be in demand but their determination depended upon the spectrograph inside the ship.

  Periodically Mark’s “Checking, Fen, where are you?” came over the phones. “All o.k. Mark,” Fenner’d reply and trudge on.

  He made a three kilometer circuit of the vessel and was on his way back when he spotted them!

  Coming directly toward him were two huge boulders, rolling with purpose and animation that was a parody on life itself. They bounced and jounced over the terrain like two monstrous billiard balls.

  “Mark!” Fenner screamed, “Something’s here! God only knows what these lumps of rock are but I think they’re alive!”

  “Shoot!” Mark cried over the phones, “shoot, Fen!”

  Fen awkwardly brought up the hot-beam and let a blast sizzle at the “rocks”. He could see sparks fly but their velocity only increased.

  Mark caught his last words—“I’m done, Mark. I’m done!”—and then silence.

  Mark went white with fear inside the ship. There was something there. Could he leave Fen. Fen’s dead, you fool, he told himself. After that cry, who’d live.

  Mark readied the controls, making the prelims to blasting. Even as he did so he felt the ellipsoid shiver under the impact of some tremendous blow. He saw the quartzite ports cave in under the pounding of a huge rock. The ship reverberated like a tin-can until the air blew out. Desperately Mark worked controls and at last was rewarded with a surge of acceleration. The ellipsoid was off and he knew he’d make Terra. The ports could be repaired in space but it was a long ride home.

  The ship rose far above malignant Loki and Mark looked down at the heap of living rocks imbued with senseless animosity. Fenner didn’t want glory—but he got it. Mark shuddered and set about checking the damage. The stout hull had withstood the blows but there was lots to do.

  He went to work. Heroes don’t dream. They act. And the ellipsoid surged with increasing velocity away from petro-living Loki . . .

  Once Upon a Time . . .

  Lynn Standish

  IF YOU want to be driven daffy, just stroll by the passenger observation dome of a space freighter, wearing a communication officer’s uniform. I guarantee you’ll blow your stack in twenty minutes. I know. I’ve done it often enough.

  I’ve been a deep-spacer for almost fifteen years, all of it as a communications man, but it’s only in the last ten of those years since space travel has become commonplace, that I’ve really gotten my dander up. I should be philosophical by now, but I guess I’ll never be. I haven’t the temperament.

  “Ooh Captain!” some beautiful young thing’ll say sweetly, staring straight at my communications’ insignia, “what’s that big star over there?” She’ll be pointing straight to one of the Jovian satellites!

  Or some middle-aged woman, a motherly type and a typical tourist, will gush all over: “This is the first time I’ve been in deep space, Captain, and do you know what? It isn’t thrilling at all.”

  I don’t know how I answer them. I’m afraid to think about it even though Company policy is pretty well drilled into me.

  Or I’ll walk down the observation lounges and I’ll overhear a typical conversation.

  A couple of newlyweds will be honeymooning and they’ll be snuggled up close to each other.

  “John,” she’ll say liltingly, “I’m thrilled! Isn’t it wonderful? Just think! We’re skillions of miles from nowhere. Oh John, what if something happens!” Invariably she’ll end this last on just the right fearful note.

  The husband will give his wife a nice manly smile. “Don’t worry darling. This isn’t anything. We’re as safe as a couple of bugs in a rug.” He’ll squeeze her a little tighter. Then he’ll say: “You shouldn’t be frightened. There isn’t even a thrill left. This is like commuting on the Long Island Monorail. These atomics aren’t even real spaceships. Just a few years ago there were real deepspacers. Those were the good old days when space travel was an adventure. Today a spaceman is as rare as a trolley motorman!”

  No, I don’t strangle ’em. I’d like to though. “No thrills left!” I could tell him a thing or two as he stands so comfortably in this palatial steel shell. I could tell him about the hell of liquid fueled rockets with which we crossed the Ecliptic. I wonder how romantic he’d think one of those flimsy shells was if he had to live aboard it. And as for deepspacers—well, every man jack aboard a Company craft has trained on liquid-fueled jobs and has teethed on a rocket lining!

  Well, when you deal with the public you’ve got expect this sort of thing, I guess. But if there’s a sudden rash of deepspace madness, with a half dozen spacemen throwing their passengers to the Void, don’t be surprised!

  Someday I’ll write a book about it, I think. It’ll be a serious job, and I’ll show people that deepspacing isn’t child’s play, even today . . .

  Interstellar Piracy!

  Lynn Standish

  CAPTAIN LANCE HARFORD watched the scene with mounting horror. He stood transfixed, as if not believing that what he was witnessing was real. His speedster floated free in space a mere five hundred meters from the pirate raiders’ craft and the merchant victim, the Sunstar. And the scene transpiring in the control room was as clear on the visiplate as if Lance were there.

  Duhammel’s harsh voice grated from the speaker.

  “Pm warning you Harford,” it said with cold hatred. “If you touch a firing stud, I’ll blast everyone in this room. And if you even breathe a radar pulse I’ll do it real slow.” He laughed cynically.

  Lance saw the row of passengers and crew members in the merchant’s control, standing in a single line. Two of the pirates stood to one side while Duhammel and two others went over them roughly appropriating even simple valuables like watches and jewelry.

  Lance held himself in check. To make a single false move would mean the destruction of the passengers—or worse.

  Duhammel paused before one of the passengers, a frightened, wide-eyed girl of statuesque beauty. He grinned evilly as he ran his hands lecherously over her shrinking body. Boldly he caressed her. Her hand went across his face with a resounding crack. Furiously the pirate chieftain balled his fist and knocked her to the floor.

  “I’ll tame you later,” he said with venom in his face. “We’ll take you along for fun.”

  Lance found his voice: “I warn you, Duhammel. Don’t try that! It’s going to be bad enough for you now without kidnapping—you fool!”

  Duhammel looked into the visiscreen. Abruptly he spat.

  “Shut up, Harford, or I’ll gun this w
hole lot.”

  Impotently Lance watched the pirates transfer the stores and valuables to their ship. He watched the girl shoved into a space and taken aboard also. The quivering crew and passengers dared offer no opposition for fear of the results.

  Lance’s patrol ship could blast the pirate from space, but he dared not fire now—or later—not with the girl aboard.

  When the pirate craft had vanished in a flare of power radiation Lance checked with the merchant.

  “Can you proceed?”

  “We can; the dirty swine didn’t touch the controls or power,”

  “Fine,” Lane replied, “I’m taking after them right now. Report to Base One at once.”

  “The girl—” the captain started to say.

  “—Who was she?” Lance interrupted.

  “Lana Terrence—Commander Terrence’s daughter.”

  That was enough for Lance. He knew what Terrence would say. In twenty-four hours there would be every available ship in space, hunting relentlessly for the pirate vessel. But he had the head start and he had a tracer. Without further parlay, he shoved down the power trips and the small patrol rocket flared into incandescent activity as its tubes poured energy into space.

  With mounting acceleration Lance followed the tracer needle. From its period he could determine distance. It—the pirate ship—had gone far even in this brief time, but no faster ship flits through space than a patrol vessel. Lance opened the power trips wide.

  It took three days before he tagged the pirate vessel, a converted merchant vessel, hovering amidst the Asteroid Belt.

  When Lance flashed radio contact, Duhammel’s handsome visage appeared on the screen.

  The self confidence was gone. Lance knew Duhammel had been intercepting the alarms of the past few days. His position was precarious. He had to bargain for he knew that Lance could blast him from the ether or if not, there’d be enough patrol ships to do the job.

  “Listen, Harford,” Duhammel said rapidly, “I hold the girl—she’s not harmed—the hell-cat—” here two pirates held the nude twisting writhing body of the girl before the screens—“—See? I’ll agree to deposit her unharmed on ’Roid 407—” it was a mining settlement—“if I get a twenty-four hour start.”

  Lance thought rapidly. He knew he couldn’t trust Duhammel—but Duhammel had to trust him!

  “I’ll take the girl right now, Duhammel,” he said, “and I’ll guarantee you personal immunity for twenty-four hours.” Here Lance bluffed. “Don’t—and I’ll blow you, the ship and the girl right out of space!”

  Grateful for the twenty-four hour respite which would give him a fighting chance to flee to some port and scatter and lose himself and crew, Duhammel accepted with alacrity. In a matter of minutes the girl appeared in Lance’s lock.

  Bruised and filthy, scratched and utterly tired, Lana still was the most beautiful thing Lance had ever seen. Tenderly he bathed her—over her feeble protests—and assisted her to his bunk. Then he sat the twenty-four hours out radiating the Patrol relay stations of his guarantee to Duhammel.

  He know he hadn’t had the authority to bargain like that, but he had had to do something. Besides his tracer still showed Duhammel to be in range.

  Lance’s ship finally caught up with Duhammel—twenty-five hours after the guarantee of immunity. Duhammel was driving wildly for Callisto in a mad effort to get there before the patrol. He could easily elude them in that unwholesome satellite’s vast jungles.

  But he was just a little too late. With Lana at his side, wild-eyed with excitement and numb with gratitude at her miraculous escape, Lance had a difficult time being unaware of her and concentrating on his work. Ho saw the rocket flash of Duhammel’s craft heading in-planet below and he knew what he must do.

  In a flat parabolic curve he swirled down on the doomed pirate. The radar sights in Lance’s ship showed their eerie phosphorescent greens as the electron beams danced. And then Lance pressed the stud.

  From the nose of the patrol ship and at a distance of no more than twelve kilometers, the heat pulse flared. When it struck the pirate ship, that unfortunate vessel folded up like an accordion and then as peculiarly, expanded as the pressure of the heat and gas dissipated.

  Where the pirate Duhammel and his ship and crew had been a moment before was now nothing, nothing except a twisted blackened hulk of metal falling with ever-mounting acceleration to the Earth below.

  Lance took liana in his arms as if to shield her from the sight and from the way she snuggled up against him, he was sure that he was going to spend a lot more time shielding her . . .

  The Martian Rocket

  Merritt Linn

  THE VAST tungsten and uranium mines on the Moon have given rise to a number of cities, but the five major ones are on the Earthward side. There is a domed observatory in the twilight zone, but it only houses a few people. The one city on the “Other Side” (as it’s called) is Caxton, a domed beauty of steel, aluminum and quartz, shining like a jewel against velvet, in its somber setting against the bleak Lunar terrain.

  Why Diane and I picked the place for a honeymoon jaunt, only honeymooners will ever know. Even at that, with all the traditional honeymooners’ desire for privacy, very few rent a shuttle rocket and visit Caxton. The city is an out of the way place doing a little mining, offering a bit of recreation, but mostly leaving you to your own devices. Diane and I liked that. We were a bit fed up with all the romantic hoop-la of Lunar City and Craterdorf. Night-clubbing under the transparent domes palls after a while even though at first it’s the most magnificent sight a couple can see.

  We’d gotten up late that day (naturally) when Diane suddenly suggested a jaunt,

  “Come on, darling,” she said, “let’s get a rocket and go a thousand miles from here. Let’s walk alone under the stars.”

  The zippone was still a little heavy in my brain, but when Diane looked at me with those half-closed, “please, honey?” eyes, I put my arms around her and said, “If you want to, dear, that’s good enough for me. I want to, too.”

  We picked up a thirty meter shuttle rocket at the Airlock, with space suits and provisions and in a few minutes we were slithering low across the barren landscape.

  I put the rocket down two hours later and a thousand miles from Caxton. The spot we selected was near a rather jagged mass of mountainous rock and had a wild fearsome appearance as if it had been the site of some past cataclysm—which in all probability, it had. We slipped into suits and started a casual walk—or bounce—under the delightful sense of airiness that one-sixth gravity can give you.

  We’d gone a few hundred meters from the ship into a series of pillar like rocks jutting into the sky when Diane, who was lagging a bit called my attention to a cavernous opening in the side of a small mountain. Caves are a rarity on Luna. I ran to her side where she was pointing at the cavern’s mouth.

  “Game, honey?” I asked. “Want to take a look?”

  Her voice was throaty over the phones: “Of course. Jerry. You’d have missed it anyway. Why do you think I caught it?” We hadn’t gone twenty meters into the cave when we sighted the other end. And at the end of the little cave was an incredible opening! We were standing on what amounted to an enormous cliff, the side of a gigantic natural cavern in the heart of the satellite. But that wasn’t what stunned us as we stepped back a minute to get a better look at the same time thoroughly concealing ourselves.

  The cavern floor was a mass of laboring creatures, and from their skeletal structure, it was easy to tell they were Martians in spite of their suits! They were working like bees and the structure they were erecting was obvious. The floor was strewn with vast amounts of tools and equipment and far across the other side of the cave we could see jet-black fans whose letters, incidentally, i entt t , rockets coming in with more loads of materials. And from the center of the floor rose four massive cylindrical tubes that no stretch of the imagination could conceive as anything but what—as it turned out later—they were—monstrous rock
et tubes!

  We didn’t stay but a second long. Wo shot back to our little shuttle rocket and were back in Caxton so fast we almost heated the craft against Luna’s nebulous residual gases!

  The rest is anti-climatic. The story of how the Martians were making the Moon a gigantic projectile to hurl against the mass of the mother planet is too well known. The League of Zixxus, that fanatic band of die-hards, refusing to accept the defeat inflicted on them thirty years ago had been working in secret ever since, and the incredible rocket motor for Luna was the result. It is hard to imagine the size of the proposed engines now that they’ve been destroyed by the fast-acting patrol, but scientists are fully aware that there was enough energy available in the equipment to move the Moon’s tremendous mass, and send it hurtling from its orbit into the placidity of the green planet beneath it.

  Diane and I often have occasion to talk about our honeymoon! If sheer chance hadn’t hit us between the eyes, there’d have been no honeymoons for anyone!—anymore!

  Who Plays with Fire . . .

  Tom Lynch

  BRENNER WAS a good deal of an eccentric, yet I dropped in on him occasionally because I’d known him for a long time—ever since we’d been in school together. His father who’d been an exporter had left him securities and plenty of money. As a result, Brenner spent most of his time puttering about his well equipped home workshop, and when I dropped in—I was the only friend he had—he was eager usually to talk about his latest project. I remember his vacuum tube experimentation, and some rather amazing developments he’d made in television, but he never seemed to carry things to their ultimate conclusion. So I wasn’t at all surprised that night when he greeted me at the door. He was dirty and covered with dust, wearing only pants and an undershirt.

  “Come in, Wilson,” he invited me cordially. “Good to see you again.”

  “What’s happened to you, man?” I asked, rather amazed at his disheveled appearance.