Fantastic Vignettes Read online

  Completely unaware the freighter plows the water at fifty knots, its powerful turbines creating an impressive howl. Ptar laughs exultantly. Hazily the English expression “like a sitting duck” drifts into his mind from some half-forgotten school class at the War College.

  Ptar eases a little power to the motors. He will close in to be absolutely sure. He doesn’t want the small atomic torpedoe to fail. He runs forward at three kilometers an hour. He raises his hand to reach over to the firing stud. He does it casually and confidently. The magnetic torpedoe can’t miss. Ptar is the acme of confidence. He breathes a slight prayer of thanks to the gods and touches the stud . . .

  Sub-lieutenant Garr looks off the larboard side of the bridge He sees the sunlight glinting on a metallic object. His face grows white and his screams, “Sub to the larboard!”

  Suddenly where his eye is watching erupts a column of water a thousand feet high. A thunderclap rolls over the sea. The ocean boils. Ptar is vapor along with his craft.

  Crisply the message flashes from the Coastwatchers. a coded brief: “Anti-sub mine K-114-2-11 . . . tripped . . . telecam records enemy D-type sub . . .”—then more conversationally—”. . . knock one, boys . . . little sucker might have ripped a freighter. . . . poor devil didn’t have a chance . . . over . . .”

  Building Blocks

  Milton Matthew

  IT WAS five hundred million years after the world had been a warm and vibrant planet, and the feeble sun that now warmed it was a dying ember, slowly radiating away its substance into the freezing reaches of outer space.

  Kuz, the archeologist, strained his feeble muscles within his warm and heated metal suit and tugged harder on the buried object, He grunted exultantly as it came free.

  “Here, Maze!” he screamed, “I’ve found another block. It’s made of lead too!”

  His companion stumbled across the dusty plain to his side and stared with amazement through his visi-port. “Another one!” he breathed incredulously. “The academy of Science will be amazed. We’ll soon be able to re-construct an entire dwelling!”

  Kuz rested from his labors and sat down beside the square leaden block. He shook his head.

  “I can’t understand what manner of people these ancestors of ours were. Why aid they use lead in their buildings? What was the purpose? The blocks survive a half a billion years. They show a high degree of technological skill. But of all the metals to use, why lead?”

  Maze settled beside him and nudged the block with metal-boot encased toe. His foot stirred up a whirl of dust. The dull sun started to settle below the horizon.

  “Do you believe Gzano’s Hypothesis?” he asked finally.

  Kuz threw back his little head and a gust of laughter shook him. “Don’t be funny,” he gasped after a moment, “There were no such things as radioactive storms! Do you honestly think people protected themselves against storms with walls of. lead?”

  Grudgingly Maze admitted his error: “No, I don’t, but remember, we always detect a little radioactivity with the lead.”

  Abruptly Kuz arose and picked up the leaden block. “Let’s get back to the ‘coptor,” ho said. “Let’s just admit that the ways of our ancestors were beyond us—what noble people they must have been!”

  The thin air whistled around them and the two archeologists shivered in their insulated suits. And as it keened around the scientists, a hundred million ghosts sighed with it—but the unsounded words “atomic war”, were never imagined, much less heard . . .

  Telerapport

  J.R. Marks

  “WHAT ARE you staring at, dear?” Blair jerked erect. There were tiny beads of sweat on his forehead. He looked at his wife a little angrily. He glanced around the apartment, his. eyes taking in its hyper-modern appearance as though it were new.

  “I wish you wouldn’t interrupt like that, Cyrisse,” he said slowly. He shook his head and passed his hand before his eyes. “I was just in telerapport with the Singapore office. You know how tough that is. Keeping a line over four thousand miles isn’t easy, even if Johnson in Seattle boosted my index a bit.”

  “I’m sorry,” his wife said sympathetically, “but you should have told me.”

  Blair went over to his wife and put his arm around her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry I snapped that way,” he said. “I’ll use the video tomorrow. I’m tired anyway. It was just a casual pulse which started the link. I’ll have to stop that. Bad habit.” They smiled at each other . . .

  That fantastic conversation may be commonplace in the future if what Dr. Rhine is saying is really true, and we have no reason to think otherwise. That telepathy can take place and over enormous distance seems to be a fact. It has definitely occurred in the past. Perhaps it can be developed to the stage where it can be used for business and industry.

  Even now however we suspect that it can be a pretty rugged drain on human energy. We know thought is a fatiguing practice. This extension of thought must be worse.

  Even if telepathy or the art of being telerapport never goes beyond definite limits, it will be a valuable faculty. How often have you tried to explain something in words without making the point? Think how easy it would be if you could permit your student to peek into your mind . . .

  Book Worm

  A. Morris

  THE COUNCIL of Science, aware of the dangers of interplanetary warfare has now a movement afoot, to reproduce the master-library at numerous points throughout the world. This is a good idea for the master-library is not as impressive physically as it may be imagined by most of us. Just because we can tap the videophone and have any volume we choose at our finger-tips, played before us from microfilm, doesn’t mean that the physical size of the master library is great.

  As a matter of fact, the six hundred million different volumes are housed in a rather unimpressive building in Washtone. Of course the interior is a miracle of electronics and photo-technique, but then we are accustomed to vastly greater miracles. The thrilling thing about the master-library is that it effectively houses the sum total of human knowledge as it has been inscribed. There is nothing that has been written in any language that is not available. And it is being added to at the rate of more than ten million volumes per year! We use the word volume, meaning of course “microfilm-volume”.

  The Martian threat, meaning as it does, the possible extinguishment of all that we know of civilization on both worlds, means that we must take steps to see that the storehouse of human knowledge is not too greatly endangered.

  For this purpose numerous duplicates of the master-library are being constructed. It is said that the most recent one has been built three hundred miles beneath the crust of this old planet, certainly an excellent protection! Nothing less than a planet-splitter among atomic bombs would be able to destroy it.

  It is a hideous thought to think that one day man might be forced to dig himself from the rubble and begin all over again. But the master-libraries will be a great comfort should such horror ever occur.

  Space School

  A.T. Kedzie

  WHEN YOU say “Lunar Base” these days, everyone knows you are referring to the Special Navigators’ School. And everyone also knows that this is one of the toughest and hardest schools in the Solar System.

  Here, raw recruits from the strange and varied peoples of the System, are brought together and taught to work and operate together as a military group, for no one knows if there Will or will not be another invasion from Antares. And unless we are better prepared this time, we will be unable to beat it off. Therefore the need for Lunar Base.

  When Elrik Kay took the final test he was as nervous and as jittery as anyone who had ever tried to pass through the school. When he finished it, he was the finest product that it had ever generated.

  It was on the final test that he had his great adventure which was said to have sheathed his nerves in nickel-vanadium. And he never denied it. The final test calls for the student-applicant to be shoved in a space-boat, a two man craft usual
ly, and then dumped somewhere outside the system. He is then to find his way back to Lunar Base.

  They dumped Elrik some two light-years outside the Plutonian orbit and left him to shift for himself. He had three months to make it back to Luna. And he didn’t come for five!

  The Service never released the story until some twenty years later nor did they explain until then why Elrik graduated with highest honors. But the truth is strange:

  When Elrik, candidate for a commission in the Service, found himself floating in free space, he was no more alarmed than the usual student. It was his job to navigate back and he knew how.

  He waited for ten hours before he broke the seals on the instruments, as was the custom so he couldn’t follow the vessel which brought him out.

  As soon as his instruments were working, he caught a pip on one of the ’scope screens. He assumed automatically that it was his mother ship. Something had gone wrong. He followed the trace to get orders.

  But when he finally reached the strange pip and glanced out the port, it wasn’t a Terran craft he was gazing at at all. That monstrous elongated cylinder was just one thing! There was no mistaking an Antarian invader. What had happened he immediately knew, was that this was one of the few which had not been tracked down and destroyed in the recent fracas. The gigantic ship remained quiescent, nor did a tractor fasten on him.

  There was only one thing to do. He flipped his plate closed on the space suit and prepared to try to board the ship. He knew how close to death he was—but he did it anyhow, first triggering a crudely rigged transmitter which he made from spare electronic tubes. He hoped to find the ship an empty shell.

  Well, he got in through an air-lock without much trouble. Then he saw what had happened. Space madness had caught the Antarians and they had cut each other down with horrible ruthlessness. The ship’s interior was a shambles and no living thing existed.

  But unfortunately a few of the reptilian things were still alive. Elrik didn’t know this until he was almost cut down by a ray gun. The resultant battle that ensued lasted for sleepless nights and days, and from the Service’s later releases, was an heroic thing indeed. We pass it briefly over it except to say that Elrik, badly wounded defeated the remaining three or four space-maddened reptilian monsters and then collapsed.

  The fighting had triggered the driving tubes and it was only by a miracle of tracking that a Terran vessel finally found the runaway. They had already found the lifeboat through its warning radiations.

  To avoid scaring the public of three worlds, no mention was made of Elrik’s performance for two decades. Finally his heroism was made known. You know the rest of it—Gentlemen, I give you. Commander of the Service, Elrik Kay!

  Sky-Hooks

  W.R. Chase

  THEY WEREN’T really anti-gravs because no such thing had yet been discovered, but the video ads made them irresistible.

  “Hook yourself to the sky,” the ads screamed, “Have fun with a rocket-harnass.” Actually that’s just what they were—harnasses with controllable rockets for steering and back deflectors for safety. They were selling like mad in metropolitan Loss-Ang for three hundred credits.

  The price and the ads were too much for Stanger. The idea of strapping a rocket to your back and floating all over the countryside was just too much for him. One afternoon after his four hour work-stretch at the relay plant, he ’coptored downtown and bought one. On the way he passed several people using them rapturously.

  When he returned home he put it on immediately. It was simply a matter of stepping into a couple of boots, adjusting a few clamps and straps. The control box fastened to his chest. For a moment he felt like a fool but the instant he touched the stud and felt the surge of life from the rockets on his back, he knew that this would be fun.

  He rose to a few hundred feet and felt the thrill of manuevering. It took him perhaps a half hour to get the hang of the studs. From then on it was strictly fun!

  He soared and zoomed like a bird; the almost-silent flight was uncanny.

  Suddenly the controls refused to work. Stanger found himself dangling in the air five hundred feet from the ground, the rockets hissing at his back quietly—but he was unable to move. He hung there helplessly. There were no people or ’coptors around and a feeling of panic seized him. What to do? He wriggled and twisted and briefly changed his thrust. Then he realized the danger. If I’m not careful, he thought, and I turn nose down, I’ll bury myself in the ground. So he hung.

  “Hey, Birdman!” a raucous voice suddenly called. Stanger breathed a sigh of relief. The police ’coptor was almost on him.

  “Having fun?” a monitor asked humorously. “You guys are beginning to give me a pain in the neck. I’m picking people out of the air like plums. Why’nt check these things?”

  Stanger laughed—at last he was able to. “Next time I will, believe me,” he said. “Whew! Say . . . what happens when one of these crazy gadgets is overpowered? There’s no altitude control in them, is there?”

  “I don’t know, brother,” the monitor said as he reached out gingerly and drew Stanger aboard, avoiding the burn of the rockets, “but we’ll sure find some character that’ll try a Lunar trip with ’em!”

  Unwilling Exile

  June Lurie

  FRANKEN snatched another tube of coffee. The hot fluid flooded through his body and gave him new strength. The tiredness fell from him like a cloak.

  I’m so close, he thought, so very close. I can’t fail! I can’t. The ferocity of the feeling startled even him. The “breadboard” arrangement of electrical equipment seemed like a hodge-podge of junk, but to Franken’s eyes it was the most beautiful sight in the world. An outsider would have thought it a battered video sender or simply a pile of junk. But this was the source and origin of something that was to affect the future very much.

  Skillfully Franken manipulated tools. The touch of a screw-driver here; the whine of an electric drill there; the sparking of a welding electrode. He left the equipment for a while and thumbed through his notes which, along with numerous texts, littered a desk in the corner of the laboratory.

  Here was the product of a lifetime’s research. Franken like all scientists knew nothing of the nature of gravitation, but instinctively when doing his work on electromagnetic fields he felt the kinship between it and them.

  If what I do tonight succeeds, the System will be forever changed! Who has not wanted to conquer gravity?

  At last the groundwork was done. All that remained was for Franken to test his handiwork. If it failed nothing would happen; if it succeeded—

  Gingerly Franken reached out and touched the potentiometer, a circular dial, which moved smoothly. For a moment nothing happened. He turned it farther.

  Abruptly the mass of equipment rose from the table. It rose slowly and Franken’s mind went wild with jubilation. Convulsively he jerked, and the equipment shot skyward!

  It was then Fate intervened. The convulsive movement sent Frank bumping against his equipment just as he deflected the control too severely and just as the equipment shot skyward. His sleeve caught on the jagged edge of the mechanism, and equipment and Franken rose like a rocket. Terrified Franken almost blanked out as they shot through the flimsy skylight.

  Then the sleeve tore, some five hundred feet, from the rapidly rising machine. A horrible scream lanced through the air as Franken tumbled to his death . . .

  “Too bad about Franken,” his colleagues sympathized when the body was found pulped, near a neighboring park. “How did the poor fellow tumble from a ’coptor?” And no eye could see one of man’s greatest inventions rising ever and ever more rapidly into the reaches of space . . .

  Joyboy—3000

  Lynn Standish

  FENLAKE THREE shoved the calculating machine from him, and his little mustache wrinkled in repugnance. He yawned and stretched. “Ugh,” he said to no one and gazed distastefully at the luminous walls of his office. His desk, a gleaming sheet of titanium was now a mess of scriptopen
s, paper and calculating instruments. Fenlake Three was tired and bored.

  Abruptly he galvanized into action. He punched the communicator button at his right hand. As the light flared, he spoke: “Fenlake Three—number four oh eight six three—classification engineer—aerotronics. Make an appointment at Pleasure Cell Twenty for me for this evening at twenty-one hundred. Check?”

  “Yes sir,” a crisp feminine voice answered but the flatness of the tone confirmed its robotic qualities.

  That evening an aero-cab dropped Fenlake Three before the ramp of an impressive structure. It was busy now and many people were leaving and entering. The reason was clear. On its face was displayed a huge fluorescent sign which winked on and off. “Pleasure Cell Twenty”, it said, and in smaller letters, “Hypnofun!” Quickly Fenlake checked with the appointment desk. He was rapidly escorted to his room. He entered it familiarly. It was completely barren except for a single heavily over-stuffed chair. Otherwise the room was totally bare.

  The attendant removed a small kit from his belt, as Fenlake threw himself into a position of comfortable relaxation in the chair. For the first time he spoke.

  “What will you have sir?” His hands worked with the kit and soon he was adjusting a large hypodermic needle. “Love? Hate? Work? Relaxation? Thrills? Danger? Fear? Peace? Friendsh—”

  “—Relaxation!” Fenlake snapped, “I’ve been working too hard.”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  The attendant fumbled with a tube which he inserted into the hypodermic syringe. “Ready, sir?” he asked solicitously. “Go ahead,” Fenlake answered. He extended a bared arm. Skillfully the attendant sterilized the arm, inserted the needle and pressed home the plunger.