The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack
THE SEVENTH SCIENCE FICTION MEGAPACK
Version 1.0.1
COPYRIGHT INFO
The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack is copyright © 2013 by Wildside Press LLC. Cover art © Algol / Fotolia. All rights reserved. For publication history of specific stories, see the Acknowledgments section at the end of this volume. For more information, contact the publisher through wildsidepress.com or the Wildside Press Forums.
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
Welcome to the seventh volume of The Science Fiction Megapack. Once again we plunge headlong into the future, with some truly stellar tales, including a great “lost” story by Arthur C. Clarke…which works as both a science fiction story and a ghost story. (How hard is that to pull off!) And, most intriguingly, we have two stories by different authors that share the same title—“Do Unto Others”—by Damien Broderick and Mark Clifton. (We couldn’t help but include them both in the same volume!)
Plus we have Lawrence Watt-Evans’s Hugo Award-winning “Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers,” and Mike Renick’s Hugo-nominated “All the Things You Are,” classic stories both. And, of course, there is a fine selection of other tales, new and old...including one by me, originally commissioned—though it’s hard to believe—almost 20 years ago for an illustrated book of tales inspired by Isaac Asimov’s robot series. I hope you enjoy it.
We have been busy doing quite a few single-author Megapacks, too, including H. Beam Piper, Philip K. Dick, and many more. But most interestingly—at least to me, as both an author and a reader—is that we have begun work on our first Megapack by a living writer: C.J. Henderson. C.J. has published more than 700 short stories (which makes him one of the field’s all-time most prolific wordsmiths). Plus he’s a fun writer, all-around nice guy, and well worth reading. Check out his contribution to this volume.
—John Betancourt
Publisher, Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidepress.com
ATTN: KINDLE READERS
The Kindle versions of our Megapacks employ active tables of contents for easy navigation…please look for one before writing reviews on Amazon that complain about the lack! (They are sometimes at the ends of ebooks, depending on your version or ebook reader.)
RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?
Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the Megapack series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://movies.ning.com/forum (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).
Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.
TYPOS
Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.
If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone (and email a revised copy to you when it’s updated, in either epub or Kindle format, if you provide contact information). You can email the publisher at wildsidepress@yahoo.com.
THE MEGAPACK SERIES
SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY
The Edward Bellamy Megapack
The First Reginald Bretnor Megapack
The Philip K. Dick Megapack
The Murray Leinster Megapack
The Second Murray Leinster Megapack
The Martian Megapack
The Andre Norton Megapack
The Pinocchio Megapack
The H. Beam Piper Megapack
The Pulp Fiction Megapack
The Randall Garrett Megapack
The Second Randall Garrett Megapack
The Mack Reynolds Megapack
The First Science Fiction Megapack
The Second Science Fiction Megapack
The Third Science Fiction Megapack
The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack
The Fifth Science Fiction Megapack
The Sixth Science Fiction Megapack
The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack
The Robert Sheckley Megapack
The Steampunk Megapack
The Time Travel Megapack
The Vampire Megapack
The Werewolf Megapack
The Wizard of Oz Megapack
HORROR
The Achmed Abdullah Megapack
The E.F. Benson Megapack
The Second E.F. Benson Megapack
The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack
The Ghost Story Megapack
The Second Ghost Story Megapack
The Third Ghost Story Megapack
The Horror Megapack
The M.R. James Megapack
The Macabre Megapack
The Second Macabre Megapack
The Mummy Megapack
MYSTERY
The Achmed Abdullah Megapack
The Charlie Chan Megapack (not available in the U.S.)
The Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective Megapack
The Detective Megapack
The Father Brown Megapack
The Jacques Futrelle Megapack
The Dashiell Hammett Megapack
The Mystery Megapack
The Penny Parker Megapack
The Pulp Fiction Megapack
The Victorian Mystery Megapack
The Wilkie Collins Megapack
GENERAL INTEREST
The Adventure Megapack
The Baseball Megapack
The Cat Megapack
The Second Cat Megapack
The Christmas Megapack
The Second Christmas Megapack
The Classic American Short Stories Megapack
The Classic Humor Megapack
The Dog Megapack
The Military Megapack
WESTERNS
The B.M. Bower Megapack
The Max Brand Megapack
The Buffalo Bill Megapack
The Cowboy Megapack
The Zane Grey Megapack
The Western Megapack
The Second Western Megapack
The Wizard of Oz Megapack
YOUNG ADULT
The Boys’ Adventure Megapack
The Dan Carter, Cub Scout Megapack
The G.A. Henty Megapack
The Rover Boys Megapack
The Tom Corbett, Space Cadet Megapack
The Tom Swift Megapack
AUTHOR MEGAPACKS
The Achmed Abdullah Megapack
The Edward Bellamy Megapack
The B.M. Bower Megapack
The E.F. Benson Megapack
The Second E.F. Benson Megapack
The Max Brand Megapack
The First Reginald Bretnor Megapack
The Wilkie Collins Megapack
The Guy de Maupassant Megapack
The Philip K. Dick Megapack
The Jacques Futrelle Megapack
The Randall Garrett Megapack
The Anna Katharine Green Megapack
The Zane Grey Megapack
The Second Randall Garrett Megapack
The Dashiell Hammett Megapack
The M.R. James Megapack
The Murray Leinster Megapack
The Second Murray Leinster Megapack
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack
The Talbot Mundy Megapack
The Andre Norton Megapack
The H. Beam Piper Megapack
The Mack Reynolds Megapack
The Rafael Sabatini Megapack
The Saki Megapack
The Robert Sheckley Megapack
OTHER COLLECTIONS YOU MAY ENJOY
The Great Book of Wonder, by Lord Dunsany (it should have been called “The Lord Dunsany Megapack”)
The Wildside Book of Fantasy
The Wildside Book of Science Fiction
Yondering: The First Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories
To the Stars—And Beyond! The Second Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories
Once Upon a Future: The Third Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories
Whodunit?—The First Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories
More Whodunits—The Second Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories
X is for Xmas: Christmas Mysteries
ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE, by Mike Resnick
You wouldn’t think they’d be so dumb. Here they were, in the biggest spaceport in the country, with hundreds of holo cameras covering every inch of the place, and these three jerks actually think they’re going to get away with robbing the currency exchange.
Okay, so they got a couple of ceramic pistols past our security devices, and reassembled them in the men’s room, and all right, another one managed to sneak a couple of steak knives out of one of the restaurants, but hell, did they think we were just going to sit on our hands and let them waltz out with their loot?
I hadn’t seen much action during my four years in the space service, and after all those months of intensive training I’d almost been hoping for something like this. I’d been at OceanPort for three weeks, and was wondering why they even bothered with a live Security team, since their automated systems were so efficient that they discouraged anything worse than spitting on the floor.
Well, now I knew.
The men with the pistols were holding the crowd at bay, and the guy with the knife had grabbed a girl—not a woman, but a kid about twelve years old—and was holding the knife at her throat.
“Don’t move on them,” said the voice in my ear. “We’ve got to get the girl away from them unharmed, and we can’t have them shooting into the crowd.”
That was Captain Symmes. He was just spouting the routine and stating the platitudes: they’ve been identified, we can trace them wherever they go, they’re dead men walking, so don’t endanger any bystanders. If we don’t nail them here, we’ll nail them somewhere up the road. They have to eat, they have to sleep; we don’t. Whatever they think they’re going to escape in, we’ll sugar their gas, rupture their jets, fuck with their nuclear pile. (I kept waiting for him to say we’d also put tacks in their track shoes, but he didn’t.)
“Show yourselves, but don’t approach him,” said Symmes’ voice. “If they’re going to take a shot at someone, better us than the civilians.”
Well, it was better us if we remembered to put on our bulletproof longjohns. Most of us had, and the ones who hadn’t were too frightened to say so. An enraged Captain Symmes could be one hell of a lot more formidable than a ceramic bullet from a homemade pistol.
I stepped out from my station, and found myself about fifty yards from the trio. The crowd parted before them like the Red Sea before Moses, and they slowly made their way to the door. Then something caught my eye. It was a well-dressed middle-aged man, not fat or skinny but not especially well-built. While everyone else had moved away, he had simply turned his back and taken just a step or two.
Damn! I thought. It’s too bad you’re not one of us. You could just about reach the son of a bitch with the knife.
And even as the thought crossed my mind, the man spun around, chopped down on the knife-holder’s arm, and sent the weapon clattering to the floor. The little girl broke and ran toward the crowd, but I was watching the man who’d freed her. He didn’t have any weapons, and he sure didn’t handle his body like an athlete, but he was charging the two guys with the guns.
They turned and fired their weapons. He went down on one knee, his chest a bloody mess, then launched himself at the nearer one’s legs. The poor bastard never had a chance; he picked up four more bullets for his trouble.
Of course, the bad guys never had a chance, either. The second they concentrated on him, we all pulled our weapons and began firing—bullets, lasers, long-range tasers, you name it. All three were dead before they hit the floor.
I could see that Connie Neff was running over to the girl to make sure she was okay, so I raced up to the guy who’d taken all the bullets. He was in a bad way, but he was still breathing. Someone else had called for an ambulance. It arrived within two minutes, and they loaded him onto an airsled, shoved it in the back, and took off for Miami. I decided to ride with him. I mean, hell, he’d risked his life, probably lost it, to save that little girl. Someone who wasn’t a doctor ought to be there if he woke up.
OceanPort is eight miles off the Miami Coast, and the ambulance shuttle got us to the hospital in under a minute, though it took another forty seconds to set it down gently so as not to do any further damage to the patient.
I’d pulled his wallet and ID out and studied them. His name was Myron Seymour, he was 48 years old and—as far as I could tell—retired. Still had the serial number of the chip the military had embedded in him when he enlisted. The rest was equally unexceptional: normal height, normal weight, normal this, normal that.
He didn’t look much like a hero, but then, I’d never seen a real bonafide hero before, so I couldn’t actually say what they looked like.
“Good God,” said an orderly who’d come out to the ship to help move Seymour to the emergency room. “Him again!”
“He’s been here before?” I asked, surprised.
“Three times, maybe four,” was the reply. “I’ll swear the son of a bitch is trying to get himself killed.”
I was still puzzling over that remark when Seymour went into surgery. He came out, heavily sedated and in grave condition, three hours later.
“Is he going to make it?” I asked the same orderly, who was guiding the airsled into a recovery room.
“Not a chance,” he said.
“How much time has he got?”
He shrugged. “A day at the outside, probably less. Once we hook him up to all the machines we’ll have a better idea.”
“Any chance he’ll be able to talk?” I asked. “Or at least understand me if I talk to him?”
“You never know.”
“Mind if I stick around?”
He smiled. “You’re walking around with a badge, three lethal weapons that I can see, and probably a couple of more I can’t see. Who am I to tell you you can’t stay?”
I grabbed a sandwich in the hospital’s restaurant, called in to OceanPort to make sure I wasn’t needed right away, then went up to the recovery room. Each of the patients was partitioned off from the others, and it took me a couple of minutes to find Seymour. He was lying there, a dozen machines monitoring all his vital functions, five tubes dripping fluids of various colors and consistencies into arms, an oxygen tube up his nostrils, bandages everywhere, and hints of blood starting to seep through the dressings.
I figured it was a waste of time, that he was never going to wake up again, but I stuck around for another hour, just to pay my respects to the man who’d saved a little girl’s life. Then, as I was about to leave, his eyelids flickered and opened. His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear him, so I pulled my chair over to the bed.
“Welcome back,” I said gently.
“Is she here?” he whispered.
“The girl you saved?” I said. “No, she’s fine. She’s with her parents.”
“No, not her,” he said. He could barely move his head, but he tried to look around the room. “She’s got to be here this time!”
“Who’s got to be here?” I asked. “Who are you talking about?”
“Where is she?” he rasped. “This time I’m dying. I can tell.”
“You’re going to be fine,” I lied.
“Not unless she gets here pretty damned soon.” H
e tried to sit up, but was too weak and sprawled back on the bed. “Is the door unlocked?”
“There isn’t any door,” I said. “You’re in the recovery ward.”
He looked genuinely puzzled. “Then where is she?”
“Whoever it is, she probably doesn’t know you’ve been wounded,” I said.
“She knows,” he said with absolute certainty.
“Was she at the spaceport?”
He shook his head weakly. “She wasn’t even on the planet,” he said.
“You’re sure you don’t want me to ask at the desk?”
“You can’t. She doesn’t have a name.”
“Everyone’s got a name.”
He uttered a sigh of resignation. “If you say so.”
I was starting to feel sorry I’d stuck around. I wasn’t bringing him any comfort, and his answers weren’t making any sense.
“Can you tell me anything about her?” I asked, making one more attempt to be helpful before I packed it in and went home.
I thought he was going to answer, he certainly looked like he was trying to say something, but then he passed out. A couple of minutes later all the machines he was hooked up to started going haywire, and a couple of young doctors raced into the room.
“Is he dead?” I asked.
“Out!” ordered one of the doctors.
They bent over the bed, going to work on him, and I figured I’d only be in the way if I stayed there, so I walked out into the corridor. Before long they emerged from the room.
“Is he dead?” I asked again.
“Yeah,” answered one of them. “Were you a friend of his?”
I shook my head. “No. I just brought him here from the spaceport.”
The doctors walked down the corridor, going to wherever doctors go when they’ve lost a patient, and a couple of orderlies showed up with an airsled. One of them was the one I’d spoken to before.
“I told you he wouldn’t last a day,” he said. “Why do these guys think they can charge into a stream of bullets or lasers and come away in one piece?”
“These guys?” I repeated.
“Yeah. This is the second one this month. There was this guy, maybe three weeks back. He stumbles upon a bank robbery, and instead of calling the cops he just lowers his head and charges these four armed guys.” He exhaled deeply and shook his head. “Poor bastard never got within twenty yards of them.”