The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack Page 7

  Alath took one of the fact-books from the Captain. “With your permission,” he said, and riffled the pages.

  “Pity we can’t invade,” he muttered, just loud enough for the rest of the crew to hear, “Look at these women! Luss, you were quite right—the place is biologically favorable!”

  “Let me see…” Luss bent to look, and emitted a sharp whistle at the pictures on the pulp-wood stuff. “I’d give a sizable fraction of my pay,” he said, “to be able to inspect the women of this planet!”

  “I wouldn’t stop at inspecting,” Ketil jeered, relieved at the change in conversation. But Luss, with a scientist’s preoccupation, was still puzzling over the painted likenesses. “They are quite—quite emphatically super-mammals,” he remarked pedantically, “I shall regret it if we cannot explore this planet at greater length.”

  “If you’ve quite finished,” Fordill reproached, and Luss fell into an embarrassed silence, handing the booklet back to the Captain.

  “I was about to state the reason,” Fordill said dully, “why an invasion is impractical.” He extended three or four more booklets, each one as large as two hands, and about a finger’s thickness. “Look at these, Captain.”

  Rudan took the pulp-wood artifacts and his lips pursed in a soundless whistle. His eyebrows went up, then he slid his tongue over his lips. “All right, Alath,” he said wearily, “You have the last laugh, it seems. Here’s your nonhuman race.”

  Luss leaned over Alath’s shoulder, and the others, big-eyed, crowded around. The painting portrayed, in the smeared flat style of a primitives race, a monster; four-armed, scaly, equipped with an unfamiliar weapon. A bosomy girl scantily-clad, lolled against the monster’s sheltering bulk. Alath’s breath was a sibilant whistle. “Impossible!” he murmured.

  “Evidently, they have non-human allies,” Luss murmured.

  “We’d be insane to invade a planet like this!” the Captain said, and the sound of defeat was already in his voice, “Look at this!” He held out the second booklet. It portrayed a battle in deep space on the outermost sheet. Ships of a pattern the R’rin had never seen battled with ships of a design slightly more conventional. In fact, allowing for primitive lack of artistic skill, they might have been R’rin ships. Rudan nodded.

  “Look at these, Ketil,” he said. “They’ve been invaded before. They have ships—better than ours; certainly they work on an entirely new principle. If they were conventionally fuelled by any known means, that design simply wouldn’t fly space. They’re—they’re—why, nothing like that would ever get out of atmosphere unless it was founded on some principle so far in advance of ours that we can’t even comprehend it! And look at the weapons they’re using…” He flipped to an inside page, of thinner, more crumbly pulp-fabric. “It’s some kind of disintegrator—that ship is breaking up in space. And the very principle of disintegration has baffled our scientists for more Galactic Aeons than I like to think about!”

  * * * *

  The R’rin crew stood stunned before the possibilities.

  “We can’t invade,” Rudan sighed at last, “not possibly. Why, these people must be the center of a great Empire! We knew it must come some day—another great civilization in space—but I wish I weren’t the one to find it!”

  Luss said wistfully, eying the painted woman, “Shouldn’t we try to make contact, Captain? Think of the advancement to science…”

  “No,” snapped Rudan, “We don’t dare! You know the Law as well as I do—when we meet a civilization technologically better than ours, we run! We can’t risk meeting a non-man race on the terms of having attacked or invaded their protectorates! If these people have non-human allies, we leave them alone! Besides—could we stand up against disintegrators?”

  Ketil was frowning over the picture. “Impossible,” he murmured again. Disintegrators! He found it incredible. Alath heard him, gave him a secret look, then spoke.

  “Captain, in respect for your Truth, I have an idea.” He pointed to the booklet, then, crossing the lounge, picked up a fact-micro from the ship’s library and slipped it into the enlarger which projected it on the wall. It was one of the Experimental Institute’s publications, and contained the familiar warning, in huge, green, danger-sign letters:

  WARNING! Material contained herein is not Factual. By special permission, theoretical material not yet proven is included as a mental recreation and exercise. Not to be sold to Minors!

  “Well?” Rudan asked roughly.

  “Captain, Ketil said that the civilization appeared low grade, with a very early technology. Isn’t it possible that these fact-accumulators might be non-factual?”

  Rudan barely considered it. “If it was in semantic symbols, I’d say possible. But these are pictures. Pictures are as infallible as Humanity, Alath. You can’t draw a picture of something that doesn’t exist. Why, my boy, what would you copy from?”

  “From a…” Alath flushed and said in a low voice, “from an aberrant dream?”

  The Captain chuckled. “My word, but that’s ingenious,” he said, in a tone that deepened Alath’s flush and made Ketil, who had admired Alath’s theory, squirm. “You think Fordill picked up a bunch of psychologist’s casebooks? No—no, those aren’t fantasies. Look at the details on the nonhuman. Look at the mechanical details on the spaceships.”

  Alath put down the micro, but persisted, “The Experimental Institute has a non-factual theory, that there might be a race of telepaths…”

  “So?” Rudan was impatient now.

  “So, sir, they might not consider it a—a perversion to speak an un-Truth, because they could read one another’s minds. So they would know when they were telling the truth and when they weren’t, and…” Alath became conscious of Rudan’s cold stare and finished with flustered desperation, “Un-Truth might be a sort of recreation; no one would take it seriously…”

  The atmosphere in the common lounge was definitely stiffer, and even Luss edged a step or two away from Alath.

  “Captain…” Alath said desperately.

  Then, to everybody’s relief, Rudan chuckled. “Alath, you’re young,” he said, then added with definite reproof, “The Experimental Institute comes dangerously near to circulating perverted smut, at times. I suggest that in future, you confine your studies to more orthodox Truthful sources, until you are old enough to judge more carefully.”

  Alath bit his lip, and insisted.

  “Indulge me as a psychologist,” he said. “Luss remarked that due to the high oxygen content of the atmosphere, he would theorize a euphoric civilization, with a very low and decadent morality. Perhaps the planet is aberrant?”

  “A whole planet of perverts? Impossible!” Rudan snorted, half-way between anger and laughter. “There’s never been such a thing in the Galaxy! If they didn’t respect Truth, they couldn’t be an intelligent race!—They’d be a race of beasts! And now, if you don’t mind—” and he sounded really angry now—“we’ll get off such disgusting topics!”

  Crushed, but carefully not looking at the Captain, Alath put the micro away. But Ketil, mentally reviewing his trip in the little scouting pickup, could not accept this. He lingered. “Captain,” he said urgently, “Listen to me. I’m sure there weren’t any spaceports! There can’t be any nonhuman races! Ask Luss! It’s—it’s biologically impossible!”

  But Luss would not meet Ketil’s imploring glance; and Rudan’s eyes were cold and small in his face. “Your words, Ketil, reflect on my infallibility!’ the Captain rasped, “In view of the short-handedness of the ship, and of the fleet in general, I will overlook them—until we return to R’rin! Then I shall hold you to account for them!” He turned on his heel, ordering as he went, “Plot a course to rejoin the fleet and make for R’rin!”

  Ketil let his knees go limp and sank into a chair. Alath, about to leave the lounge for his quarters, bent for an instant and advised in a murmur, “You’d better do what he said…” and Ketil, trembling with reaction and near to hysteria, could not escape the look
of mingled triumph and commiseration in Alath’s eyes. Then he felt Alath’s friendly arm around his shoulders, and heard the young psychologist’s smooth voice, raised to recall Rudan.

  “Captain, I have authority to relieve a man from duty,” he said gently. “Send some one else to plot the course. I’ve been aboard ship with Ketil for several revolutions while you were out on scout, and I’m convinced that he is mildly neurotic and needs rest and treatment, or—” his nails bit sharply into Ketil’s flesh and the words were a cue and a rebuke—“or he’ll end up where the-former-Narth is!”

  “Fordill, take over Ketil’s duty till further notice,” Rudan said, not paying much attention. “Ketil, confined to cabin at Alath’s discretion,” and he went out of the lounge.

  Supported by Alath’s arm, Ketil reeled toward his bunk-cubby. Down in his beast-cell at the end of the corridor, Narth raised a shrill howl of despair.

  Which one would finish the voyage in that cell with Narth? Himself or Rudan? They couldn’t both be right. Humanity was infallible…either Rudan or himself was infallible… Ketil, less flexible than the cynical young Alath, shuddered with the first premonitory tremors of incipient insanity, knowing that for the rest of his life he would be concealing, concealing, hiding his disbelief in someone’s infallibility, including his own…or end up in a cell like Narth’s…

  He collapsed, shuddering, into his bunk. The great ship of the R’rin trembled noiselessly, with a great shake and shudder of drive units, and turned her back on invincible Earth.

  * * * *

  Two hundred miles below, a news dealer in Denver, checking his stock at the end of a busy day, spewed a flood of indecorous language at the so-and-sos who’d steal magazines right off a rack so’s a body couldn’t make a decent living. “Must be teen-age boys,” he grumbled, “darn juvenile delinquents! Always stealing the same stuff! Magazines with nekkid women in ’em, and that crazy science-fiction junk!”

  SARGASSO OF LOST STARSHIPS, by Poul Anderson

  1

  Basil Donovan was drunk again.

  He sat near the open door of the Golden Planet, boots on the table, chair tilted back, one arm resting on the broad shoulder of Wocha, who sprawled on the floor beside him, the other hand clutching a tankard of ale. The tunic was open above his stained gray shirt, the battered cap was askew on his close-cropped blond hair, and his insignia—the stars of a captain and the silver leaves of an earl on Ansa—were tarnished. There was a deepening flush over his pale gaunt cheeks, and his eyes smoldered with an old rage.

  Looking out across the cobbled street, he could see one of the tall, half-timbered houses of Lanstead. It had somehow survived the space bombardment, though its neighbors were rubble, but the tile roof was clumsily patched and there was oiled paper across the broken plastic of the windows. An anachronism, looming over the great bulldozer which was clearing the wreckage next door. The workmen there were mostly Ansans, big men in ragged clothes, but a well-dressed Terran was bossing the job. Donovan cursed wearily and lifted his tankard again.

  The long, smoky-raftered taproom was full—stolid burghers and peasants of Lanstead, discharged spacemen still in their worn uniforms, a couple of tailed greenies from the neighbor planet Shalmu. Talk was low and spiritless, and the smoke which drifted from pipes and cigarettes was bitter, cheap tobacco and dried bark. The smell of defeat was thick in the tavern.

  “May I sit here, sir? The other places are full.”

  Donovan glanced up. It was a young fellow, peasant written over his sunburned face in spite of the gray uniform and the empty sleeve. Olman—yes, Sam Olman, whose family had been under Donovan fief these two hundred years.

  “Sure, make yourself at home.”

  “Thank you, sir. I came in to get some supplies, thought I’d have a beer too. But you can’t get anything these days. Not to be had.”

  Sam’s face looked vaguely hopeful as he eyed the noble. “We do need a gas engine bad, sir, for the tractor. Now that the central powercaster is gone, we got to have our own engines. I don’t want to presume, sir, but—”

  Donovan lifted one corner of his mouth la a tired smile. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If I could get one machine for the whole community I’d be satisfied. Can’t be done. We’re trying to start a small factory of our own up at the manor, but it’s slow work.”

  “I’m sure if anyone can do anything, it’s you, sir.”

  Donovan looked quizzically at the open countenance across the table.

  “Sam,” he asked, “why do you people keep turning to the Family? We led you, and it was to defeat. Why do you want anything more to do with nobles? We’re not even that, any longer. We’ve been stripped of our titles. We’re just plain citizens of the Empire now like you, and the new rulers are Terran. Why do you still think of us as your leaders?”

  “But you are, sir! You’ve always been. It wasn’t the king’s fault, or his men’s, that Terra had so much more’n we did. We gave ’em a fight they won’t forget in a hurry!”

  “You were in my squadron, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. CPO on the Ansa Lancer, I was with you at the Battle of Luga.” The deep-set eyes glowed. “We hit ’em there, didn’t we, sir?”

  “So we did.” Donovan couldn’t suppress the sudden fierce memory. Outnumbered, outgunned, half its ships shot to pieces and half the crews down with Sirius fever, the Royal Lansteaders had still made naval history and sent the Imperial Fleet kiyoodling back to Sol. Naval historians would be scratching their heads over that battle for the next five centuries. Before God, they’d fought!

  He began to sing the old war-song, softly at first, louder as Sam joined him—

  Comrades, hear the battle tiding,

  hear the ships that rise and yell

  faring outward, standard riding—

  Kick the Terrans back to hell!

  The others were listening, men raised weary heads, an old light burned in their eyes and tankards clashed together. They stood up to roar out the chorus till the walls shook.

  Lift your glasses high,

  kiss the girls good-bye,

  (Live well; my friend, live well, live you well)

  for we’re riding,

  for we’re riding,

  for we’re riding out to Terran sky! Terran sky! Terran sky!

  We have shaken loose our thunder

  where the planets have their way,

  and the starry deeps of wonder

  saw the Impies in dismay.

  Lift your glasses high,

  kiss the girls good-bye—

  The workmen in the street heard it and stopped where they were. Some began to sing. The Imperial superintendent yelled, and an Ansan turned to flash him a wolfish grin. A squad of blue-uniformed Solarian marines coming toward the inn went on the double.

  Oh, the Emp’ror sent his battle

  ships against us in a mass,

  but we shook them like a rattle

  and we crammed them—

  “Hi, there! Stop that!”

  The song died, slowly and stubbornly, the men stood where they were and hands clenched into hard-knuckled fists. Someone shouted an obscenity.

  The Terran sergeant was very young, and he felt unsure before those steady, hating eyes. He lifted his voice all the louder: “That will be enough of that. Any more and I’ll run you all in for lèse majesté. Haven’t you drunken bums anything better to do than sit around swilling beer?”

  A big Ansan smith laughed with calculated raucousness.

  The sergeant looked around, trying to ignore him. “I’m here for Captain Donovan—Earl Basil, if you prefer. They said he’d be here. I’ve got an Imperial summons for him.”

  The noble stretched out a hand. “This is he. Let’s have that paper.”

  “It’s just the formal order,” said the sergeant. “You’re to come at once.”

  “Commoners,” said Donovan mildly, “address me as ‘sir.’”

  “You’re a commoner with the rest of ’em now
.” The sergeant’s voice wavered just a little.

  “I really must demand a little respect,” said Donovan with drunken precision. There was an unholy gleam in his eyes. “It’s a mere formality, I know, but after all my family can trace itself farther back than the Empire, whereas you couldn’t name your father.”

  Sam Olman snickered.

  “Well, sir—” The sergeant tried elaborate sarcasm. “If you, sir, will please be so good as to pick your high-bred tail off that chair, sir, I’m sure the Imperium would be mostly deeply grateful to you, sir.”

  “I’ll have to do without its gratitude, I’m afraid.” Donovan folded the summons without looking at it and put it in his tunic pocket. “But thanks for the paper. I’ll keep it in my bathroom.”

  “You’re under arrest!”

  Donovan stood slowly up, unfolding his sheer two meters of slender, wiry height. “All right, Wocha,” he said. “Let’s show them that Ansa hasn’t surrendered yet.”

  He threw the tankard into the sergeant’s face, followed it with the table against the two marines beside him, and vaulted over the sudden ruckus to drive a fist into the jaw of the man beyond.

  Wocha rose and his booming cry trembled in the walls. He’d been a slave of Donovan’s since he was a cub and the man a child, and if someone had liberated him he wouldn’t have known what to do. As batman and irregular groundtrooper he’d followed his master to the wars, and the prospect of new skull-breaking lit his eyes with glee.

  For an instant there was tableau, Terrans and Ansans rigid, staring at the monster which suddenly stood behind the earl. The natives of Donarr have the not uncommon centauroid form, but their bodies are more like that of a rhinoceros than of a horse, hairless and slaty blue and enormously massive. The gorilla-armed torso ended in a round, muzzled, ape-like face, long-eared, heavy-jawed, with canine tusks hanging over the great gash of a mouth. A chair splintered under his feet, and he grinned.

  “Paraguns—” cried the sergeant.

  All hell let out for noon. Some of the customers huddled back into the corners, but the rest smashed the ends off bottles and threw themselves against the Terrans. Sam Olman’s remaining arm yanked a marine to him and bashed his face against the wall. Donovan’s fist traveled a jolting arc to the nearest belly and he snatched a rifle loose and crunched it against the man’s jaw. A marine seized him from behind, he twisted in the grip and kicked savagely, whirled around and drove the rifle butt into the larynx.