The Early Pohl (18 page)

The end was there, for it was ringed by robot ships. It screamed up in a short zoom that broke as it nosed over and plunged for the ground, its jets blazing behind it. It was heading for one of the towers of the Others, the central tower in which lay great and mysterious mechanisms—for what purpose they operated, I did not know.

I thought I saw two tiny black figures, jetting white light of their own, flung away from the diving ship in mid-air.

Then it struck. A volcano of energy flared up from the stricken tower, dimming the light of the risen sun for a second of ultimate violence. As it settled, smaller lights of explosions puffed up all about, one at a time, then by dozens. The robot ships were crashing, plunging into the ground as if their automatic pilots had lost control!

I darted a glance below us, where we were coming down with too much speed in a plaza on the outskirts of the city of the Others. The ground was rushing up at us, too fast. I had a quick, insane glimpse of figures—figures that were not men, but the Others—huddled on the ground in distorted attitudes all over the square. Strangely, they made no attempt to rise, or to escape the down-plunging hulk we were in.

Abruptly, a group of jets on one side of our compartment spurted wildly, then were dead. The cubicle lurched wildly, then pinwheeled, the jets no longer keeping us up but spinning us end over end as we dropped to the closed ground. There was a splintering sound of cataclysm. My head struck against a wall and then there was blackness. We had come to earth.

3
Awakening in Hell

Collard was standing over me when I woke up, his eyes filled with that familiar mixture of anxiety and mistrust. His crown was not on his head, but a blaster was jammed negligently in his belt and his right hand was never far from the butt of it.

He said, "You're not hurt. You can thank the Others for that. Five of the girls were killed, but it takes a lot to bother a man of the Four and the Four. Just take a minute and rest up. I want to talk to you."

I felt like I'd been beaten with clubs, but I pushed myself up and looked around. What I saw was fantastic—absurd—frightful! All about there lay corpses, the bodies of the Others. They were dead, but without a mark on them, as though they had perished in some weird pandemic. I could not understand.

I looked at Collard. "You've killed them," I said, but it was not an accusation, for I simply could not believe that it had happened. I had never seen a dead master before; I had not known that they could die.

He shook his head, "No," he said cryptically. "The Others are still alive."

"Alive?" I gasped. "But—"

"Their bodies are dead," he said carefully. "At least, they're dead as any machine is dead, when the power is turned off. The Others themselves—their minds and egos—are . . . Well, look." He held out one hand to me, showed me a capsule of coppery metal. "This," he said solemnly, "is what you are so devoted to. This is one of the masters."

I reached up automatically, touched it. It was curiously chill, as though it had been in outer space for weeks. I fondled it, looked at it. . . . Then what Collard had said penetrated. "You fool," I said. "What are you—" He held up a hand, took back the coppery capsule. "I'm not lying," he sighed, "but I didn't expect you to believe me. Well, let me tell you anyhow. The Others were robots. Where they came from, how they came into being, perhaps they could tell you, though I doubt it. Certainly, I can't. But all they were was clever machines—oh, made of organic materials, for the most part, yes. But a machine can be organic in composition. The robots were activated from without, supplied with energy from the central sending station that we crashed into and annihilated. When the power stopped—they stopped.

"They are unharmed. That is why we are removing these capsules—which contain the mind of the robot—from their bodies. You see, the power might be turned on by some of those who, like you, are still under the domination of the Others. We can't chance that."

I looked around, bewildered. For the first time I saw that the sending tower was still blazing furiously, sending up a tower of unbelievably thick white smoke. Other, lesser pyres all around marked where the robot ships had crashed. I looked back at Collard.

He was smiling at me. I wondered at his smile, open and sincere, warm. I wondered—until I understood.

I stood up, "You had me going," I admitted. "I understand now. All right. You killed these Others, and you dare not admit it to me. You are a rebel—a heretic—a renegade. You must be punished, and it seems that I am the only one who can do it. Collard," I said, "draw your gun. I'm going to kill you."

His smile faded, but he made no move for his gun. He looked at me for a long second. Then, just as I was about to spring for him, he said quietly, "Take him."

I had been a fool! Two pairs of arms grabbed me from behind, and pinioned me. I struggled, but I was weak and there were twice as many of them. I fought them all the way, but they brought me here, to this room. And there they left me.

Collard came back in a while ago to tell me that I had five minutes. He has been reading what I have written—I let him, because it does not matter. I have given up hope of getting this to those it should reach, even as I have given up hope of dying. Collard was too smart for me; he left his blaster outside when he came in with another like him. Otherwise I would have died at the muzzle of his blaster—and I might have taken him with me.

Collard has been talking to me as he reads. He says I am deliberately deceiving myself, omitting important things. He says that I should not refer to the machine he is going to use on me as a torture machine. He says that the Others used the same machine on me during the hundred days of training, repeatedly; that they indoctrinated me with it, very thoroughly, and that all he is going to do is to cancel out what they impressed on my mind.

That may be true. But I do not want it canceled out; I do not want to become a traitor to the Others. What Collard has said may be true, in part; it may be that the Others were robots, the mechanical descendants of some organic race that once lived on this green planet and disappeared without a trace. I don't know; it doesn't matter. The Others were—the Others. I swore to obey them and to serve them.

I do not want to be forced to change that.

They must be nearly ready for me. Almost all of those of the Four and the Four who were still loyal to the masters have been through the mind-molding machine already. They have been warped as Collard is warped, have degenerated to mere humans again, though with all the physical powers and mental keenness that the Others gave them still. But their emotions and their outlook have become human.

That was how it began. I think the Others could have prevented it, if they had thought ahead far enough, and cared enough. The mind is an elastic thing, and tends to return to its original shape. After a time on the green planet, even the most devoted of the Four and the Four began to question, to change back to humanity.

Yes, even I might have done so, in time. For it is true that the Others did not plan well what to do with us after we arrived; all that concerned them was getting us here, with the girls.

Collard claimed an absurd thing. He said that this planet of the Others is dying out, that it will soon be uninhabitable even for them. He said that that is why the Others have seventy-seven representatives on Earth. That, he said, is why the maidens of the Four and the Four were sent—to provide all information necessary. It may be, as I told him, true. And if so it does not matter, for the Others are beyond our questioning.

It might have been well if the three Others there in that great tomb-like structure where the maidens waited, somnolent, had been unable to send warning. All that Collard and his cohorts wanted was the girls themselves. Some insane idea they had of finding a hidden spot on this green planet, where they could live and have children and, after the Others had left for Earth, take over the green planet. The Others could have spared the maidens—they were important, but not vital—and the aerial duel over the city, with its frightful consequences, need never have been.

But it is too late to think of that.

Collard is getting impatient. If the mind operation is successful on me—if I become a traitor—he will want me to go back to Earth with him, to seek out the radio-power station that feeds the Others there and destroy it.

If the mind machine fails he will go alone.

I hope it fails.

Collard is opening the door, beckoning to me. The shadow of the machine is visible, flickering only slightly in the light of the flames that are finally beginning to die down. It is waiting for me, and I must go.

I pray that it will kill me—

But I have become sure that it won't.

I have just added up the prices I was paid for all the stories (and the one sf poem) included up to this point in this book. It comes in the aggregate to $283.50. Money was worth more a generation ago, but not
that
much more. The principal reason I wrote so much and earned so little from sf was that I was writing mostly for myself, at the rates I could afford to pay.

Partly that was because of lack of confidence. Partly it was lack of money. A terrible disadvantage in working cheap is that it condemns you to go on working cheap. You can't afford to take chances, even if they might pay off better. While I was my own editor I didn't pay much. But I paid fast, and I paid sure.

When Al Norton took over my magazines it was no longer quite as fast, because he had the quaint notion that he should read my stories before he bought them and that usually took a week or two. And, at least in my mind, it wasn't as sure. I don't remember Al ever rejecting a science-fiction story of mine. But it could have happened. And I reasoned that as long as I had to go back to being a civilian I might as well try a few other markets.

So I cast around for a new outlet. I found one in
Planet Stories,
which published
Conspiracy on Callisto
in its Winter 1943 issue.

Conspiracy on Callisto

JAMES MacCREIGH

I

Duane's hand flicked to his waist and hung there, poised. His dis-gun remained undrawn.

The tall, white-haired man—Stevens—smiled.

"You're right, Duane," he said. "I could blast you, too. Nobody would win that way, so let's leave the guns where they are."

The muscles twitched in Peter Duane's cheeks, but his voice, when it came, was controlled. "Don't think we're going to let this go," he said. "We'll take it up with Andrias tonight. We'll see whether you can cut me out!"

The white-haired man's smile faded. He stepped forward, one hand bracing him against the thrust of the rocket engines underneath, holding to the guide rail at the side of the ship's corridor.

He said, "Duane, Andrias is your boss, not mine. I'm a free lance; I work for myself. When we land on Callisto tonight I'll be with you when you turn our—shall I say, our
cargo?
—over to him. And I'll collect my fair share of the proceeds. That's as far as it goes. I take no orders from him."

A heavy-set man in blue appeared at the end of the connecting corridor. He was moving fast, but stopped short when he saw the two men.

"Hey!" he said. "Change of course—get to your cabins." He seemed about to walk up to them, then reconsidered and hurried off. Neither man paid any attention.

Duane said, "Do I have to kill you?" It was only a question as he asked it, without threatening.

A muted alarm bell sounded through the P.A. speakers, signaling a one-minute warning. The white-haired man cocked his eyebrow.

"Not at all," he said. He took the measure of his slim, red-headed opponent. Taller, heavier, older, he was still no more uncompromisingly belligerent than Duane, standing there. "Not at all," he repeated. "Just take your ten thousand and let it go at that. Don't make trouble. Leave Andrias out of our private argument."

"Damn you!" Duane flared. "I was promised fifty thousand. I need that money. Do you think—"

"Forget what I think," Stevens said, his voice clipped and angry. "I don't care about fairness, Duane, except to myself. I've done all the work on this—I've supplied the goods. My price is set, a hundred thousand Earth dollars. What Andrias promised you is no concern of mine. The fact is that, after I've taken my share, there's only ten thousand left. That's all you get!"

Duane stared at him a long second, then nodded abruptly. "I was right the first time," he said. "I'll
have
to kill you!"

Already his hand was streaking toward the grip of his dis-gun, touching it, drawing it forth. But the white-haired man was faster. His arms swept up and pinioned Duane, holding him impotent.

"Don't be a fool," he grated. "Duane—"

The P.A. speaker rattled, blared something unintelligible. Neither man heard it. Duane lunged forward into the taller man's grip, sliding down to the floor. The white-haired man grappled furiously to keep his hold on Peter's gun arm, but Peter was slipping away. Belatedly, Stevens went for his own gun.

He was too late. Duane's was out and leveled at him.

"
Now
will you listen to reason?" Duane panted. But he halted, and the muzzle of his weapon wavered. The floor swooped and surged beneath him as the thrust of the mighty jets was cut off. Suddenly there was no gravity. The two men, locked together, floated weightlessly out to the center of the corridor.

"Course change!" gasped white-haired Stevens. "Good God!"

The ship had reached the midpoint of its flight. The bells had sounded, warning every soul on it to take shelter, to strap themselves in their pressure bunks against the deadly stress of acceleration as the ship reversed itself and began to slow its headlong plunge into Callisto. But the two men had not heeded.

The small steering rockets flashed briefly. The men were thrust bruisingly against the side of the corridor as the rocket spun lazily on its axis. The side jets flared once more to halt the spin, when the one-eighty turn was completed, and the men were battered against the opposite wall, still weightless, still clinging to each other, still struggling.