Authors: The Best of Murray Leinster (1976)
Murray Leinster (3 page)
Time steadied. All was normal again. He was in a cell. In a death cell. It was not the cell he had occupied before, but the deathhouse was the same. It was dawn, and a gray light came in the skylight high overhead. He wore prison garb - but not the same garments he had worn before. The stenciled numbers were different. He was in a different time track, but he was in a death cell.
There were clankings. Footsteps. Three guards and a trusty appeared before his cell. The trusty, twitching, carried a basin of water and safety razor and a pair of shears. He was to shave Rodney’s temples and slit his trouser legs for the convenience of those who would presently - today - take him through that green door and strap him in that horrible squat chair, in which after a little his body - already dead - would struggle convulsively against its doom …
He was paralyzed. He could not move. The door of his cell opened. They came in. He could not stir. He barely breathed. He was almost in a coma of pure, incredulous horror.
One of the guards handed him a note.
‘Professor Fellenden,’ he said curtly, ‘you know, the fella who fought so hard for you, got permission to send you this.’ Rodney breathed hoarsely. It was almost impossible to move. For an instant he seemed unconscious of the offered message. Then one of the guards stirred, and he snatched it. They would wait while he read it— They would wait that long. No longer— His eyes were hard to focus. Almost he did not try to read but only to delay, to gain precious seconds of life. But then he saw an equation, and he reacted with a stunned swiftness. And Fellenden had written down for him, in concise equations and precise, scientific phrasing, the theory of time travel with such absolute clarity that a trained brain could grasp it in a single reading. On the very brink of execution, a scientific mind could comprehend and use this, and escape death by the simple process of going back in time and - not committing murder. But nothing else would suffice. He must not commit murder!
Rodney shifted his eyes and stared unseeingly at the opposite wall. So that was it! He’d been wrong, not in a trivial detail of a murder, but in a basic fact. Execution was a consequence of murder, not of a fumbled clue. And Fellenden, who’d been a murderer himself, had to tell him so with pious urgency! Rodney raged coldly. Very well, he’d go back again! Not to a moment just after he’d murdered Hale, but to a time long before! Before Hale had found out anything for which he would need to be murdered.
The guards lifted him to his feet and bound his hands behind him. He was very calm, now. Ragingly calm. With the clarity of conception that Fellenden had made possible, he knew that it would be infinitely easy to escape. Even in the chair itself. With his brains—
He said scornfully:
‘Just for curiosity, I’d like to know what set the police on my
trail after the murder. Something trivial - but I’ve forgotten.’ A guard said awkwardly:
‘You laid down a chair to look like it’d been knocked over. You pulled it where you wanted it by one leg. The cops knew it wasn’t knocked over because a loose cushion didn’t fall out. An’
- your fingerprints were on the leg you pulled it by.’
Rodney shrugged. Proof enough. He’d have to go back beyond the murder and not commit it. Too bad! Professor Adner Hale had been a righteous old fool whom it had been a positive pleasure to bludgeon to death. Now he’d have to live in a third time track—
The guards led him out of his cell. He said harshly:
‘I’d like to tell Limpy something.’ When they stared at him, he said impatiendy: ‘Limpy Gossett! In the deathhouse, here! I was given a reprieve so it’d be a double execution.’
One of the guards said:
‘You didn’t get a reprieve, fella. An’ there ain’t any Limpy Gossett here. Never was. I never heard of ’im.’
The green door opened. Rodney was badly shaken, now. Still, he had only to go back in time. But he gave a precious half-second to a raging hatred of Fellenden, who had written piety in with science in his instructions for Rodney’s escape. ‘The important thing,’ said Fellenden fatuously, ‘was to be rid of all
ties
to the time track you wanted to leave. Everything in it had not to matter to you—’ Rodney despised him.
There was the squat and horrible chair. Rodney began to listen to his own breathing. To his own heartbeat. Step by step, they marched him to the chair. Slow down time! Slow it! Watch everything! Cut the things that anchor you to this time track! With that and Fellenden’s equations it’s easy - but Fellenden’s a pious fool!
Time did not slow. He realized it in a surge of panic as they strapped him in the chair. Then he knew why. Fellenden held him in this time track! Fellenden mattered! The fact that he had escaped to here! The equations and the explanation he’d given Rodney could not dismiss them as meaningless! He hated Fellenden with a terrible, despairing hatred. But he had to stop hating him and put all his mind on slowing time—
He fought to achieve it with all the strength of one of the four best brains in the country. He was trying when they drew back from the chair and waited, white-faced, for the switch to be thrown.
He sobbed, then. But he was still trying when—
Space enigma. In the May, 194s, issue of
Astounding Science Fiction
appeared a novelette by Leinster entitled
‘First ContactIt dealt in an entirely new way with the meeting in space of humankind and aliens with an advanced technological background. The story made a great impact at the time: it has appeared in several anthologies, and the problems connected with its filming led to the development of the Jenkins Systems mentioned in the Introduction to this book.
l
The Ethical Equations’ appeared in the very next issue of
ASF.
It covers a very similar situation - the first contact in deep space with an alien spaceship - but with a very different outcome.
It is very, very queer. The Ethical Equations, of course, link conduct with probability, and give mathematical proof that certain patterns of conduct increase the probability of certain kinds of coincidences. But nobody ever expected them to have any really practical effect. Elucidation of the laws of chance did not stop gambling, though it did make life insurance practical. The Ethical Equations weren’t expected to be even as useful as that. They were just theories, which seemed unlikely to affect anybody particularly. They were complicated, for one thing. They admitted that the ideal pattern of conduct for one man wasn’t the best for another. A politician, for example, has an entirely different code - and properly - than a Space Patrol man. But still, on at least one occasion—
The thing from outer space was fifteen hundred feet long, and upward of a hundred and fifty feet through at its middle section, and well over two hundred in a curious bulge like a fish’s head at its bow. There were odd, gill-like flaps just back of that bulge, too, and the whole
thing
looked extraordinarily like a monster, eyeless fish, floating in empty space out beyond Jupiter. But it had drifted in from somewhere beyond the sun’s gravitational field - its speed was too great for it to have a closed orbit - and it swung with a slow, inane, purposeless motion about some axis it had established within itself.
The little spacecruiser edged closer and closer. Freddy Holmes had been a pariah on the
Amina
all the way out from Mars, but he clenched his hands and forgot his misery and the ruin of his career in the excitement of looking at the thing.
‘No response to signals on any frequency, sir,’ said the communications officer, formally. ‘It is not radiating. It has a minute magnetic field. Its surface temperature is just about four degrees absolute.’
The commander of the
Amina
said, ‘HrrnnphP Then he said, ‘We’ll lay alongside.’ Then he looked at Freddy Holmes and stiffened. ‘No,’ he said,
‘1
believe you take over now, Mr. Holmes.’
Freddy started. He was in a very bad spot, but his excitement had made him oblivious of it for a moment. The undisguised hostility with which he was regarded by the skipper and the others on the bridge brought it back, however.
‘You take over, Mr. Holmes,’ repeated the skipper bitterly.
1
have orders to that effect. You originally detected this object and your uncle asked Headquarters that you be given full authority to investigate it. You have that authority. Now, what are you going to do with it?’
There was fury in his voice surpassing even the rasping dislike of the voyage out. He was a lieutenant commander and he had been instructed to take orders from a junior officer. That was bad enough. But this was humanity’s first contact with an extrasolar civilization, and Freddy Holmes, lieutenant junior grade, had been given charge of the matter by pure political pull.
Freddy swallowed.
‘I… I—’ He swallowed again and said miserably, ‘Sir, I’ve tried to explain that I dislike the present set-up as much as you possibly can. I… wish that you would let me put myself under your orders, sir, instead of—’
‘No!’ rasped the commander vengefully. ‘You are in command, Mr. Holmes. Your uncle put on political pressure to arrange it. My orders are to carry out your instructions, not to wet-nurse you if the job is too big for you to handle. This is in your lap! Will you issue orders?’
Freddy stiffened.
‘Very well, sir. It’s plainly a ship and apparently a derelict. No crew would come in without using a drive, or allow their ship to swing about aimlessly. You will maintain your present position with relation to it. I’ll take a spaceboat and a volunteer, if you will find me one, and look it over.’
He turned and left the bridge. Two minutes later he was struggling into a spacesuit when Lieutenant Bridges - also junior grade - came briskly into the spacesuit locker and observed:
‘I’ve permission to go with you, Mr. Holmes.’ He began to get into another spacesuit. As he pulled it up over his chest he added blithely: ‘I’d say this was worth the price of admission!’
Freddy did not answer. Three minutes later the little spaceboat pulled out from the side of the cruiser. Designed for expeditionary work and tool-carrying rather than as an escapecraft, it was not inclosed. It would carry men in spacesuits, with their tools and weapons, and they could breathe from its tanks instead of from their suits, and use its power and so conserve their own. But it was a strange feeling to sit within its spidery outline and see the great blank sides of the strange object draw near. When the spaceboat actually touched the vast metal wall it seemed impossible, like the approach to some sorcerer’s castle across a monstrous moat of stars.
It was real enough, though. The felted rollers touched, and Bridges grunted in satisfaction.
‘Magnetic. We can anchor to it. Now what?’
‘We hunt for an entrance port,’ said Freddy curtly. He added: ‘Those openings that look like gills are the drive tubes.
Their drive’s in front instead of the rear. Apparently they don’t use gyros for steering.’
The tiny craft clung to the giant’s skin, like a fly on a stranded whale. It moved slowly to the top of the rounded body, and over it, and down on the other side. Presendy the cruiser came in sight again as it came up the near side once more.
‘Nary a port, sir,’ said Bridges blithely. ‘Do we cut our way in?’
(
Hm-m-m/ said Freddy slowly. Te have our drive in the rear, and our control room in front. So we take on supplies amidships, and that’s where we looked. But this ship is driven from the front. Its control room might be amidships. If so, it might load at the stem. Let’s see.’
The litde craft crawled to the stem of the monster.
‘There!’ said Freddy.
It was not like an entrance port on any vessel in the solar system. It slid aside, without hinges. There was an inner door, but it opened just as readily. There was no rush of air, and it was hard to tell if it was intended as an air lock or not.
‘Air’s gone,’ said Freddy. ‘It’s a derelict, all right. You might bring a blaster, but what we’ll mostly need is light, I think.’
The magnetic anchors took hold. The metal grip shoes of the spacesuits made loud noises inside the suits as the two of them pushed their way into the interior of the ship. The spacecruiser had been able to watch them, until now. Now they were gone.
The giant, enigmatic object which was so much like a blind fish in empty space floated on. It swung aimlessly about some inner axis. The thin sunlight out here beyond Jupiter, smote upon it harshly. It seemed to hang motionless in mid-space against an all-surrounding background of distant and unwinking stars. The trim Space Patrol ship hung alertly a mile and a half away. Nothing seemed to happen at all.
Freddy was rather pale when he went back to the bridge. The pressure mark on his forehead from the spacesuit helmet was still visible, and he rubbed at it abstractedly. The skipper regarded him with a sort of envious bitterness. After all, any human would envy any other who had set foot in an alien spaceship. Lieutenant Bridges followed him. For an instant there were no words. Then Bridges saluted briskly:
^Reporting back on board, sir, and returning to watch duty after permitted volunteer activity.’
The skipper touched his hat sourly. Bridges departed with crisp precision. The skipper regarded Freddy with the helpless fury of a senior officer who has been ordered to prove a junior officer a fool, and who has seen the assignment blow up in his face and that of the superior officers who ordered it. It was an enraging situation. Freddy Holmes, newly commissioned and assigned to the detector station on Luna which keeps track of asteroids and meteor streams, had discovered a small object coming in over Neptune. Its speed was too high for it to be a regular member of the solar system, so he’d reported it as a visitor and suggested immediate examination. But junior officers are not supposed to make discoveries. It violates tradition, which is a sort of Ethical Equation in the Space Patrol. So Freddy was slapped down for his presumption. And he slapped back, on account of the Ethical Equations’ bearing upon scientific discoveries. The first known object to come from beyond the stars ought to be examined. Definitely. So, most unprofessionally for a Space Patrol junior, Freddy raised a stink.