Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Read online

  The machine hung in silence scant feet above the smooth, steel-hard floor, just as the miniature suns hung above the pillars in the great hall at which I had banqueted. In size it was perhaps a third the length and half the width of my space-lugger; in shape it resembled an old-fashioned electro-calculator. There were rows upon rows of grids and relays.

  “The vacuum grids, upon which the thought-impulses are recorded, and the relays, which control their direction, selection, and intensity,” Jjaro read my mind.

  I stared at transformers and condensers, intricate rectifiers and trunk-circuits of a complexity far beyond my understanding.

  “With this great mechanism,” Jjaro was saying, “do we of Qyylao maintain the illusion of a bleak, dead planet to all would-be intruders . . . it governs the admittance of those we might wish among us, the exclusion of those who would pollute our civilization.” Again, she spoke as though parroting her explanation.

  “The recorded thought-impulses, I suppose, are of a specific pattern which establish a mental set of depression, insecurity and impotence,” I said. “Is that what you would tell me, Jjaro?”

  “Yes,” she answered as though in a hypnotic trance, “A mental set, established through telehypnosis, carried to—”

  “Jetwash!” I snapped at her. “Come out of it baby, and show me the master switch on this pile of junk. Six to five you aren’t even real! Want me to tell you what’s recorded on those grids? Dreams, baby, just dreams!”

  She didn’t have to show me the master switch, because I was at least smart enough to have picked out the control panel on the thing. Faster than I could think what I was doing, because I knew I’d be sunk if I let the thought even form completely in my brain, I snapped over the biggest lever on the panel, and knew I had broken the main drive-circuits.

  JJORA was gone, all right. And I was able to see to the sides and almost to the end of the huge place. I knew without thinking about it how the city above me looked.

  I knew everything on Qyylao was just as it had been when I put on my helmet a couple of hours before.

  Because lining the sides of the great amphitheater were oblong coffins of still-uncorroded metal, stacked to the roof, packed end-to-end in endless tiers easily fifty deep.

  There were probably half a million.

  I blew one open with a cut-back blast of my ray-pistol. And in it was a man who could have been any one of the men I had seen in the sporting arenas, or at the banquet table, or with the women in the shaded alcoves.

  I didn’t need to open any more.

  And when the low, ghostly moaning began to fill the great place, I knew I was right.

  Once, the people of Qyylao had attained the height of their civilisation—had attained perfection, if you want to call it that. They had reached the point where you either appreciate what you’ve got and do something with it, or take a free ride on what those who have gone before you have provided.

  They were taking the ride.

  They had made their machine for effortless dreaming’—for dreaming through untold millennia of every lust, every physical comfort, every desire their minds could imagine—and then had settled on their backs for a million-year snooze while the machine gave out with what they wanted, Dreams.

  The waste of Qyylao was the thing that was reality.

  While my lead-lined helmet had been off, the amplified thought-recordings had taken me over as it had those in the coffins. Part of my mind had been made to dream, and I had been drawn into their dreams—and not denied, because I was something new—a new dream-thing for them to play with.

  I guess Jjaro had been in the greatest need for something to “intrigue her fancy,” although I can’t figure why.

  To keep their slumberland convincing, of course, they had had to kid themselves into believing that the machine worked the opposite way from which it actually did. It’s no fun having a dream if you know that that’s all it really is.

  And there they were, a bunch of the laziest zombies I ever came across—dreaming their fun because it had been just too much work to go out and keep their perfection alive and useful. The great-grandpa of all lawn-chair colonies . . .

  But don’t contaminate us, Mr. Kosta!

  Well, I knew there wouldn’t be any Jjaro for me, but everything else I wanted was hardly inches beneath the ground I walked on.

  I could still hear them moaning their wail of the damned when I left the caverns and headed for the place I’d left my suit. Qyylao was different now; Qyylao was in its death-throes.

  I found the hiding place that I had located in juxtaposition to the city, which I had known would at least not change location, and in an hour I had the Omicron and the radar-unit ready to take me back to the lugger.

  I had almost ten hours of air left, and in less than half of that time I was back within the familiar confines of the lugger’s smelly control-cabin.

  I don’t know how long I worked Qyylao. A month, maybe two, I don’t know. Long enough to fill my hull with ore until the seams strained at their welds, anyway. I loaded up good because I knew I wouldn’t be coming back.

  And then—well, I’m Joe Kosta, not the Great Judge. And there, could no longer be danger for me. So, if it was dreams they wanted . . .

  I made sure my helmet was dogged on tight, and then I went back and threw the master switch, and I could sense that all at once, the moaning had ceased, and the people of Qyylao were once again at peace with their universe.

  And I blasted for home. For Earth.

  You can have your Utopia, your Shangri-La, your never-never land of idleness if that’s what you want.

  Earth stinks with sweat and cries in the night with pain and sorrow, and works until it drops, exhausted, with each new day of half-seen hopes and broken plans suddenly gone its way, like the thousands before it, into eternity.

  Earth is heartbreak, sometimes it’s laughter, but always it’s the struggle of life and death every second you move on its great wide face.

  But it’s no illusion.

  At least, not for Joe Kosta.

  Yachting Party

  While their crew worked feverishly to repair the damaged rocket ship, the passengers set out to explore the planet. Thus they met the Hairy One . . .

  THE girl, Marla, trembled, yet she was not afraid. Ronal had told her at the outset of the cruise that although Krist’s friend Logan was young for a space pilot, he was a good one, and had trained in the old fuel-propelled ships that men had first flown Space in before the new warp-drive had been perfected. But Logan was sweating visibly.

  The blue planet loomed up, and Krist, who owned the trim Spaceyacht and had suggested the cruise, jumped noticeably when the first shrill whistle of atmospheric resistance pierced the tense quiet-of-the well-appointed control room.

  They were half-falling, half gliding downward, and despite Logan’s attempts to check their descent with the dogged free-drive maneuvering jets, their downward speed seemed to increase each second.

  “My fault,” Ronal muttered so only Marla could hear. “Had we stayed on the warp we charted and not followed my suggestion to go adventuring on free-drive in some system none of us have ever heard of, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “Not your fault, dear,” Marla said to her husband. “Even Logan couldn’t have known the free-drive would fail and leave us too far from our warp-point to make it back, and—”

  The stricken craft lurched again, and the polished nose began an almost imperceptible up-swing. The shrill scream of the rarefied atmosphere ;began descending the scale like a gigantic siren running down.

  “Flat on the deck!” Krist yelled.

  Lush, green forests stretched but scant miles below. The sound of a heavy, rich atmosphere now racing past their gleaming hull dropped to a low, moaning note and then the sound of it was gone.

  The nose came up.

  There was a wrenching jar and the nerve-shattering cry of tearing, scorched metal. The control-room rocked crazily, then was suddenly
still, cocked at a nightmare angle, as a shuddering impact brought the wildly slewing craft to a punishing halt.

  And for the four of them, there was sudden oblivion . . .

  “MARLA was as lucky as the rest of us,” Ronal said, “Just the wind knocked out of her. She’s coming around.” The girl’s silver-flecked eyes were already open and for a moment there was forgetfulness in them. “We splattered a little,” Ronal told her. “You move all right?”

  She was shaken, but unhurt. He helped her t0 a standing position on the canted deck, and saw that Krist and Logan were already taking a rapid inventory of the yacht’s available tools.

  “Got to look around outside,” Logan was saying, shaking his bruised head a little, “before I can tell you how bad we are. But I think Krist and I can get her back into one piece.”

  “Can if we can go out,” the tall, athletic-looking owner of the pleasure craft said. “We’ll need the suits.”

  “Maybe not.” Ronal said. “There was plenty of atmosphere wailing away—”

  “Five credits gets you 20 it’s all pure poison,” Logan retorted. He was standing at one of the metalo-glass ports, surveying the colorful terrain speculatively. They joined him.

  The ship had hit in an oblong clearing, perhaps five miles in length and half that in width. Surrounding the open, grassy spot were the depths of an untamed, riotously colored jungle.

  “I’ll give it a try in a suit,” Logan said. “The sooner we patch up and get out of here the better. No telling what’s in that.” He gestured toward the clearing’s mile-distant edge.

  Ronal helped him into the bundle-some plasti-seal space-suit, then watched tensely with the others as the starboard airlock hissed, and Logan stepped onto the thickly-carpeted clearing floor.

  “He’s a cool kid,” Ronal said. “For all we know, he’s just—”

  “He’s a cracker-jack mechanic,” Krist interrupted. “If we’ve got a couple of straight rivets left, he’ll get us out of here. I’m just glad that he picked out this planet to come in on instead of the first or second out from this system’s sun. It’s plenty hot even here.” They were all perspiring freely; the atmosphere conditioner had ceased operating from the shock of landing.

  Logan’s voice cracked from the still-functioning communications panel.

  “Not too bad. Forehull plates got a little bashed in—couple of rips in the speed-skin. Take us maybe four, five days to get her Space-worthy again. Can unclog the free-drive jets in a day easy. But the guy who thought of leaving modern yachts equipped with free-drive units oughtta be hung from a comet tail.”

  THEY could see Logan near the nose of the ship. His hands were working at his helmet.

  “Take it easy!” Krist called. They could hear a soft hiss in the intercom.

  “Letting some of this stuff in, a cubic millimeter at a time, grandma! If I can breathe it, I’ll let you know. If I can’t—Anyway, if we can work without the suits, it’ll get us out of here that much sooner. Don’t know about you kids, but I didn’t even bring a sling-shot along . . .”

  Krist traded looks with Ronal. There wasn’t so much as a hand-gun in the whole ship. Neither said what was in his mind but Ronal drew Marla a little closer and broke the silence.

  “You’d think they’d equip even pleasure craft with a few of these scientific gadgets you hear about, instead of taking up room with a lot of old-fashioned fuel tanks and jets that nobody needs. With an atmosphere or gravity tester things like this would be a lot less risky. Got to admire Logan’s nerve.”

  “He’s got his suit off!”

  It was true. Logan was walking slowly, experimentally about, eyeing the surrounding terrain to estimate their situation, unhampered by the suit. He moved slowly, but not laboredly.

  “Let’s get some tools out there!” Ronal said. “The three of us can—”

  “There’s only the emergency kit. Tools enough for two, working simultaneously. You better stick with Marla, Ronal, and both of you can keep a weather-eye out for—anything—while we’re putting this egg together again.”

  “How about trying to contact some Stellar Patrol outpost? They—”

  “No good. We’re way off our warp. Even if we had the power, it’d take our beam, like our ship if it had enough free-drive fuel—about eighty thousand years to reach the nearest one. Remember, kid, we had warped some fifty thousand light years out before you talked Logan into leaving the warp to fool around in free Space for awhile. Until we can jet our way back to warp-point, we can forget about communication.”

  Ronal understood too dearly what Krist was talking about. Travel in “free” Space, the ordinary three-dimensional kind, was measured in miles; warp-travel was measured in parsecs. “Free” speed, with old-fashioned fuel-eating jets which were supposed to be carried as emergency power units only, was forty thousand miles a second it best—warp-speed, depending on the dimension you used, had a top of better than a thousand light-years a minute. Leaving your warp to poke around in ordinary three-dimensional Space on jets was like leaving your surface-car parked on a speedway to hike up a side-road on foot. You had to get back to the speedway to get home. And if you broke a leg—

  KRIST was already outside, lugging tool-carriers to i spot Logan had selected to begin. Ronal turned to his wife.

  “Well, we can’t keep f. weather-eye out for bug-eyed monsters in here,” he said. “Might as well go brave the Great Unknown ourselves. C’mon!”

  The heavy grass was wet and soft beneath their feet, and had a distinctive aroma of its own. Ronal thought to himself as they walked that perhaps the red, desert covered fourth planet would have been a better bet after all—at least cooler.

  “We shouldn’t get too far from the ship,” Marla said.

  “We won’t. But I just want to look around—want a closer look at the jungle from the edge of the clearing. Always wanted to be able to tell people. To been exploring on some strange, erotic planet somewhere—”

  “It’s strange enough. But quiet up to now, anyway. Maybe all that—”

  They had reached the clearing’s edge.

  And saw the Hairy One for the first time.

  Marla stopped in mid-sentence, and they stood transfixed.

  The Hairy One regarded them evenly with small, narrowly-spaced black eyes. He remained as immobile as the two from the ship.

  “Like a man, bit smaller,” Marla whispered tautly.

  “But covered with hair! And on all fours,” Ronal said. Marla started to speak again, but he silenced her with a nervous gesture. The ape-like creature cocked its head, as though listening. A light breeze made ripples in the thick hair on his narrow, sloping back, but for long moments he did not stir, nor did Marla or Ronal advance toward him.

  The Hairy One fixed his gaze on Marla, then shifted it to her husband. Then, as though at a signal, he turned abruptly and shambled off into the dense undergrowth at a rapid pace without so much as a backward glance.

  “Better be on our way back,” Ronal said. “If he’s displeased with us, he’ll have his whole tribe on our necks.”

  To run a mile’s distance had never been difficult for either the man or woman before, but on this lush planet with its heavy, sweet atmosphere and slightly greater gravity than that of their own home sphere, it seemed to both that the distance between them and the ship would never be covered. Ronal glanced over his shoulder twice as they ran, but there were no signs of activity at the jungle’s edge. But the heavy foliage would make perfect camouflage for an entire army . . .

  KRIST dogged the airlock shut.

  “The best bet,” he said, “is to barge right in and let them all see us. If we can let them know, or get them to understand, that we’re weaponless and harmless, they won’t attack.”

  “That would only work if their thinking is based on our system of logic,” Logan said. “We don’t know that it is. It could easily be suicide to step one inch inside that seething tangle.”

  “But you’ve both missed the big poin
t,” Ronal said. “I doubt very much if he, or they can ‘think’ at all as we know thought. He is no more than a beast—a jungle beast, and would behave according to what I’ve read is the first law of the wild—exterminate the intruder to protect yourself. And I think if he and his kind did attack, it would be under cover of darkness.”

  “He might’ve killed us both an hour ago,” Marla said then. “But he didn’t. He showed no sign of hostility.”

  “She’s right on that,” Ronal admitted. “He ran!”

  There was silence for a moment, and then Logan spoke again.

  “We could go on like this for hours and get nowhere. Hours that could be a lot better spent. We know nothing of the situation on this planet beyond the hull of our own ship. I think our best protection is completing repairs as quickly as possible and getting out. Ronal and Marla can still keep an eye out. If anything happens, we can always get into the ship before they reach us. We’ll all have to remain within the ship at night, of course. And without any weapons, that’s all there is to do.”

  IN the days of feverish work that followed, the life that they all could feel was teeming within the hot, moist jungle that surrounded them gave little hint of its presence save for an occasional beast-like scream and the cries of birds. And the nights were quiet save for the sound of warm breezes riffling their way through lush foliage.

  “But I can feel a thousand eyes upon us for every move we make,” Marla said.

  “It’ll be all over in a day or so,” Ronal reassured her. “Logan says that we’ll be able to blast off without even trying to shift the ship’s position. Chances are we won’t even set eyes on our hairy friend again, much less any of his tribesmen. Don’t worry.”

  But it was the next morning that they saw the Hairy One again.

  “He’s trying to get up into that tree with the fruit on it,” Marla said, “but the trunk’s too big around for him to climb, and the lowest branch is too high for him to reach.”