1930. At that time we were approximately 300 years ahead, technologically, of the people of Mert. A similar case exists for Neptune, which was not discovered, although adequate telescopes had long been in use, until 1846.” He paused and gazed happily around. “Does the light dawn?”
“Holy cow!”
“Exactly. Diomed is a nine planet system. For which ‘fack’ thank old Ed Horton, who returned a favor done many years ago. Luck? Only if doing favors for people is lucky. Which I suppose you could make a case for. But in the astrology of Diomed III—an astrology I took great pains to understand—how many planets are considered? Let us examine. Rym, Fors, Lyndal, Bonken, Huck, Weepen, and Sharb. And then there are also the two ‘lights,’ that is, the sun and the moon. But how many planets are there? Counting Mert as one, add them up. It comes out eight. Not nine. Eight. But Diomed is a nine planet system. Bless Ed Horton. What happened to the missing planet?”
Dahlinger whooped. “They didn’t know they had one!”
Travis grinned. “With surety. They didn’t know it existed. If they had their astrology would certainly have shown it. So it had obviously, like our own Pluto at a similar time, never been discovered.”
He paused once again while Dahlinger and Trippe regarded him with delight.
“And you,” Trippe said, “you showed them where it was.”
Travis clucked. “I did not. For one thing, I didn’t know where it was. I simply told him, very regretfully, that there was one, but the situation being what it was, I couldn’t allow him to use our telescopes to plot its orbit. Unless, you see, there existed a concrete agreement between us.
“I added that I had heard that Earthmen would shortly be leaving his planet. Very unhappily I told him he could not expect to produce a telescope of the necessary power within at least the next hundred years. And even then, it would be many more years before they actually found it. I was very sorry about the whole business, so I just thought I’d drop by to offer my regrets.”
“And he leaped at the chance.”
“No. You rush to conclusions. He did not leap at the chance. He sat very quietly thinking about it. It was a gruesome sight. I could sympathize with him. On the one hand he had us, the unknown, moon-moving Us, with which he wanted no traffic whatever. But on the other side there was the knowledge of that planet moving all unwatched out in the black, casting down its radiations, be they harmful or good, and no way to know in what sign the thing was, or what house, or what effect it would have on him,was having on him, even as he sat there. Oh he struggled, but I knew I had him. He signed the contract. I think I may say, that it is among the most liberal contracts we have ever signed.”
There was a long moment of silence in the ship. The young men sat grinning foolishly.
“So let me hear no more about luck,” said Travis firmly. “In the future, sons, put your shoulders to the wheel . . . .”
But the attention of the two was already wandering. They were both beginning to gaze once more upon the lovely Navel, who was quite shyly but very womanly gazing back. He saw Trippe look at Dahlinger, Dahlinger glare at Trippe, their hackles rising. He looked down at Navel in alarm.
Born to cause trouble?
Oh no, he thought abruptly, seeing a whole new world beginning to open up, oh no, oh no . . . .
Rescue Squad
by Thomas J. O’Hara
When Mr. O’Hara won the prize story contest recently conducted by the fantasy writers’ workshop at the College of the City of New York, in conjunction with fantastic universe, it was the unanimous opinion of the judges that a second story by Mr. O’Hara, rescue squad, deserved honorable mention. We think you’ll agree with that decision when you’ve read this documentary-type science-fiction yarn, which so excitingly combines realistic characterization with the mystery, suspense and terror of the near future’s exploration of space and a lone pilot’s struggle to survive.
Stark disaster to a brave lad in space may—to the mind that loves—be a tragedy pridefully concealed.
The mail ship, MR4, spun crazily through space a million miles off her trajectory. Her black-painted hull resembled a long thermonuclear weapon, and below her and only a scant twenty million miles away burned the hungry, flaming maw of the Sun.
The atomic-powered refrigeration units of the MR4 were working full blast—and still her internal and external temperatures were slowly and inexorably rising. Her atomic engines had been long since silenced—beaten by the inexhaustible, fiery strength of the invincible opponent waiting patiently a narrowing twenty million miles “below.”
Hal Burnett twisted painfully on the narrow space-bunk, his tormented body thrusting desperately against the restraining bands of the safety straps that lashed him in against the dangers of non-gravity.
He moaned, and twisted sideways, while his half-asleep mind struggled on an almost instinctive level against a dimly-remembered, utterly intolerable reality.
It was a losing battle. He was suddenly wide awake, staring in horror at the vibrating bulkheads of the deserted little mail ship. For a moment his conscious barriers against reality were so completely down that he felt mortally terrified and overwhelmed by the vast emptiness about him. For a moment the mad idea swept into his mind that perhaps the universe was just another illusion, an echo of man’s own inner loneliness.
Realizing his danger, Burnett quickly undid the restraining safety straps, sat up and propelled himself outward from the edge of his bunk. The sudden surge of physical action swept the cobwebs from his mind.
He thought of his father—and there was bitterness in his heart and frustration, and a rebellious, smouldering anger. The old man would never know how close he had come to cracking up.
For a moment he wondered fearfully if his father’s cold and precise appraisal of his character and courage had been correct. Suppose he was unable to stand the rigid strains and pressures of a real emergency. Suppose— He tightened his lips in defiant self-justification. What did they expect of a twenty-year-old kid anyway? He was, after all, the youngest and probably the greenest mail pilot in the entire Universal Run.
Suddenly the defensive barriers his mind had thrown up against the grievous flaw in his character, which made him feel uncertain of himself when he should have felt strong and capable, crumbled away completely. He could no longer pretend, no longer deceive himself. He hated his father because the elder Burnett had never known a moment of profound self-distrust in his entire life.
He remembered his father’s favorite line of reasoning with a sudden, overwhelming resentment. “Fear can and must be controlled. If you have your objective clearly in mind a new experience, no matter how hazardous, will quickly become merely a routine obstacle to be surmounted, a yardstick by which a man can measure his own maturity and strength of purpose. You’ll find peace of mind in doing your work ably and well and by ignoring all danger to yourself.”
It was so easy to say, so hard to live up to. How, for instance, could a twenty-year-old kid on his first mail run hope to completely outwit fatigue, or even forget, for a single moment, that it was his first run. Fatigue had caused his undoing, but had he been completely fearless he might have found a way to save himself, might have managed somehow to prevent
