The Second Science Fiction Megapack Read online

  Captain Somers wiped his forehead and tried to think of a plan. He found it difficult to concentrate. There was too great a discrepancy between his knowledge of the situation and its appearance. He knew—intellectually—that his ship was traveling out of the Solar System at a tremendous rate of speed. But in appearance they were stationary, hung in the abyss, three men trapped in a small, hot room, breathing the smell of hot metal and perspiration.

  “What shall we do, Captain?” Watkins asked.

  Somers frowned at the engineer. Did the man expect him to pull a solution out of the air? How was he even supposed to concentrate on the problem? He had to slow the ship, turn it. But his senses told him that the ship was not moving. How, then, could speed constitute a problem?

  He couldn’t help but feel that the real problem was to get away from these high-strung, squabbling men, to escape from this hot, smelly little room.

  “Captain! You must have some idea!”

  Somers tried to shake his feeling of unreality. The problem, the real problem, he told himself, was how to stop the ship.

  He looked around the fixed cabin and out the porthole at the unmoving stars. We are moving very rapidly, he thought, unconvinced.

  Rajcik said disgustedly, “Our noble captain can’t face the situation.”

  “Of course I can,” Somers objected, feeling very light-headed and unreal. “I can pilot any course you lay down. That’s my only real responsibility. Plot us a course to Mars!”

  “Sure!” Rajcik said, laughing. “I can! I will! Engineer, I’m going to need plenty of fuel for this course—about ten tons! See that I get it!”

  “Right you are,” said Watkins. “Captain, I’d like to put in a requisition for ten tons of fuel.”

  “Requisition granted,” Somers said. “All right, gentlemen, responsibility is inevitably circular. Let’s get a grip on ourselves. Mr. Rajcik, suppose you radio Mars.”

  When contact had been established, Somers took the microphone and stated their situation. The company official at the other end seemed to have trouble grasping it.

  “But can’t you turn the ship?” he asked bewilderedly. “Any kind of an orbit—”

  “No. I’ve just explained that.”

  “Then what do you propose to do, Captain?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m asking you.”

  There was a babble of voices from the loudspeaker, punctuated by bursts of static. The lights flickered and reception began to fade. Rajcik, working frantically, managed to re-establish the contact.

  “Captain,” the official on Mars said, “we can’t think of a thing. If you could swing into any sort of an orbit—”

  “I can’t!”

  “Under the circumstances, you have the right to try anything at all. Anything, Captain!”

  Somers groaned. “Listen, I can think of just one thing. We could bail out in spacesuits as near Mars as possible. Link ourselves together, take the portable transmitter. It wouldn’t give much of a signal, but you’d know our approximate position. Everything would have to be figured pretty closely—those suits just carry twelve hours’ air—but it’s a chance.”

  There was a confusion of voices from the other end. Then the official said, “I’m sorry, Captain.”

  “What? I’m telling you it’s our one chance!”

  “Captain, the only ship on Mars now is the Diana. Her engines are being overhauled.”

  “How long before she can be spaceborne?”

  “Three weeks, at least. And a ship from Earth would take too long. Captain, I wish we could think of something. About the only thing we can suggest—”

  The reception suddenly failed again.

  Rajcik cursed frustratedly as he worked over the radio. Watkins gnawed at his mustache. Somers glanced out a porthole and looked hurriedly away, for the stars, their destination, were impossibly distant.

  They heard static again, faintly now.

  “I can’t get much more,” Rajcik said. “This damned reception.… What could they have been suggesting?”

  “Whatever it was,” said Watkins, “they didn’t think it would work.”

  “What the hell does that matter?” Rajcik asked, annoyed. “It’d give us something to do.”

  They heard the official’s voice, a whisper across space.

  “Can you hear…Suggest…”

  At full amplification, the voice faded, then returned. “Can only suggest…most unlikely…but try…calculator…try…”

  The voice was gone. And then even the static was gone.

  “That does it,” Rajcik said. “The calculator? Did he mean the Fahrensen Computer in our hold?”

  “I see what he meant,” said Captain Somers. “The Fahrensen is a very advanced job. No one knows the limits of its potential. He suggests we present our problem to it.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Watkins snorted. “This problem has no solution.”

  “It doesn’t seem to,” Somers agreed. “But the big computers have solved other apparently impossible problems. We can’t lose anything by trying.”

  “No,” said Rajcik, “as long as we don’t pin any hopes on it.”

  “That’s right. We don’t dare hope. Mr. Watkins, I believe this is your department.”

  “Oh, what’s the use?” Watkins asked. “You say don’t hope—but both of you are hoping anyhow! You think the big electronic god is going to save your lives. Well, it’s not!”

  “We have to try,” Somers told him.

  “We don’t! I wouldn’t give it the satisfaction of turning us down!”

  They stared at him in vacant astonishment.

  “Now you’re implying that machines think,” said Rajcik.

  “Of course I am,” Watkins said. “Because they do! No, I’m not out of my head. Any engineer will tell you that a complex machine has a personality all its own. Do you know what that personality is like? Cold, withdrawn, uncaring, unfeeling. A machine’s only purpose is to frustrate desire and produce two problems for every one it solves. And do you know why a machine feels this way?”

  “You’re hysterical,” Somers told him.

  “I am not. A machine feels this way because it knows it is an unnatural creation in nature’s domain. Therefore it wishes to reach entropy and cease—a mechanical death wish.”

  “I’ve never heard such gibberish in my life,” Somers said. “Are you going to hook up that computer?”

  “Of course. I’m a human. I keep trying. I just wanted you to understand fully that there is no hope.” He went to the cargo hold.

  After he had gone, Rajcik grinned and shook his head. “We’d better watch him.”

  “He’ll be all right,” Somers said.

  “Maybe, maybe not.” Rajcik pursed his lips thoughtfully. “He’s blaming the situation on a machine personality now, trying to absolve himself of guilt. And it is his fault that we’re in this spot. An engineer is responsible for all equipment.”

  “I don’t believe you can put the blame on him so dogmatically,” Somers replied.

  “Sure I can,” Rajcik said. “I personally don’t care, though. This is as good a way to die as any other and better than most.”

  Captain Somers wiped perspiration from his face. Again the notion came to him that the problem—the real problem—was to find a way out of this hot, smelly, motionless little box.

  Rajcik said, “Death in space is an appealing idea, in certain ways. Imagine an entire spaceship for your tomb! And you have a variety of ways of actually dying. Thirst and starvation I rule out as unimaginative. But there are possibilities in heat, cold, implosion, explosion—”

  “This is pretty morbid,” Somers said.

  “I’m a pretty morbid fellow,” Rajcik said carelessly. “But at least I’m not blaming inanimate objects, the way Watkins is. Or permitting myself the luxury of shock, like you.” He studied Somers’ face. “This is your first real emergency, isn’t it, Captain?”

  “I suppose so,” Somers answered vaguely.
r />   “And you’re responding to it like a stunned ox,” Rajcik said. “Wake up, Captain! If you can’t live with joy, at least try to extract some pleasure from your dying.”

  “Shut up,” Somers said, with no heat. “Why don’t you read a book or something?”

  “I’ve read all the books on board. I have nothing to distract me except an analysis of your character.”

  Watkins returned to the cabin. “Well, I’ve activated your big electronic god. Would anyone care to make a burned offering in front of it?”

  “Have you given it the problem?”

  “Not yet. I decided to confer with the high priest. What shall I request of the demon, sir?”

  “Give it all the data you can,” Somers said. “Fuel, oxygen, water, food—that sort of thing. Then tell it we want to return to Earth. Alive,” he added.

  “It’ll love that,” Watkins said. “It’ll get such pleasure out of rejecting our problem as unsolvable. Or better yet—insufficient data. In that way, it can hint that a solution is possible, but just outside our reach. It can keep us hoping.”

  Somers and Rajcik followed him to the cargo hold. The computer, activated now, hummed softly. Lights flashed swiftly over its panels, blue and white and red.

  Watkins punched buttons and turned dials for fifteen minutes, then moved back.

  “Watch for the red light on top,” he said. “That means the problem is rejected.”

  “Don’t say it,” Rajcik warned quickly.

  Watkins laughed. “Superstitious little fellow, aren’t you?”

  “But not incompetent,” Rajcik said, smiling.

  “Can’t you two quit it?” Somers demanded, and both men turned startedly to face him.

  “Behold!” Rajcik said. “The sleeper has awakened.”

  “After a fashion,” said Watkins, snickering.

  Somers suddenly felt that if death or rescue did not come quickly, they would kill each other, or drive each other crazy.

  “Look!” Rajcik said.

  A light on the computer’s panel was flashing green.

  “Must be a mistake,” said Watkins. “Green means the problem is solvable within the conditions set down.”

  “Solvable!” Rajcik said.

  “But it’s impossible,” Watkins argued. “It’s fooling us, leading us on—”

  “Don’t be superstitious,” Rajcik mocked. “How soon do we get the solution?”

  “It’s coming now.” Watkins pointed to a paper tape inching out of a slot in the machine’s face. “But there must be something wrong!”

  They watched as, millimeter by millimeter, the tape crept out. The computer hummed, its lights flashing green. Then the hum stopped. The green lights blazed once more and faded.

  “What happened?” Rajcik wanted to know.

  “It’s finished,” Watkins said.

  “Pick it up! Read it!”

  “You read it. You won’t get me to play its game.”

  Rajcik laughed nervously and rubbed his hands together, but didn’t move. Both men turned to Somers.

  “Captain, it’s your responsibility.”

  “Go ahead, Captain!”

  Somers looked with loathing at his engineer and navigator. His responsibility, everything was his responsibility. Would they never leave him alone?

  He went up to the machine, pulled the tape free, read it with slow deliberation.

  “What does it say, sir?” Rajcik asked.

  “Is it—possible?” Watkins urged.

  “Oh, yes,” Somers said. “It’s possible.” He laughed and looked around at the hot, smelly, low-ceilinged little room with its locked doors and windows.

  “What is it?” Rajcik shouted.

  Somers said, “You figured a few thousand years to return to the Solar System, Rajcik? Well, the computer agrees with you. Twenty-three hundred years, to be precise. Therefore, it has given us a suitable longevity serum.”

  “Twenty-three hundred years,” Rajcik mumbled. “I suppose we hibernate or something of the sort.”

  “Not at all,” Somers said calmly. “As a matter of fact, this serum does away quite nicely with the need for sleep. We stay awake and watch each other.”

  The three men looked at one another and at the sickeningly familiar room smelling of metal and perspiration, its sealed doors and windows that stared at an unchanging spectacle of stars.

  Watkins said, “Yes, that’s the sort of thing it would do.”

  THE WAVERIES, by Fredric Brown

  Definitions from the school-abridged Webster-Hamlin Dictionary 1998 edition:

  wavery (WA-ver-i) n. a vader-slang

  vader (VA-der) n. inorgan of the class Radio

  inorgan (in-OR-gan) n. noncorporeal ens, vader

  radio (RA-di-o) n. 1. class of inorgans 2. etheric frequency between light and electricity 3. (obsolete) method of communication used up to 1977

  * * * *

  The opening guns of invasion were not at all loud, although they were heard by millions of people. George Bailey was one of the millions. I choose George Bailey because he was the only one who came within a googol of light-years of guessing what they were.

  George Bailey was drunk and under the circumstances one can’t blame him for being so. He was listening to radio advertisements of the most nauseous kind. Not because he wanted to listen to them, I hardly need say, but because he’d been told to listen to them by his boss, J. R. McGee of the MID network.

  George Bailey wrote advertising for the radio. The only thing he hated worse than advertising was radio. And here on his own time he was listening to fulsome and disgusting commercials on a rival network.

  “Bailey,” J. R. McGee had said, “you should be more familiar with what others are doing. Particularly, you should be informed about those of our own accounts who use several networks. I strongly suggest…”

  One doesn’t quarrel with an employer’s strong suggestions and keep a five-hundred-dollar a week job. But one can drink whisky sours while listening. George Bailey did. Also, between commercials, he was playing gin rummy with Maisie Hetterman, a cute little redheaded typist from the studio. It was Maisie’s apartment and Maisie’s radio (George himself, on principle, owned neither a radio nor a TV set) but George had brought the liquor. “—only the very finest tobaccos,” said the radio, “go dit-dit-dit nation’s favorite cigarette—”

  George glanced at the radio. “Marconi,” he said. He meant Morse, naturally, but the whisky sours had muddled him a bit so his first guess was more nearly right than anyone else’s. It was Marconi, in a way. In a very peculiar way.

  “Marconi?” asked Maisie. George, who hated to talk against a radio, leaned over and switched it off.

  “I meant Morse,” he said. “Morse, as in Boy Scouts or the Signal Corps. I used to be a Boy Scout once.”

  “You’ve sure changed,” Maisie said.

  George sighed. “Somebody’s going to catch hell, broadcasting code on that wave length.”

  “What did it mean?”

  “Mean? Oh, you mean what did it mean. Uh—S, the letter S. Dit-dit-dit is S. SOS is dit-dit-dit dah-dah-dah dit-dit-dit.”

  “O is dah-dah-dah?”

  George grinned. “Say that again, Maisie. I like it. And I think you are dah-dah-dah too.”

  “George, maybe it’s really an SOS message. Turn it back on.”

  George turned it back on. The tobacco ad was still going. “—gentlemen of the most dit-dit-dit-ing taste prefer the finer taste of dit-dit-dit-arettes. In the new package that keeps them dit-dit-dit and ultra fresh—”

  “It’s not SOS. It’s just S’s.”

  “Like a teakettle or—say, George, maybe it’s just some advertising gag.”

  George shook his head. “Not when it can blank out the name of the product. Just a minute till I—” He reached over and turned the dial of the radio a bit to the right and then a bit to the left, and an incredulous look came into his face. He turned the dial to the extreme left, as far as it wo
uld go. There wasn’t any station there, not even the hum of a carrier wave.

  But: “Dit-dit-dit,” said the radio, “dit-dit-dit.”

  He turned the dial to the extreme right. “Dit-dit-dit.” George switched it off and stared at Maisie without seeing her, which was hard to do.

  “Something wrong, George?”

  “I hope so,” said George Bailey. “I certainly hope so.”

  He started to reach for another drink and changed his mind. He had a sudden hunch that something big was happening, and he wanted to sober up to appreciate it. He didn’t have the faintest idea how big it was.

  “George, what do you mean?”

  “I don’t know what I mean. But Maisie, let’s take a run down the studio, huh? There ought to be some excitement.”

  * * * *

  April 5, 1977; that was the night the waveries came.

  It had started like an ordinary evening. It wasn’t one, now. George and Maisie waited for a cab, but none came, so they took the subway instead. Oh yes, the subways were still running in those days. It took them within a block of the MID Network Building.

  The building was a madhouse. George, grinning, strolled through the lobby with Maisie on his arm, took the elevator to the fifth floor and, for no reason at all, gave the elevator boy a dollar. He’d never before in his life tipped an elevator operator.

  The boy thanked him.

  “Better stay away from the big shots, Mr. Bailey,” he said. “They’re ready to chew the ears off anybody who even looks at ’em.”

  “Wonderful,” said George.

  From the elevator he headed straight for the office of J. R. McGee himself. There were strident voices behind the glass door. George reached for the knob and Maisie tried to stop him.

  “But George,” she whispered, “you’ll be fired!”

  “There comes a time,” said George. “Stand back away from the door, honey.”

  Gently but firmly he moved her to a safe position.

  “But George, what are you—?”

  “Watch,” he said.

  The frantic voices stopped as he opened the door a foot. All eyes turned toward him as he stuck his head around the corner of the doorway into the room.