The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

In turn they all protested, but Dominguey was not to be over-ruled. He stood with his hands on his hips, his dark face unmoving as they climbed into their bunks. Then he shrugged, set the alarm on the communication panel, and crawled into the drive compartment.

It was not a matter of simple replacement. Fortunately they had spares for the little sinecells which studded the main spiral of the cyboscope that steered the ship. But the spiral itself had become warped by the extra strains placed on it during their penetration of the nebula. Malravin had drained its oil bath and removed its casing, but the business of setting it back into true was a slow precision job, not made easier by the awkward angle at which it had to be tackled.

Time passed. Dominguey was listening to the sound of his own heavy breathing when the alarm bell shrilled.

He crawled out into the cabin. Sharn and Malravin were already rousing and stretching.

‘That’s four hours’ hard grind I just put in,’ he said, pushing his words through a yawn. ‘Eddy, see if you can raise the other ships, will you? I must have a drink and get some shut eye. We’re nearly set to blast off.’

Then he pointed to Baron, his ashen face, the crimson stain over his chest. In two steps he was over to his bunk. Baron lay contorted on his left side, gripping a handful of blanket. He was dead with a knife in his ribs. Dominguey let out a cry that brought the other two down onto their feet.

‘He’s been murdered! Jim’s been murdered! One of you two. …’ He turned to Sharn. ‘Sharn, you did this. You’ve killed him with his own explorer’s knife. Why? Why?’

Sharn had gone as pale as Dominguey.

‘You’re lying, I never did it. I was in my bunk asleep! I had no quarrel with Baron. What about Malravin? He’d just had a fight with Jim. He did it, didn’t you, Malravin?’

The alarm was still shrilling away. They were all shouting. Malravin said, ‘Don’t you call me a murderer. I was fast asleep in my bunk, under sedation as ordered. One of you two did it. It was nothing to do with me.’

‘You’ve got a black eye coming on, Malravin,’ Dominguey said. ‘Jim Baron gave you that before you hit the sack. Did you stab him to even up the score?’

‘For God’s sake, man, let’s try and raise the other ships while we’ve the chance. You know I’d not do anything like that. You did it yourself, most likely. You were awake, we weren’t.’

‘I was stuck with my head in the drive all the time.’

‘Were you? How do we know?’

‘Yes, he has a point, Dominguey,’ Sharn said. ‘How do we know what you were up to? Didn’t you arrange for us all to get a bit of sleep on purpose, so that you could bring this off?’

‘So he did, the filthy murderer,’ Malravin shouted. ‘I wonder you didn’t finish us all while you were about it.’ Putting his hands up, he charged at Dominguey.

Dominguey ducked. He jumped to one side and hit Malravin as he lumbered past. The blow was a light one. It served merely to make Malravin bellow and come on again. On the table lay a wrench they had used earlier on the cybo casing. Dominguey hit Malravin with it at the base of the neck. The big fellow collided with a chair and sprawled with it to the floor, catching his head sharply against the bulkhead as he went.

‘You want any?’ Dominguey asked, facing Sharn with the wrench ready.

Shaking, Sharn formulated the word ‘No’.

‘See to Ike then, while I try to raise a signal.’ Nodding curtly, he went over to the communications panel and cut off the alarm. The sudden silence was as chilling as the racket had been a moment before. He opened up the subradio and began to call.

Sharn slipped to his knees and pulled Malravin’s head up as gently as he could. The man did not stir. Groaning, Sharn tried to adjust to what had happened. He tried to concentrate his thoughts. He muttered, ‘Humans instigate events; events affect humans. Once a man has started a chain of events, he may find himself the victim of the events. When I entered star service, this was a decisive action, but readers may think that since then I have been at the mercy – the mercy –’

He began to weep. Malravin was also dead. His neck was broken. Inside his head, still warm, thoughts pouring out into oblivion. …

After some indefinite period of time, Sharn realised that Dominguey had stopped speaking. Only a meaningless gibber and squeak of static came from the subradio. He looked up. The captain was pointing an iongun at him.

‘I know you killed Jim Baron, Sharn,’ he said. His face was distorted by tension.

‘I know you killed Malravin. I saw you do it, and there is the murder weapon on the floor.’

The iongun wavered.

‘Ike’s dead?’

‘Dead, just as you killed Baron. You’re clever, Dominguey, the real silent superman type, always in command of his environment. Now I suppose you will kill me. With three bodies out of the hatch, the Wilson will lift a lot more easily, won’t it? You’ll need all that lift, Dominguey, because we are getting nearer to Bertha every minute.’

‘I’m not going to kill you, Sharn, just as I didn’t kill Baron. Just as killing Malravin was an accident. You know – Wait! Don’t move! There’s a signal.’

He slightly swivelled his chair and turned up the volume of the set. Below the crackle of static, a faint voice called them. It said, ‘Can you hear me, Wilson? Can you hear me, Wilson? Grant of the Brinkdale here. Come in, please.’

‘Hello, Grant! Hello, Grant!’ As he spoke, the captain moved the mike so that he could continue to cover Sharn with his iongun. ‘Dominguey of Wilson here. We’re down on an asteroid for repairs. If I send a carrier, will you get a fix on us? Situation very urgent – dawn is less than an hour away, and static will cancel reception then.’

Far away, down a great well of time and space, a tiny voice asked for the carrier wave. Dominguey switched to send and turned to face Sharn.

Sharn still crouched over Malravin. He had brought himself under control now.

‘Going to finish me at once, Dominguey?’ he asked. ‘Don’t want any witnesses, do you?’

‘Get up, Sharn. Back over to the wall. I want to see if Malravin is really dead, or if you are up to some stupid deception.’

‘Oh, he’s dead all right. I’d say you did a very good job. And with Baron too, although there it was easier because the poor fellow was not only asleep but believed himself already dead.’

‘You’re sick, Sharn. Get over against that wall when you’re ordered to.’

They moved into their new positions, Sharn by the wall near the shuttered ports, Dominguey by the ugly body on the floor. Both of them moved slowly, watching each other, their faces blank.

‘He’s dead all right,’ Sharn said.

‘He’s dead. Sharn, get into your space suit.’

‘What are you planning, a burial service? You’re crazy, Dominguey! It’s only a few hours before our mass cremation.’

‘Don’t you call me crazy, you little snake. Get into your space suit. I can’t have you in here while I’m working. I don’t trust you. I know you killed Baron; you’re mad and he had less patience with your talk and theories than any of us. You can’t tolerate anyone who won’t enlist as your audience, can you? But you’re not going to kill me. So you wait outside until we are ready to go, or until the Brinkdale comes to pick us up, whichever is soonest. Move fast now, man, into your suit.’

‘You’re going to leave me out there, you swine! What are you doing, compiling an anthology of ways to murder in galactic space? Beyond the solar system, the word of man becomes the word of God.’

Moving fast, Dominguey slapped him across the cheek.

‘– And the hand of God,’ Sharn muttered. He moved towards his suit. Reluctantly, he climbed into it, menaced continually by the iongun. Dominguey propelled him towards the lock.

‘Don’t send me out there again, Dominguey, please. I can’t stand it. You know what Big Bertha’s like – Please! Tie me to my bunk –’

‘Move, man. I have to get back to the set. I won’t leave without you.’

‘Please, Dominguey, Captain, I swear I’m innocent. You know I never touched Baron. I’d die out there on the rock! Forgive me!’

‘You can stay if you’ll sign a confession that you murdered Baron.’

‘You know I never did it! You did it while we were all asleep. You saw how his idea about our all being dead was a menace to the general sanity, and so you killed him. Or Malravin killed him. Yes, Malravin killed Jim, Dominguey, it’s obvious! You know we were talking together while they were quarrelling! We’re not to blame. Let’s not be at each other’s throats now we’re the only two left. We’ve got to get out of here quickly – you need help. We always get on well together, we’ve covered the galaxy –’

‘Confess or get out, Sharn. I know you did it. I can’t have you’ in here or you’ll kill me.’

Sharn stopped protesting. He ran a hand through his damp hair and leant back against the bulkhead.

‘All right. I’ll sign. Anything rather than go out there again. I can always say I signed under duress.’

Dominguey dragged him to the table, seized a scratch pad from the radio bench, and forced Sharn to write out a brief confession to the murder of Jim Baron. He pocketed it and levelled the iongun again.

‘Now get outside,’ he said.

‘Dominguey, no, no, you lied to me – please –’

‘You’ve got to get out, Sharn. With this paper in my pocket, you’d not hesitate to kill me now, given half a chance.’

‘You’re mad, Dominguey, cunning mad. You’re going to get rid of me and then blame it all onto me –’

‘I’ll count five, Sharn. If you’re not on your way to that lock by then, I swear I’ll fry your boots off.’

The look on his face was unmistakable. Sharn backed into the lock, weeping. The door closed on him. He heard Dominguey begin to exhaust the air from the room panel. Hurriedly, he screwed down his faceplate. The air whispered away and the lock descended to ground level.

When it stopped, he opened the door, unscrewed one of the levers from the control panel, and wedged it in the doorway so that the door could not close. It could not retract until it was closed, so his way to the ship was not withdrawn. Then he stepped out onto the surface of Erewhon for a second time.

Conditions were changing. Bertha came ripping up into the sky, surrounded by a shock wave of star-blur. The farther stars lent it a halo of confused light. It was rising ahead of the time-table the humans had worked out. So communication with Brinkdale would now be effectively cut off. Also, the perceptible disc of the body was larger. They were indeed falling towards it.

Sharn wondered why he was not already fried to smears of carbohydrate on the rock, despite the refrigeration unit in his suit. But if Bertha was so gigantic, then she would not even be able to release her own heat. What a terrible unstable thing it was! He looked up at it, in a sort of ecstasy transcending fear, feeling in his lack of weight that he was drifting out towards it. The black globe seemed to thunder overhead, a symbol – a symbol of what? Of life, of fertility, of death, of destruction? It seemed to combine aspects of all things as it rode omnipotently overhead.

‘The core of experience – to be at the core of experience transcends the need for lesser pleasures,’ Sharn told himself. He could feel his black notebook in his hip pocket. It was inaccessible inside the space-suit. For all his inability to get at it, it might as well have been left back on Earth. That was a terrible loss – not just to him, but to others who might have read and been stimulated by his work. Words were coming to him now, thick and rich as blood, coming first singly like birds alighting on his shoulder, then in swarms.

Finally he fell silent, impaled under that black gaze. The isolation was so acute, it was as if he alone of all creation had been singled out to stand there … there under something that was physically impossible.

He switched on his suit mike and began to speak to Dominguey.

‘I want to come back aboard. I want to make some calculations. I’m beginning to understand Bertha. Her properties represent physical impossibilities. You understand that, don’t you, Dominguey? So how can she exist? The answer must be that beneath her surface, under unimaginable conditions, she is creating anti-matter. We’ve made a tremendous discovery, Dominguey. Perhaps they’ll name the process after me: the Sharn Effect. Let me come back, Dominguey. …’

But he spoke to himself, and the words were lost in his helmet.

He stood mute, bowing to the black thing.

Already Bertha was setting. The foggy blanket of atmosphere was whipped off the bed of rock, following, following the sun round like a tide. The vapour was thinner now, and little more than shoulder high as its component molecules drained off into space.

The weight-shift took place. Sharn’s body told him that down was the monstrous thing on the horizon and that he walked like a fly on the wall across Erewhon. Though he fought the sensation, when he turned back towards the Wilson, he moved uphill, and the vapours poured across him in a dying waterfall.

Taking no notice of the vapours, Sharn lumbered back to the air lock. He had remembered the thick pad of miostrene that hung clipped to one wall of the lock, a stylo beside it. It was placed there for emergencies, and surely this was one. As he reached for it, Dominguey’s voice came harshly through his headphones.

‘Stay away from that lock, Sharn. I’ve got the casing back on the cyboscope and am preparing to blast off. I shall have to take a chance on manoeuvring. Get away from the ship!’

‘Don’t leave without me, Dominguey, please! You know I’m an innocent man.’

‘We’re none of us innocent, Sharn, isn’t that true?’

‘This is no time for metaphysics, Dominguey. We’ll discuss it when you let me back inside.’

‘You killed Jim Baron, Sharn, and I’m not letting you back on board in case you kill me.’

‘I didn’t kill Baron, and you know it. I’m not the killer type. Either you killed him, or else Malravin did. It wasn’t me.’

‘I’ve got your confession! Stand clear for blast-off!’

‘But I’ve made an important discovery!’

‘Stand clear!’

The connection went dead. Sharn cried into his suit. Only the universe answered.

Clutching the miostrene pad, he ran from the lock. He ran after the last disappearing strand of vapour, sucked along the ground like a worm withdrawing. He lumbered down a cliff that began to see-saw back towards horizontal. The big sun had disappeared below a group of rocks that did rough duty for a horizon.

A tower of distorted strata rose before him. He stooped behind it as quickly as the suit would allow him, and looked back.

A golden glow turned white, a plump pillow of smoke turned into flat sheets of vapour that flapped across the rock towards him, the ship rose. Almost at once, it was hidden behind the northern horizon. The movement was so sudden and unpredictable that Sharn thought it had crashed, until he realised how fast ship and planetoid were moving in relation to each other. He never caught another glimpse of it.

Calmer now, he stood up and looked round. In the rock lay a great crater. The last of the smoke was sucked into it. He hobbled over to it and looked down. A great eye looked back at him.

Sharn staggered away in alarm, running through the passages of his mind to see if delusion had entered there. Then he realised what he had seen. Erewhon was a thin slab of rock holed right through the middle. He had seen Bertha louring on the other side. In a minute, it would rise again in its tireless chase of this splinter of flotsam.

Now the illusion of day and night, with its complementary implication that one was on a planet or planetoid, was shattered. That great eye held truth in its gaze: he clung to an infinitesimal chunk of rock falling ever faster towards its doom.

As he squatted down with his pad, the sun came up again. It rushed across the arch of space and disappeared almost at once. Erewhon bore no trace of any vapour to follow it now. And another illusion was gone: now, plainly, it was the chunk of rock that turned, not the mighty ball that moved – that was stationary, and all space was full of it. It hung there like a dull shield, inviting all comers.

He began to write on his pad in big letters. ‘As this rock is stripped of all that made it seem like a world, so I become a human stripped of all my characteristics. I am as bare as a symbol myself. There are no questions relevant to me; you cannot ask me if I murdered a man on a ship; I do not know; I do not remember. I have no need for memory. I only know what it is to have the universe’s grandest grandstand view of death. I –’

But the rock was spinning so fast now that he had to abandon the writing. A spiral of black light filled space, widening as he drew nearer to Bertha. He lay back on the rock to watch, to stretch his nerves to the business of watching, holding on as his weight pulsed about him in rhythm with the black spiral.

As he flung the pad aside, the last word on it caught his eye, and he flicked an eyebrow in recognition of its appositeness:

‘I –’

In the Arena

The reek and noise at the back of the circus were familiar to Javlin Bartramm. He felt the hard network of nerves in his solar plexus tighten.

There were crowds of the reduls here, jostling and staring to see the day’s entry arrive. You didn’t have to pay to stand and rubberneck in the street; this lot probably couldn’t afford seats for the arena. Javlin looked away from them in scorn. All the same, he felt some gratification when they sent up a cheeping cheer at the sight of him. They loved a human victim.

His keeper undid the cart door and led him out, still chained. They went through the entrance, from blinding sunshine to dark, into the damp unsavoury warren below the main stadium. Several reduls were moving about here, officials mainly. One or two called good luck to him; one chirped, ‘The crowd’s in a good mood today, vertebrate.’ Javlin showed no response.

His trainer, Ik So Baar, came up, a flamboyant redul towering above Javlin. He wore an array of spare gloves strapped across his orange belly. The white tiara that fitted around his antennae appeared only on sports day.

‘Greetings, Javlin. You look in the rudest of health. I’m glad you are not fighting me.’

‘Greetings, Ik So.’ He slipped the lip-whistle into his mouth so that he could answer in a fair approximation of the redul language. ‘Is my opponent ready to be slain? Remember I go free if I win this bout – it will be my twelfth victory in succession.’

‘There’s been a change in the program, Javlin. Your Sirian opponent escaped in the night and had to be killed. You are entered in a double double.’

Javlin wrenched at his chains so hard that the keeper was swung off balance.

‘Ik So! You betray me! How much cajsh have I won for you? I will not fight a double double.’

There was no change of expression on the insect mask.

‘Then you will die, my pet vertebrate. The new arrangement is not my idea. You know by now that I get more cajsh for having you in a solo. Double double it has to be. These are my orders. Keeper, Cell one-o-seven with him!’

Fighting against his keeper’s pull, Javlin cried, ‘I’ve got some rights, Ik So. I demand to see the arena promoter.’

‘Pipe down, you stupid vertebrate! You have to do what you’re ordered. I told you it wasn’t my fault.’

‘Well, for God’s sake, who am I fighting with?’

‘You will be shackled to a fellow from the farms. He’s had one or two preliminary bouts; they say he’s good.’

‘From the farms …’ Javlin broke into the filthiest redulian oaths he knew. Ik So came back toward him and slipped one of the metal gloves onto his forepincers; it gave him a cruel tearing weapon with a multitude of barbs. He held it up to Javlin’s face.

‘Don’t use that language to me, my mammalian friend. Humans from the farms or from space, what’s the difference? This young fellow will fight well enough if you muck in with him. And you’d better muck in. You’re billed to battle against a couple of yillibeeth.’

Before Javlin could answer, the tall figure turned and strode down the corridor, moving twice as fast as a man could walk.

Javlin let himself be led to Cell 107. The warder, a worker-redul with a grey belly, unlocked his chains and pushed him in, barring the door behind him. The cell smelled of alien species and apprehensions.

Javlin went and sat down on the bench. He needed to think.

He knew himself for a simple man – and knew that that knowledge meant the simplicity was relative. But his five years of captivity here under the reduls had not been all wasted. Ik So had trained him well in the arts of survival; and when you came down to brass tacks, there was no more proper pleasure in the universe than surviving. It was uncomplicated. It carried no responsibilities to anyone but yourself.

That was what he hated about the double double events, which till now he had always been lucky enough to avoid. They carried responsibility to your fellow fighter.

From the beginning he had been well equipped to survive the gladiatorial routine. When his scoutship, the Plunderhorse, had been captured by redul forces five years ago, Javlin Bartramm was duelling master and judo expert, as well as Top Armament Sergeant. The army ships had a long tradition, going back some six centuries, of sport aboard; it provided the ideal mixture of time-passer and needed exercise. Of all the members of the Plunderhorse’s crew who had been taken captive, Javlin was – as far as he knew – the only survivor after five years of the insect race’s rough games.

Luck had played its part in his survival. He had liked Ik So Baar. Liking was a strange thing to feel for a nine-foot armoured grasshopper with forearms like a lobster and a walk like a tyrannosaurus’ run, but a sympathy existed between them – and would continue to exist until he was killed in the ring, Javlin thought. With his bottom on the cold bench, he knew that Ik So would not betray him into a double double. The redul had had to obey the promoter’s orders. Ik So needed his twelfth victory, so that he could free Javlin to help him train the other species down at the gladiatorial farm. Both of them knew that would be an effective partnership.

So. Now was the time for luck to be with Javlin again.

He sank onto his knees and looked down at the stone, brought his forehead down onto it, gazed down into the earth, into the cold ground, the warm rocks, the molten core, trying to visualise each, to draw from them attributes that would help him: cold for his brain, warm for his temper, molten for his energies.

Strengthened by prayer, he stood up. The redul workers had yet to bring him his armour and the partner he was to fight with. He had long since learned the ability to wait without resenting waiting. With professional care, he exercised himself slowly, checking the proper function of each muscle. As he did so, he heard the crowds cheer in the arena. He turned to peer out of the cell’s further door, an affair of tightly set bars that allowed a narrow view of the combat area and the stands beyond.

There was a centaur out there in the sunlight, fighting an Aldebaran bat-leopard. The centaur wore no armour but an iron cuirass; he had no weapons but his hooves and his hands. The bat-leopard, though its wings were clipped to prevent it flying out of the stadium, had dangerous claws and a great turn of speed. Only because its tongue had been cut out, ruining its echo-location system, was the contest anything like fair. The concept of fairness was lost upon the reduls, though; they preferred blood to justice.

Javlin saw the kill. The centaur, a gallant creature with a human-like head and an immense gold mane that began from his eyebrows, was plainly tiring. He eluded the bat-leopard as it swooped down on him, wheeling quickly around on his hind legs and trampling on its wing. But the bat-leopard turned and raked the other’s legs with a slash of claws. The centaur toppled hamstrung to the ground. As he fell, he lashed out savagely with his forelegs, but the bat-leopard nipped in and tore his throat from side to side above the cuirass. It then dragged itself away under its mottled wings, like a lame prima donna dressed in a leather cape.