Ellison Wonderland (10 page)

“The lemmings,” I said. “You know the lemmings. For no reason, for some deep instinctual surging, they follow each other, and periodically throw themselves off the cliffs. They follow one another down to destruction. A racial trait. It was that way with the creature and his people. They came across the mega–galaxies to kill themselves here. To commit mass suicide in our solar system. To burn up in the atmosphere of Mars and Mercury and Venus and Earth, and to die, that's all. Just to die.”

His face was stunned. I could see he comprehended that. But what did it matter? That was not what had made Leus and the nine kill themselves, that was not what filled me with such a feeling of frustration. The drive of one race was not the drive of another.

“But — but — I don't underst — ”

I cut him off.

“That was what Ithk said.”

“But why did they come
here
to die?” he asked, confused. “Why
here
and not some other solar system or galaxy?”

That was what Ithk had said. That was what we had wondered in our minds — damn us for asking — and in its simple way, Ithk had answered.

“Because,” I explained slowly, softly, “this is the end of the Universe.”

His face did not register comprehension. I could see it was a concept he could not grasp. That the solar system, Earth's system, the backyard of Earth to be precise, was the end of the Universe. Like the flat world over which Columbus would have sailed, into nothingness. This was the end of it all. Out there, in the other direction, lay a known Universe, with an end to it . . . but they — Ithk's people — ruled it. It was theirs, and would always be theirs. For they had racial memory burnt into each embryo child born to their race, so they would never stagnate. After every lemming race, a new generation was born, that would live for thousands of years, and advance. They would go on till they came here to flame out in our atmosphere. But they would rule what they had while they had it.

So to us, to the driving, unquenchably curious, seeking and roaming Earthman, whose life was tied up with wanting to know,
needing
to know, there was nothing left. Ashes. The dust of our own system. And after that, nothing.

We were at a dead end. There could be no wandering among the stars. It was not that we
couldn't
go. We could. But we would be tolerated. It was
their
Universe, and this, our Earth, was the dead end.

Ithk had not known what it was doing when it said that to us. It had meant no evil, but it had doomed some of us. Those of us who dreamed. Those of us who wanted more than what Portales wanted.

I turned away from him and looked up.

The sky was burning.

I held very tightly to the bottle of sleeping tablets in my pocket. So much light up there.

Bluntly put, the following story has truly been used. I am always astounded at writers who sell and re–sell and re–re–sell their stories or books, wringing every last possible penny from them. But in the case of the following epic, I can truly say I take backseat to no man. The idea occurred to me in my first days at Ohio State University, back in the early Fifties. I wrote it and it was published in the Ohio State
Sundial,
the humor magazine I later edited. When I got to New York in 1956, I submitted the idea as story–continuity to EC Publications, now the producers of
Mad
magazine, then the producers of such goodies as
Weird Science–Fantasy
comics, in which this story appeared as “Upheaval.” Between these two appearances, however, the story showed up in the amateur science fiction magazine I published
, Dimensions.
In that incarnation it was called “Green Odyssey.” Eventually, I wrote it as a full short story and it appeared in Bill Hamling's short–lived
Space Travel Magazine.
No two of these setting–downs were alike, incidentally. Then the radio performance rights were purchased by an outfit that was planning to revive
Dimension X
for Sunday listening on the Mutual Broadcasting System. It never got off the ground, but I had been paid, so that was another sale. There may have been another conversion or two of this story, but I can't remember right now if such was the case. What I do remember is that the basic tenet of this story
— You ain't as hot an item as you think, Chollie! —
has appealed to every editor who has seen it. Which speaks well for mankind, I guess, if you think there's validity in the encounter viewed in

While the ship
Circe
burned its way like some eternal Roman Candle through the surrounding dark of forever, within:

“You make me sick, Dembois! Absolutely sick to my gut!”

“Sick? Why you sleazy crumb, I ought to break you in half! Who the hell do you think you're — ”

“All right! Now! That's it from the both of you. I've got enough on my hands now with just getting there and back — I said knock it
off
, Kradter — just getting there and back, and I've heard enough swill from both of you on this trip! So kill it before I take a spanner to your heads. Read me?”

There were three of them riding the flame to the stars. Three on a Catalog Ship sent to chart the planets of unknown stars, and to take brief studies of the worlds themselves. They were three months out, on a jump between their last world — an ivy–covered ball of green they had named Garbo because it was the single planet of its star — and their next one, which had no name. Nor chart position; nor star whose light had reached the Earth as yet. But there was another island of star clusters across this immensity of black between galaxies, and as soon as they had hopped it through Inverspace, they would find yet another shining light to draw them on.

It had been that way for over one year and nine months. They had catalogued over two–hundred and twenty worlds, each one different from its predecessors.

But the work was not enough. Time hangs like an albatross about the neck of the space–wanderer. He sees blackness all about him, and occasionally the starshine, and even more occasionally the crazy–quilt patchwork that is Inverspace. There is no radio contact with Earth. There is little recreation and even less provision made to keep fit and alert.

But nature knows when its creatures need sharpening. So, the arguments.

There were three of them: Kradter, who was descended from Prussians, and had the look of them. Tall, with heavily–muscled torso and the square, close–cropped blond hair of his ancestors. Rigid in his thinking unless pried forcibly from the clutch of his convictions. Poverty and determination had combined to bring him into the high–paying but dangerous SeekServ branch of the Navy. He was a Lieutenant, with the opinion that rank was unimportant, only drive was essential.

The second was Dembois, who was a bigot.

He came from Louisiana wealth, and his background was one of idleness, dissipation and revelry. A serious affair with a lovely quadroon girl had forced his father to order the boy out of the city, and into the Navy. Authority and wealth and position had saved Dembois from a prison sentence, but for him the Navy was sentence enough. He despised the SeekServ, and it was for that reason he had joined it. Self–punishment, in the adolescent “Look how I'm suffering, aren't you sorry you threw me out of the house!” tradition had prompted his signing–on. He loathed the furry and tracked and tentacled and finned and feathered aliens he discovered on the worlds of space.

He hated Negros and Jews, Catholics and Orientals. He was uncomfortable in the presence of poor people, sick people, crippled people or hungry people. Yet there was a fierce determination in him, also. What he wanted to do, he did thoroughly and well; what he did not want to do, but knew he
must
do, he did in a similar fashion. He was an Ensign II.

The third was the Captain of the
Circe
.

His past was the reflective, mysterious face of a mirror; any man might look, but all he would see was the image of himself. No more. His past was silent in its shell, but its form was there to be seen in the man. His name was Calk.

His personality dominated the
Circe
, held the other two in check. Calk was strong, perhaps too strong for his own good. The bickering was beginning to tell on him.

“What the hell was it all about
this
time?”

Dembois and Kradter spoke together, their voices rising automatically in anger as they found competition. Calk was forced to shut them up again. Then he motioned to Kradter. “Okay. You first. What was it this time?”

Kradter looked disgruntled, and yanked his pipe from where it was thrust pistol–like in his belt. He dug a finger into the blackened bowl and growled something unintelligible.

“Well, now look, Kradter, if you want to say something, say it. If you don't, there isn't an argument, nothing to settle, and I can go the blazes back to my plot–tank.”

Kradter looked up, as though ready to throw a string of cursewords, but merely said, instead, “We were arguing the nobility of Man.”

Calk's eyebrows went up. They were thick and black, and gave the ludicrous impression of two slanted caterpillars inching up his forehead.

Kradter explained hurriedly, expecting Dembois to interrupt at any moment. “I was saying that the poor slobs we find on these worlds
deserve
human care. It's our
obligation
to these lesser creatures to provide them with the comforts a greater race can offer.”

Dembois snorted, and Calk looked over sharply. “Now, what was your beef, that you wanted to start a brawl?”

Dembois looked angrily at Kradter. “And I say it's not our place to do
any
thing for these stinking savages. The only thing we owe them is conquest. They'd overrun us in a month if we gave them the chance. Kill the bloody bastards, that's the answer to colonial expansion out here.

“Put them away for good, the first thing we see them. It's the only way we can be sure we're protected. This ass — ” he stopped at Kradter's bleat of anger, and tensed as the other man took a half–
step forward.

Calk stopped them. “Okay, knock it off. So one of you thinks we should play Big Daddy to the poor natives, and the other thinks we should mow 'em down on sight. Okay. Fine. Good. Now shut your traps and let me get our course set, or we'll wind up frying inside some red dwarf when we pop out.”

He gave them both a strange look, and murmured,
“Homo superior,”
and walked out of the lounge.

The other two sat staring at points between them. Neither spoke. No crossbow bolts were loosed.

The
Circe
moved out.

A green fog in the ever–changing pattern of Inverspace. Green, roiling, oily dark fog.

A speck of crimson that flickered and steadied and exploded into sharp golden fragments.

A lurch, a twist, the guts heaving and the puke–masks filling, and the eyeballs burning without heat. The roots of the hair straining, and the arches of the cheekbones stretching the skin tight as a corpse's. Then a gray–out, a black–out, a white–and–black–out and the ship was traveling in the normal universe again.

They were in sight of the cold, chiselled stars and the steady multi–colored stars. They were a Catalog Ship and there was work to be done. The constellation firmed out in the plot–tank, superimposing itself almost exactly over Calk's lined–in course. The CourseComp chattered eerily and the few discrepancies in course variation were merged, so that the wing–shaped constellation was directly on the Captain's pattern.

Dembois and Kradter knocked politely on the door to the control cabin, and slid it open when Calk said absently, “Come.”

“How's it set?” Dembois asked.

“About three points off, but we've corrected already,” Calk replied, indicating the plot–tank. He slipped the infrared goggles off and stuck them on their pad. “You start undogging the gear yet?”

Kradter nodded, addressing the nod totally to Calk, and Dembois's lips pursed in annoyance that the conversation had been stolen away from him. He thrust back into it with, “I hope we don't run up against any eetees. The last batch was enough to turn my stomach for quite a while.”

Kradter whirled on him again. “I thought we had this out once and for all, man. I thought you understood our job is to befriend and aid these unfortunate — ”

“Bull!” Dembois snarled. “Show me in the Regs where it says that? Show me, or shut your Heinie trap — eetee lover.”

Kradter had swung before Calk could stop him. He caught Dembois along the cheekbone and spun the smaller man. The Ensign II staggered backward, crashed into the bulkhead and slid to one knee, shaking his head. Kradter was moving forward when Calk caught him, slipping his hands under the Prussian's armpits and up behind his neck, where they locked. He dragged Kradter half off the floor in a full–nelson and shook him solidly, taking the Lieutenant's breath away.

“Now . . . knock . . . off . . . that . . . stuff!” Calk whispered loudly in Kradter's ear. He held the man completely paralyzed, his feet dangling a quarter inch off the floor. Tremendous muscles stood out on Calk's arms, beneath the sleeves of his T–shirt, and a blue pulse of nerve throbbed at his right temple.

Dembois staggered erect, clutching his face, and made a few idle stepping motions; then, in a blur, he hurled himself at Kradter and sank a doubled fist into the Lieutenant's belly. Kradter gasped and moaned softly and slumped in Calk's grasp.

The Captain dropped him, reached over with one hand and brought a judo cut down on the Ensign's neck. Dembois clattered to the deckplates beside his adversary.

Calk returned to the plotting seat, and snapped his goggles back on. Once more he murmured softly to himself:

“Homo superior!”

The three outer planets were catalogued without difficulty. The blue dwarf was not able to reach them with its rays, and they were frozen; but there were deep treasures of pitchblende and phosphorous and trace elements from which ferro–zinc could be collandered and strained with little effort. They were marked in the log as triple–A planets, well worth the trouble to reach and mine.

The center ring of planets — fifteen of them — was not as worthwhile. There were three desert worlds (too much harsh silicon), seven barren rock worlds without atmosphere, and ignored by the hand of God (nothing grew there, nothing of value), four jungle planets (one with technicolored tyrannosauri), and one oddity.

They saved the oddity for last.

Before they would catalogue the inner round of worlds — there appeared to be nineteen, though one of those they credited as being a moon of a blue and white planet might have had an atmosphere of its own — they would set down and explore the oddity.

The oddity was a pale silver globe without ground feature and without atmosphere. It was a great ball of smooth tinfoil set in the black of space, a featureless plain without hump or depression, mountain or valley, stream or even rock formation. No grass and no clouds. In fact, nothing.

They stared down at the planet inching its way to greatness in the ports. It was as though they were settling toward a gigantic beachball.

“That's impossible!” Dembois gasped.

“How can it be impossible, you clown? It's there, isn't it?” Kradter was spoiling for another fight. The pains in his stomach had not yet completely left him.

“Break!” Calk snapped. “Not this close to landfall, you two. And it may be impossible, but it's there, and we have to check it out. No telling
what
a planet like that might have beneath the surface.”

Dembois cast a sharp glance at the potentiometer and the gauging devices for composition. “They say you're wrong, Captain.”

Calk turned to the dials and studied them at length. They read zero. Not negative, as they read in space, but zero. But that, too, was impossible. The planet had to be made of
something
.

They looked at each other, and said nothing, for there was nothing to say. They had encountered a phenomenon. “Could it be contra–terrene?” The question hung unasked in the air of the control room. The only way to answer it was to test.

They shot out the missile when they were still ten miles above the smooth silver surface, and it sped down down down without hindrance of air or course correction. It hit, and exploded. But its indestructible plasteel devices continued to register on the
Circe
‘s banks, so it was apparent the planet was of matter, not the anti–matter that would disintegrate the rocket on contact.

They landed.

When the three men emerged from the ship, sliding down the landing ramp as children on a playground slide, they were encased in bulky pressure suits and clear bubble helmets. Each carried a triple–thread stun–rifle, for despite the utterly safe appearance of the planet, there was no question as to carrying weapons. Space was deep and angry at Man. Its creatures were varied and utterly unpredictable. So they never took a chance.

As they walked out across the featureless plain, their chest–consoles humming and gauging and studying, they moved in a tight triangle.

Calk, in the front, as the apex of the triangle, cast about warily, his triple–threader swinging in lazy arcs.

“Have you noticed the ground?” Kradter asked, his voice hushed and solemn as a man in a cathedral, transmitted over the intercom system.

Calk nodded, but Dembois put it into words.

“It's spongey. Springy. Like the ‘giving' floors back at SeekServ Central. What's it made of?”

“I don't know,” Calk answered, and that was the final word any of them said.

There was a shivering in the planet. A soft trembling, like a bowl of jelly. It shivered and pulsed and seemed to deepen as they stopped.

Then, through their intercoms, they heard a distinct crunch and clang, and as one they spun around. Half a mile behind them the
Circe
was trembling, tottering, falling, and then —

The planet swallowed the ship.

They screamed. Each of them, and the pitch was the same. The meaning behind the screams was the same. They were lost, stranded out here, somewhere out in the nowhere, with only the oxygen in their tanks to sustain them, and their transportation gone!

Then . . . they realized the greater danger.
The planet was carnivorous!