The Second Murray Leinster Megapack (79 page)

He waited. But still he had no hope. When he heard the snapping of rifles brought to present arms, he barely lifted his eyebrows. He did, though, permit himself an almost imperceptible shrug when a short, stocky man in a general’s uniform came into the room. This grandiose person was that former harness-maker who had been appointed by a neighboring country to be the puppet dictator of Mr. Czagy’s homeland. He stared ominously at Mr. Czagy, who did not quail. Then, amazingly, the dictator smiled lightly at Mr. Czagy.

“You are Andrei Czagy,” said the titular ruler of Mr. Czagy’s native country. “You are a very famous person, my dear sir! It has been a long time since you visited us!”

“Because,” said Mr. Czagy, “you have been so anxious to stand me against a wall to be shot.”

The dictator nodded.

“True… But that is not necessarily the case now. You have made a name for yourself in America, as a nuclear physicist. If you should wish to reenter your country’s service—”

“It is rather late for that, Excellency,” said Mr. Czagy, very dryly indeed. “War begins tomorrow.”

“Why do you say that?” demanded the dictator.

“Lately,” explained Mr. Czagy, “I worked on counter-measures against atomic-dust bombardment. Tomorrow is the date when clouds of radioactive dust are expected to land in America.”

The stocky man said, “What counter-measures were devised?”

“None,” said Mr. Czagy. “There is no defense against atomic bombs or dust. The dust is the deadlier weapon.”

“America will use it?”

“Both sides will use it,” said Mr. Czagy. He added, “Atomic bombs are obsolete.”

There was silence. The titular ruler of Mr. Czagy’s home country paced up and down. He strutted—a harness-maker ruler in a palace that had known a hundred kings. He said suddenly:

“Why did you come back?”

“I was homesick,” admitted Mr. Czagy. “I wished to see the scenes of my childhood before—”

“Before what?” The question was barked at him.

“Before the end of the world,” said Mr. Czagy mildly.

The stocky dictator ceased his pacing. He paused, and his manner changed with theatrical suddenness to menace.

“You have acted,” barked the dictator, “like a madman! But you are one of the half dozen most eminent nuclear physicists in the world! You have spoke repeatedly of the end of the world, which is nonsense! But you have acted as if you believed it!”

“The end of the world,” said Mr. Czagy, “is unfortunately not nonsense. I myself made the experiment which proved it.”

The dictator stopped short.

“An experiment which proved it? You will tell me!”

“Both sides will use it,” said Mr. Czagy. “I and my associates merely spread some of the radioactive dust both sides will use in the coming war, upon a sample patch of land. A small area. We used the standard military concentration. And we waited. In twenty-four hours, everything on the dusted area was dead. Everything. Plants, insects, and even bacteria. The dust remained radioactive, of course. It kills by its mere presence. In a week, everything had shriveled to ashes—plants and leaves and all. The dusted space was a tiny desert.”

The dictator said impatiently, “But that is no new experiment!”

“But it was!” said Mr. Czagy. “We did not immediately set to work to recover the atomic dust, because it is so precious a material. We left it, as it would be left in actual war. It lay on the desert it had made. And winds blew across that desert and dust-clouds arose. And the dust-clouds contained the material that had made the desert. So the dust was carried on the wind—and it settled again. It was spread more thinly, this second time. Everything, where it descended, did not die for forty-eight hours! But in eight days everything on this second area was dead, too, and crumbled to ash. There was another desert. It was larger than the first. And presently winds blew across it and dust-clouds arose.…”

“Go on!”

“Military dust,” said Mr. Czagy, “has a half-life of two years, because a shorter-lived dust is hard to store and to accumulate. But even so it breaks down more than twelve hundred times as fast as radium, and hence is so much more deadly. The load of a single guided missile should destroy all life in two thousand square kilometers of land within twenty-four hours. It is,” he added, “nearly thirty per cent more effective than an explosive atomic bomb, for immediate military results. But in a week that two thousand square kilometers is a desert. Winds blow, and in another week there is a desert of five thousand square kilometers. In a month, ten thousand. In three months—fifty. As it spreads to larger spaces, of course, it kills more slowly, but always it kills. Where there is moisture there is life, and the dust clings to moisture. But when it has made a desert it is free to ride the winds again to find other moisture and other life to kill.”

The dictator glared furiously.

“It loses half its deadliness in two years,” Mr. Czagy finished, without emphasis. “But In that time, with favorable winds, the dust carried by one missile—one, Excellency—will make half a million square kilometers of land into a desert in which not one plant or insect or human being remains alive. If America is bombarded, it will retaliate. And in all Europe there are just a few more than six million square kilometers of area. I leave the arithmetic to you.

“You,” said Mr. Czagy, “are just as futile and as helpless as I am, Excellency. Stupidity conquers all. Your elevation and that of your kind was a trivial victory. Now comes overwhelming triumph over reason and logic and faith and hope—by stupidity. Even you, Excellency, are helpless against the stupidity which raised you and your kind to authority!”

The stocky man flared into open rage.

“Futile, am I?” he roared. “Stupid? You will see!
Guards!
Take this man out—”

* * * *

The plane rose heavily from the runway and climbed into the dawnlit sky. It was two thousand feet up when the sun’s rays struck it.

Mr. Czagy was very pale. He looked utterly exhausted. The American military officer with him was bluff and ruddy and, well-fed.

“No bombs yet!” he said. “Maybe you pulled it off, eh? You think so?”

“There will be no bombs,” said Mr. Czagy tiredly. “The government which was to have been our enemy is in the city down below. It moved into a puppet nation—supposedly neutral—to run the war from safety while we did what damage we could. It knew we would not bomb a neutral country! Admitting their presence—even under threat of having it revealed—is assurance that there will be no bombs today. And they released me to give their unofficial assurance of a desire for peace.”

“Eh?” said the American colonel. “D’you mean the enemy government was all down below? The old Uncle himself?”

“He was in the next room,” said Mr. Czagy. “He heard all that I said. He was convinced that a man of my stature as a scientist would not act as I had unless he knew the end of the world was at hand. So he called off the war.”

He closed his eyes. The reaction, for Mr. Czagy, was more than that of a mere reprieve from death. It was a reprieve for all that he had believed in, and all the hopes men have hoped for a thousand years. But the American colonel hrrrrrumphed cheerfully.

“Good work!” he exclaimed. “Splendid work! You bluffed him!”

Mr. Czagy opened his eyes again. They were full of a weary hatred.

“It was not a bluff,” he said. “It was the truth. Our enemies will make a test and be sure that it was the truth. The world of stupidity we have known is dead. Mankind almost died with it. But there is now a thin and faint and remote hope for a new world in which men will stumble toward reason because they know that stupidity is death.”

*

THIS STAR SHALL BE FREE

(Originally Published in 1949)

The urge was part of an Antarean experiment in artificial ecological imbalance, though of course the cave folk could not guess that. They were savages with no interest in science or, indeed, in anything much except filling their bellies and satisfying other primal urges. They inhabited a series of caves in a chalk formation above a river that ran through primordial England and France before it joined the Rhine and emptied into the sea.

They did not understand the urge at all—which was natural. It followed the disappearance of the ship from Antares by a full two hours, so they saw no connection between the two. Anyhow, it was just a vague, indefinite desire to move to the eastward—an impulse for which they had no explanation whatever.

Tork was spearing fish from a rock out in the river when the ship passed overhead. He was a young man, still gangling and awkward. He wasn’t up to a fight with One-Ear yet, and had a bad time in consequence. One-Ear was the boss male of the cave-dwellers’ colony in the cliff over the river. He wanted to chase Tork away or kill him, and Tork had to be on guard every second. But he felt safe out on his rock.

He had just speared a fine ganoid when he heard a howl of terror from the shore. He jerked his head around. He saw Bent-Leg, the other adult male, go hobbling in terror toward his own cave mouth, and he saw One-Ear knock two of his wives and three children off the ladder to his cave so he could get in first. The others shrieked and popped into whatever crevice was at hand, including the small opening in which Tork himself slept when he dared. Then there was stillness.

Tork stared blankly. He saw no cause for alarm ashore. He ran his eyes along the top of the cliff. He saw birch and beech and oak, growing above the chalk. His eyes swept the stream. There were old-men’s stories of sea monsters coming all the way up from the deep bay (which would some day be the English Channel). But the surface of the river was undisturbed. He scanned the farther shore. There were still a few of the low-browed ogres from whom Tork’s people had taken this land, but Tork knew that he could outrun or outswim them. And there were none of them in sight, either.

All was quiet. Tork grew curious and stood up on his rock. Then he saw the ship.

It was an ovoid of polished, silvery metal. It was huge, two hundred feet by three hundred, and it floated tranquilly a hundred yards above the treetops. It moved to the stream and then drifted smoothly in a new direction up the river. It was going to pass directly over Tork’s head.

It was so strange as to be unthinkable, and therefore it smote Tork with a terror past expression. He froze into a paralytic stillness, staring up at it. It made no sound. It had no features. Its perfectly reflecting sides presented to Tork’s dazed eyes a distorted oval reflection of the river and the stream banks and the cliffs and all the countryside for many miles around. He did not recognize the reflection. To him it seemed that the thing’s hide was mottled and that the mottlings shifted in a horrifying fashion.

It floated on, unwavering, as if its mass were too great to be affected by the gentle wind. Tork stood frozen in the ultimate catalepsy of a man faced with terror neither to be fought nor fled from. He did not see the small, spidery frameworks built out from the shining hull. He did not see the tiny tubes moving this way and that, as if peering. He did not see several of the tubes converging upon him. He was numbed, dazed.

Nothing happened. The silver ovoid swam smoothly above the river. Presently the river curved, and the ship from Antares went on tranquilly above the land. A little later it rose to clear a range of low hills. Later still, it vanished behind them.

When he recovered, Tork swam ashore with his fish, shouting vaingloriously that there was nothing to be afraid of. Heads popped timorously into view. Children appeared first, then grownups. One-Ear appeared last of all, with his red-rimmed eyes and whiskery truculence. There were babblings; then they died down. The cave folk could not talk about the thing. They had no words for it. There were no precedents, however far-fetched, to compare it with. They babbled of their fright, but they could not talk about its cause.

In an hour, it appeared to have been forgotten. Tork cooked his fish. When his belly was quite full, a young girl named Berry stopped cautiously some yards away from him. She was at once shy and bold.

“You have much fish,” she said, with a toss of her head.

“Too much,” said Tork complacently. “I need a woman to help eat it.”

He looked at her. She was probably One-Ear’s daughter, but she was slim and curved and desirable where he was bloated and gross and bad-tempered. An interesting, speculative idea occurred to Tork. He grinned tentatively.

She said, “One-Ear smelled your fish. He sent me to get some. Shall I tell him he is a woman if he eats it?”

Her eyes were intent, not quite mocking. Tork scowled. To let her give such a message would be to challenge One-Ear to mortal combat, and One-Ear was twenty years older and sixty pounds heavier than Tork. He tossed the girl a fish, all cooked and greasy as it was.

“I give you the fish,” said Tork grandly. “Eat it or give it to One-Ear. I don’t care!”

She caught the fish expertly. Her eyes lingered on him as she turned away. She turned again to peer at him over her shoulder as she climbed the ladder to One-Ear’s cave.

At just about that time the urge came to Tork. He suddenly wanted to travel eastward.

Travel, to the cave folk, was peril undiluted. They had clubs and fish spears which were simply sharpened sticks. They had nothing else. Wolves had not yet been taught to fear men. The giant hyena still prowled the wild. There were cave bears and innumerable beasts no man of Tork’s people could hope to cope with save by climbing the nearest tree. To want to travel anywhere was folly. To travel eastward, where a sabertooth was rumored to den, was madness. Tork decided not to go.