The Second Murray Leinster Megapack (62 page)

“The plane,” said Kenie’s father softly, “was a bomb. Which will go off when they investigate its high-speed drive. When they look at it. That’ll be in the middle of their workshops and laboratories, wherever they may be. There may not be many of them left.

“But anyhow there will be two hundred localities like ours all starting to use electricity on the same day, and they won’t quite dare to bomb any of them because then they’ll know we can now strike back.”

The two boys rocked and whooped in their saddles. They shouted. Kenie’s plaintive, “But what am I going to do?” went unheard.

They reached home, and as they dismounted in the barnyard there was a momentary feeling of insecurity underfoot. The ground seemed to tremble just a little. The barn-joists creaked and groaned. Then everything was still again. Kenie’s father nodded as young faces turned quickly to him.

“Probably,” he said softly. “Quite likely that was it. A few hundred miles away. They’ll never know how we did it, but they won’t risk trying to find out by bombing us for trying to use electricity again!”

Aloud, he said in a tired, natural voice, “Tom, I’m going to ask you to put up the horses.”

Tom moved joyfully to obey. Bub leaped to help.

Kenie caught hold of her father’s hand.

A great feat had been accomplished and the world had moved a step nearer to something more spacious and more sane. Universities and cities and television were closer.

Dread was now pushed a little farther back. The new climb of humanity was really begun.

But Kenie had a terrific problem all her own.

“Daddy!” she wailed desperately. “What can I do? You say I’m going to be Cissie’s bridesmaid! And I haven’t a thing to wear!”

*

PROPAGANDIST

(Originally Published in 1947)

You remember the Space Assassins, of course. They were that race of which no human being ever saw a living member, and escaped to tell about it afterward. You also remember the deadly, far-flung search that was made for their base, their home. They’d been sniping our ships for a long time. But then a squadron of their space fleet raided the Earth colony on Capella Three and, without warning or provocation or alternative, slaughtered every one of the colony’s half million human population. Then the hunt for them began.

This is the story of one of the incidents of that hunt—and also it’s the story of a dog named Buck.

* * * *

Buck trailed his master sedately into the control room of the light cruiser
Kennessee.
He waited patiently until the skipper looked up from the electron telescope. Then Buck’s master—Holden—sat down with the sheaf of wave records he’d brought from the communications room. Buck blinked wisely at the skipper and lay down on the floor with an audible, loose-jointed thump. He put his nose between his paws and sighed heavily. But the sigh was not of unhappiness. Buck was a simple dog. He was friendly with everybody on the
Kennessee,
from the skipper himself to the lowliest mess boy, but his master and private deity was Junior Lieutenant Holden. Whithersoever Holden went, there Buck went also—regulations permitting—and waited until Holden wanted to go somewhere else.

Now he lay on the foamite flooring. He heard his master’s voice, and the skipper’s in reply. They were concerned and uneasy. Buck dozed. Little, half-formed dreams ran through his slumber. Memory dreams, mostly of himself racing gloriously through tall grass on the green fields of Earth, with Holden always somewhere near. The voices of the two men formed a half-heard background to his dozing.

The men were troubled. The
Kennessee
rode a comet’s orbit through the solar system of Masa Gamma, her drive off and giving no sign of life. She was impersonating a barren visitor from the void, spying out the ground for what would be—if she was successful—the monstrous destruction of an entire race by planet-smasher guided missiles and the merciless weapons of an Earth fleet. The men did not like it. They’d hoped that some other ship would be the one to meet with success in its search. But they had their orders.

Some weeks back the ship had dropped from overdrive to less-than-light speed far beyond the outermost of the Masa Gamma planets. She’d decelerated to an appropriate speed and course for a wanderer, and she’d begun her ride along a comet’s path through the eleven-planet system. And almost immediately her receptors had picked up evidence of civilization here. Space-radio signals. They were unintelligible, of course, but they told that here was a civilization comparable to human culture on a technical basis. And that was what the
Kennessee,
with every other light ship of Earth’s space navy, was hunting for. There was a race which, without known contact with Earthmen, was the deadly enemy of humanity. For years past, exploring ships from Earth had dropped out of sight with ominous frequency. There had been suspicions, but no proof of an inimical race which destroyed humans wherever it came upon them. But six months ago the Earth colony on Capella Three had been wiped out, terribly, by raiders of whom nothing was known except that they were not human. So somewhere there was a race which held Earth to be its enemy. It had to be found. If it could not be negotiated with, it must be destroyed before it grew strong enough to wipe out all of humankind. And the men on the
Kennessee
knew that they might have found it on the planets of Masa Gamma. This system had never been explored before, and this civilization which had space radio might be the one—

Buck, the dog, dozed lightly on the control-room floor. Little fragments of dreams ran through his half-slumbering consciousness: the smells in the engine room; and irrelevant fragment of chasing a cat; a moment or two in which he sniffed elaborately at a tree…A slightly louder comment made him open his eyes.

“They’ve interplanetary travel, sir, at least”—that was Holden. “We’ve picked up space-radio messages from definitely between planets. It looks like this is the race we were sent to find.”

The skipper nodded.

“It could be. But if they’re to be smashed on our report, we need to make sure. That’s orders, too. Can they smash the
Kennessee?
That’s the test for the enemy. If this race can’t kill us, they’re not the enemy we’re looking for. If they can, they are. We’ve got to find out.”

“But interplanetary travel is good evidence—”

“It’s not interstellar travel,” said the skipper. “We’ll send a torp back immediately with all the data to date. But you’ve picked up no whango waves, Holden. We’ve no proof that these folk can travel between the stars. The enemy can.”

“They might be concealing the fact,” said Holden. “They’d have picked up our whango wave on arrival. They might be laying for us, waiting for us to walk into their parlor where they can smash us without a chance to fight back or report. That would be typical.”

He stood up and Buck got immediately to his four paws and wagged his tail. His master, Holden, was going to go somewhere. So Buck was going with him. He waited contentedly. To Buck, happiness was going where Holden went, being wherever Holden was, simply soaking in the sensation of being with Holden. It was a very simple pleasure, but it was all he asked of fate or chance. When Holden petted him or played roughly with him, Buck was filled with ecstatic happiness, but now he waited contentedly enough simply to follow Holden.

“What you say is true enough,” agreed the skipper. “They could be laying for us. We’ll see. A message torp will make sure that if we don’t get back our fleet will know where to come and who to smash. Then we’ll make a landing in a lifeboat. Our enemy couldn’t resist smashing that! And if it gets away, we’ll know something about their weapons, anyhow.”

“I volunteer, sir, for the lifeboat,” said Holden quickly.

“We’ll see,” said the skipper. “You get your data ready for the torp. You’re sure this record is a scanning beam? Like the old-fashioned radar? And it’s being kept on us from this fourth planet?”

“Quite sure, sir,” said Holden. “We can’t know how detailed the information may be that it takes back. Of course, it would be logical enough to scan a supposed comet—”

“Let’s hope,” said the skipper, twinkling, “that the echo from our hull says, ‘Nobody out here but us comets, boss.’ Get your stuff ready for half an hour from now, Holden.”

Holden saluted and went out of the control room. Buck went sedately after him, a large brown dog who did not bother his head over such trivia as interstellar travel or nonhuman races that massacred half a million humans with an insensate ferocity.

Buck was a very contented dog. He was with his master.

* * * *

The Planetary Council of Masa Four was in session. It was not a happy gathering. Scanning beams had reported that a supposed new comet, driving in on a perfectly convincing orbit, was actually an artifact—a spaceship. It used no drive and seemed empty of life. But it had come in through the gravitation field of the outermost planets—and it showed no sign of rotation. Which was impossible unless gyroscopes or some similar device were running within it.

“We have had one visitor from space, before,” said the Moderator of the Planetary Council. He looked very weary. “Our histories tell us of the consequences. If this is another ship of the same race, we must destroy it. Since it is attempting secrecy, such action is justified, I think. But that secrecy suggests suspicion of us—a suspicion that we may have destroyed the last visitor. If we destroy this ship also, we may be sure that suspicion will become certainty and a third visit will be made in overwhelming force. That means that we will have to convert our whole civilization for war. We will have somehow to develop an interstellar drive, and we will have to spend the rest of the time in battle for our very survival. We will have to change from a peaceful race to one with a psychology adapted only to war.”

The Spokesman for the First Continent said hopefully:

“Is it certain that this is a ship of the same race as the first? It is not of the same form. Is it certain that this race is of a not-possibly-friendly type, like the first?”

“It is not certain,” said the Moderator tiredly. “The psychological factors implied by its outer design suggest a different race. But can we risk an attempt at peaceful contact? The crew of one ship would be at our mercy. Might they not pretend friendship in order to escape with information leading to our destruction? Could we trust the friendship of any race at all which sent a single ship to spy?”

There was silence. Two centuries before, another ship had entered the Masan system. Half a planet devastated, and millions upon millions of lives, had been the cost of the destruction of that one ship. But its destruction had been necessary. Its crew made no response to peaceful overtures. Wherever they landed they destroyed, ferociously, everything savoring of a rival civilization. Especially the inhabitants. They could not be treated with—only killed.

“If,” said the Spokesman for the Third Continent wistfully, “we could capture a single member of this spaceship’s crew, we could make sure that friendship was hopeless. It is a pity we cannot make sure before—”

“It is a great pity,” said the Moderator bleakly. “To convert not only our civilization but our people to endless war, for all time, is the greatest of pities. But I do not think there is anything else to do. Will you vote upon preparations for the destruction of this ship?”

The vote was reluctant but unanimous. For war.

* * * *

The
Kennessee
sent off the torp from the aft communications room. It was not an impressive device, the torp, merely a cigar-shaped object some six feet long. After leaving the Kennessee it would drive away at thirty-five gravities’ acceleration for fifteen minutes and then go into overdrive—when it would cease to exist, as far as normal space was concerned. Its disappearance would be marked by the emission of a monstrous surge of energy—a “whango wave”—which could be detected at hundreds of millions of miles. Near home base it would come out of overdrive with the emission of another, similar, wave. The second wave was useful. From Masa Gamma to the
Kennessee’s
home base was some eighty light-years. A space-radio message transmitted by tight beam would reach home base only in time to be of interest to the crew’s great-grandchildren. But the torp would arrive within days, its reappearance wave would be picked up by a far-flung net of communications ships, and they would receive and forward the torp’s automatically transmitted messages, and later pick it up for the recovery of written data and physical specimens.

Buck was not allowed to be present at the launching. He was a large dog, and the aft communications room was in the tapering, slender tail of the Kennessee. It would be crowded. Holden ordered him out. And Buck was far too well assured, both of Holden’s affection for him and of his own worth, to be sensitive about such a matter. He knew there were times when he couldn’t be underfoot. But he also knew that he was welcome anywhere else on the ship. He went trotting sedately in search of inferior, but still human, company until his master could allow him around again.

He found crew members stocking a lifeboat for its special mission. He went companionably into the lifeboat with the working party. He wriggled into the control cubicle with the man sent to remove its records—and observed. Presently other men arrived, the work party left, and there were sundry heaving movements of the lifeboat. Buck blinked from where he lay more or less curled up on the floor. Stars shone in the lifeboat portholes. There was a glaring bright light. Unshielded sunshine from Masa Gamma came in a forward port and made a patch of incandescence on the back wall. Junior Lieutenant Maynard walked into the control cubicle and flipped the phone switch.