The Early Asimov. Volume 1 Read online

“I’ll explain, and if you listen carefully you may understand me. This ship is built like a vacuum bottle. It gains heat only with the greatest of difficulty and loses it likewise.” He paused and let his words sink in. “At ordinary temperatures this ship is not supposed to lose more than two degrees a day if no outside sources of heat are supplied. Perhaps at the temperature at which we were, the loss might amount to five degrees a day. Do you get me?”

  Roy’s mouth was open wide and Jimmy continued. “Now this blasted ship has lost fifty degrees in less than three days.”

  “But that’s impossible.”

  “There it is.” Jimmy pointed ironically. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong. It’s that damn Field. It acts as a repulsive agent towards electromagnetic radiations and somehow is hastening the loss of heat of our ship.”

  Roy sank into thought and did some rapid mental calculations. “If what you say is true,” he said at length, “we’ll hit freezing point in five days and then spend a week in what amounts to winter weather.”

  “That’s right. Even allowing for the decrease in heat-loss as the temperature is lowered, we’ll probably end up with the mercury anywhere between thirty and forty below.”

  Roy gulped unhappily. “And at twenty million miles away from the sun!”

  “That isn’t the worst,” Jimmy pointed out. “This ship, like all others used for travel within the orbit of Mars, has no heating system. With the sun shining like fury and no way to lose heat except by ineffectual radiation, Mars and Venus space-ships have always specialized in cooling systems. We, for instance, have a very efficient refrigeration device.”

  “We’re in a devil of a fix, then. The same applies to our space suits.”

  In spite of the still roasting temperature, the two were beginning to experience a few anticipatory chills.

  “Say, I’m not going to stand this,” Roy burst out. “I vote we get out of here right now and head for Earth. They can’t expect more of us.”

  “Go ahead! You’re the pilot. Can you plot a course at this distance from the sun and guarantee that we won’t fall into the sun?”

  “Hell! I hadn’t thought of that.”

  The two were at their wits’ end. Communication via radio had been impossible ever since they had passed Mercury’s orbit. The sun was at sunspot maximum and static had drowned out all attempts.

  So they settled down to wait.

  The next few days were taken up entirely with thermometer watching, with a few minutes taken out here and there when one of the two happened to think of an unused malediction to hurl at the head of Mr. Frank McCutcheon. Eating and sleeping were indulged in, but not enjoyed.

  And meanwhile, the Helios , entirely unconcerned in the plight of its occupants, blasted on.

  As Roy had predicted, the temperature passed the red line marked “Freezing” towards the end of their seventh day in the Deflection Belt. The two were remarkably unhappy when this happened even though they had expected it.

  Jimmy had drawn off about a hundred gallons of water from the tank. With this he had filled almost every vessel on board.

  “It might,” he pointed out, “save the pipes from bursting when the water freezes. And if they do, as is probable, it is just as well that we supply ourselves with plenty of available water. We have to stay here another week, you know.”

  And on the next day, the eighth, the water froze. There were the buckets, overflowing with ice, standing chill and bluecold. The two gazed at them forlornly. Jimmy broke one open.

  “Frozen solid,” he said bleakly and wrapped another sheet about himself.

  It was hard to think of anything but the increasing cold now. Roy and Jimmy had requisitioned every sheet and blanket on the ship, after having put on three or four shirts and a like number of pairs of pants.

  They kept in bed for as long as they were able, and when forced to move out, they huddled near the small oil-burner for warmth. Even this doubtful pleasure was soon denied them, for, as Jimmy remarked, “the oil supply is extremely limited and we will need the burner to thaw out the water and food.”

  Tempers were short and clashes frequent, but the common misery kept them from actually jumping on each other’s throats. It was on the tenth day, however, that the two, united by a common hatred, suddenly became friends.

  The temperature was hovering down near the zero point, making up its mind to descend into the minus regions. Jimmy was huddled in a corner thinking of the times back in New York when he had complained of the August heat and wondered how he could have done so. Roy, meanwhile, had manipulated numb fingers long enough to calculate that they would have to endure the coldness for exactly 6354 minutes more.

  He regarded the figures with distaste and read them off to Jimmy. The latter Scowled and grunted, ”The way I feel, I’m not going to last 54 minutes, let alone 6354.” Then, impatiently, “I wish you could manage to think of some way of getting us out of this.”

  “If we weren’t so near the sun,” suggested Roy, “we might start the rear blasts and hurry us up.”

  “Yes, and if we landed in the sun, we’d be nice and warm. You’re a big help!”

  “Well, you’re the one that calls himself ‘Brains’ Turner. You think of something. The way you talk, you’d think all this was my fault.”

  “It certainly is, you donkey in human clothing! My better judgment told me all along not to go on this fool trip. When McCutcheon proposed it, I refused pointblank. I know better.” Jimmy was very bitter. “So what happened? Like the fool you are, you accept and rush in where sensible men fear to tread. And then, of course. I naturally had to tag along.

  “Why, do you know what I should have done,” Jimmy’s voice ascended the scale, “I should have let you go alone and freeze and then sat down by a roaring fire all by myself and gloated. That is, if I had known what was going to happen.”

  A hurt and surprised look appeared on Roy’s face. “Is that so? So that’s how it is! Well, all I can say is that you certainly have a genius for twisting facts, if for nothing else. The fact of the matter is that you were unutterably stupid enough to accept and I the poor fellow raked in by the force of circumstances.”

  Jimmy’s expression was one of the utmost disdain. “Evidently the cold has driven you batty, though I admit it wouldn’t take much to knock the little sense you possess out of you.”

  “Listen,” Roy answered hotly. “On October 10th, McCutcheon called me up on the ‘visor and told me you had accepted and laughed at me for a yellow-belly for refusing to go. Do you deny that?”

  “Yes, I do, and unconditionally. On October 10, Sourpass told me that you had decided to go and had bet him that-”

  Jimmy’s voice faded away very suddenly and a shocked look spread over his face. “Say-, are you sure McCutcheon told you I had agreed to go?”

  A chill, clammy feeling clutched at Roy’s heart when he caught Jimmy’s drift, a feeling that drowned out the numbness of the cold.

  “Absolutely,” he answered. “I’ll swear to that. That’s why I went.”

  “But he told me you had accepted and that’s why / went.” Jimmy felt very stupid all at once.

  The two fell into a protracted and ominous silence which was broken at length by Roy, who spoke in a voice that quivered with emotion.

  “Jimmy, we’ve been the victims of a contemptible, dirty, lowdown, doublecrossing trick.” His eyes dilated with fury. “We’ve been cheated, robbed-,” words failed him but he kept on uttering meaningless sounds, indicative mainly of devouring rage.

  Jimmy was cooler, but none the less vindictive, “You’re right, Roy; McCutcheon has done us dirty. He has plumbed the depths of human iniquity. But we’ll get even. When we get through in 6300 odd minutes, we will have a score to settle with Mr. McCutcheon.”

  “What are we going to do?” Roy’s eyes were filled with a bloodthirsty joy.

  “On the spur of the moment, I suggest that we simply tear into him and rend him into tiny, little pieces.”

 
; “Not gruesome enough. How about boiling him in oil?”

  “That’s reasonable, yes; but it might take too long. Let’s give him a good old-fashioned beating-with brass knuckles.”

  Roy rubbed his hands. “We’ll have lots of time to think up some really adequate measures. The dirty. God-forsaken, yellow-livered, leprous-” The rest verged fluently into the unprintable.

  And for four more days, the temperature dove. It was on the fourteenth and last day that the mercury froze, the solid red shaft pointed its congealed finger at forty below.

  On this terrible last day, they had lit the oil-burner, using their entire scanty supply of oil. Shivering and more than half frozen, they crouched close, attempting to extract every last drop of heat.

  Jimmy had found a pair of ear-muffs several days before in some obscure corner, and it now changed hands at the end of every hour. Both sat buried under a small mountain of blankets, chafing chilled hands and feet. With every passing minute, their conversation, concerning McCutcheon almost exclusively, grew more vitriolic.

  “Always quoting that triply-damned slogan of the Space Mail: ‘Our flight through sp-’ “ Jimmy choked with impotent fury.

  “Yes, and always rubbing holes in chairs instead of coming out here and doing something like a man’s work, the rotten so-and-so,” agreed Roy.

  “Well, we’re due to pass out of the deflection zone in two hours. Then three weeks and we’ll be on Venus,” said Jimmy, sneezing.

  “That can’t be too soon for me,” answered Sneed, who had been sniffling for the last two days. “I’m never taking another space trip except maybe the one that takes me back to Earth. After this, I make my living growing bananas in Central America. A fellow can be decently warm out there at least.”

  “We might not get off Venus, after what we’re going to do to McCutcheon.”

  “No, you’re right there. But that’s all right. Venus is even warmer than Central America and that’s all I care about.”

  “We have no legal worries either,” Jimmy sneezed again. “On Venus, life imprisonment’s the limit for first-degree murder. A nice,-warm dry cell for the rest of my life. What could be sweeter?”

  The second hand on the chronometer whirled at its even pace; the minutes ticked off. Roy’s hands hovered lovingly over the lever that would set off the right rear blasts which would drive the Helios out away from the sun and from that terrible Deflection Zone.

  And at last, “Go!” shouted Jimmy eagerly. “Let her blast!”

  With a deep reverberating roar, the rockets fired. The Helios trembled from stem to stern. The pilots felt the acceleration press them back into their seats and were happy. In a matter of minutes, the sun would shine again and they would be warm, feel the blessed heat once more.

  It happened before they were aware of it. There was a momentary flash of light and then a grinding and a click, as the sunward portholes closed.

  “Look,” cried Roy, “the stars! We’re out of it!” He cast an ecstatically happy glance at the thermometer. “Well, old boy, from now on we go up again.” He pulled the blankets about him closer, for the cold still lingered.

  There were two men in Frank McCutcheon’s office at the Venus branch of the United Space Mail: McCutcheon himself and the elderly, white-haired Zebulon Smith, inventor of the Deflection Field. Smith was talking.

  “But Mr. McCutcheon, it is really of great importance that I learn exactly how my Deflection Field worked. Surely they have transmitted all possible information to you.”

  McCutcheon’s face was a study in dourness as he bit the edge off one of his two-for-five cigars and lit it.

  “That, my dear Mr. Smith,” he said, “is exactly what they did not do. Ever since they have receded far enough from the sun to render communication possible, I have been sending requests for information regarding the practicability of the Field. They just refuse to answer. They say it worked and that they’re alive and that they’ll give the details when they reach Venus. That’s all!”

  Zebulon Smith sighed in disappointment. “Isn’t that a bit unusual; insubordination, so to speak? I thought they were required to be complete in their reports and to give any requested details.”

  “So they are. But these are my ace pilots and rather temperamental. We have to extend some leeway. Besides, I tricked them into going on this trip, a very hazardous one, as you know, and so am inclined to be lenient.”

  “Well, then, I suppose I must wait.”

  “Oh, it won’t be for long,” McCutcheon assured him. “They’re due today, and I assure you that as soon as I get in touch with them, I shall send you the full details. After all, they survived for two weeks at a distance of twenty million miles from the sun, so your invention is a success. That should satisfy you.”

  Smith had scarcely left when McCutcheon’s secretary entered with a puzzled frown on her face.

  “Something is wrong with the two pilots of the Helios , Mr. McCutcheon,” she informed him. “I have just received a bulletin from Major Wade at Pallas City, where they landed. They have refused to attend the celebration prepared for them, but instead immediately chartered a rocket to come here, refusing to state the reason. When Major Wade tried to stop them, they became violent, he says.” She laid the communication down on his desk.

  McCutcheon glanced at it perfunctorily. “Hmm! they do seem confoundedly temperamental. Well, send them to me when they come. I’ll snap them out of it.”

  It was perhaps three hours later that the problem of the two misbehaving pilots again forced itself upon his mind, this time by a sudden commotion that had arisen in the reception room. He heard the deep angry tones of two men and then the shrill remonstrances of his secretary. Suddenly the door burst open and Jim Turner and Roy Snead strode in.

  Roy coolly closed the door and planted his back against it.

  “Don’t let anyone disturb me until I’m through,” Jimmy told him.

  “No one’s getting through this door for a while,” Roy answered grimly, “but remember, you promised to leave some for me.”

  McCutcheon said nothing during all this, but when he saw Turner casually draw a pair of brass knuckles from his pocket and put them on with a determined air, he decided that it was time to call a halt to the comedy.

  “Hello, boys,” he said, with a heartiness unusual in him. “Glad to see you again. Take a seat.”

  Jimmy ignored the offer. “Have you anything to say, any last request, before I start operations?” He gritted his teeth with an unpleasant scraping noise.

  “Well, if you put it that way,” said McCutcheon, “I might ask exactly what this is all about-if I’m not being too unreasonable. Perhaps the Deflector was inefficient and you had a hot trip.”

  The only answer to that was a loud snort from Roy and a cold stare on the part of Jimmy.

  “First,” said the latter, “what was the idea of that filthy, disgusting cheat you pulled on us?”

  McCutcheon’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “Do you mean the little white lies I told you in order to get you to go? Why, that was nothing. Common business practice, that’s all. Why, I pull worse things than that every day and people consider it just routine. Besides, what harm did it do you?”

  “Tell him about our ‘pleasant trip,’ Jimmy,” urged Roy.

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” was the response. He turned to McCutcheon and assumed a martyr-like air. “First, on this blasted trip, we fried in a temperature that reached 150 but that was to be expected and we’re not complaining; we were half Mercury’s distance from the sun.

  “But after that, we entered this zone where the light bends around us; incoming radiation sank to zero and we started losing heat and not just a degree a day the way we learned it in pilot school.” He paused to breathe a few novel curses he had just thought of, then continued.

  ““In three days, we were down to a hundred and in a week down to freezing. Then for one entire week, seven long days, we drove through our course at sub-fr
eezing temperature. It was so cold the last day that the mercury froze.” Turner’s voice rose till it cracked, and at the door, a fit of self-pity caused Roy to catch his breath with an audible gulp. McCutcheon remained inscrutable.

  Jimmy continued. “There we were without a heating system, in fact, no heat of any kind, not even any warm clothing. We froze, damn it; we had to thaw out our food and melt our water. We were stiff, couldn’t move. It was hell, I tell you, in reverse temperature.” He paused, at a loss for words.

  Roy Snead took up the burden. “We were twenty million miles away from the sun and I had a case of frost-bitten ears. Frost-bitten, I say.” He shook his fist viciously under McCutcheon’s nose. “And it was your fault. You tricked us into it! While we were freezing, we promised ourselves that we’d come back and get you and we’re going to keep that promise.” He turned to Jimmy. “Go ahead, start it, will you? We’ve wasted enough time.”

  “Hold it, hoys,” McCutcheon spoke at last. “Let me get this straight. You mean to say that the Deflection Field worked so well that it kept all the radiation away and sucked out what heat there was in the ship in the first place?” Jimmy grunted a curt assent.

  “And you froze for a week because of that?” McCutcheon continued.

  Again the grunt.

  And then a very strange and unusual thing happened. McCutcheon, “Old, Sourpuss,” the man without the “risus” muscle, smiled. He actually bared his teeth in a grin. And what’s more, the grin grew wider and wider until finally a rusty, long-unused chuckle was heard louder and louder, until it developed into a full-fledged laugh, and the laugh into a bellow. In one stentorian burst, McCutcheon made up for a lifetime of sour gloom.

  The walls reverberated, the windowpanes rattled, and still the Homeric laughter continued. Roy and Jimmy stood openmouthed, entirely non-plussed. A puzzled bookkeeper thrust his head inside the door in a fit of temerity and remained frozen in his tracks. Others crowded about the door, conversing in awed whispers. McCutcheon had laughed!

  Gradually, the risibilities of the old General Manager subsided. He ended in a fit of choking and finally turned a purple face towards his ace pilots, whose surprise had long since given way to indignation.