The Best of AE van Vogt Part 23

As she heard those words, Pat felt a hardening of her own resolve, a conviction that she had nothing to lose.

They had started up the metal gangplank that led to the airlock of Hanardy's ship. Hanardy walked blankly in front, behind him was the girl, thenRilke,and, bringing up the rear, Sween. And they reached the final few feet, Pat braced herself and spoke aloud.

"It seems wrong,-" she said.

And leaped forward. She put her hands against Hanardy and shoved him over the side of the plank.

As she expected, the Dreeghs were quick. Hanardy was still teetering over the fifty-foot drop from the narrow walk when both the man and woman were beside him. As one person, they reached over the low handrail, reached out, reached down. That swiftly they had him.

In pushing at Hanardy, Pat found herself automatically propelled by the effort of her thrust away from Hanardy and over the other edge of the plank.

As she fell, she completed in her mind the sentence she had begun: "It seems wrong ... not to put that dumb love to the uttermost test!"

10.

s.p.a.ceport, onEuropa, like other similar communities in the solar system, was not at all like an ordinary little town of four thousand human beings. If anything, it resembled an old-style naval refueling station in the South Pacific, with its military establishment and garrison. Except that the "garrison" of s.p.a.ceport consisted of technical experts who worked in complex mechanical systems for the repair and servicing of s.p.a.ceships. In addition, s.p.a.ceport was a mining post, where small craft brought their meteorite ore, gigantic plants separated the precious from the debris, and the resultant refined materials were trans-shipped to Earth.

The similarity to a South Pacific port was borne out in one other respect. Exactly as each little island post of Earth's Pacific Ocean gradually acc.u.mulated a saturation of human flotsam and jetsam, so on s.p.a.ceport there had gathered a strange tribe of s.p.a.ce b.u.ms. The tribe consisted of men and women in almost equal numbers, the size of the group being variable. Currently, it consisted of thirteen persons.

They were not exactly honest people, but they were not criminals. That was impossible. In s.p.a.ce, a person convicted of one of the basic crimes was automatically sent back to Earth and not allowed out again. However, there was a great toler-ance among enforcement officials as to what const.i.tuted a crime.

Not drunkenness, certainly, and not dope addiction, for either men or women. Any degree of normal s.e.x, paid for or not, was never the subject of investigation.

There was a reason for this lat.i.tude. The majority of the persons involved-men and women-were technically trained. They were b.u.ms because they couldn't hold a steady job, but during rush periods, a personnel officer of the pressured company could often be found down in the bars on Front Street looking for a particular individual, or group. The b.u.ms thus located might then earn good money for a week or two, or perhaps even three.

It was exactly such a personnel officer looking for exactly such lost souls who discovered all thirteen of the people he wanted-four women and nine men-were sick in their hotel rooms.

Naturally, he called the port authorities. After an examination, the M.D. who was brought in stated that all thirteen showed extreme weakness. They seemed to be, as he so succinctly put it, "only marginally alive".

The report evoked an alarm reaction from the Port Authority. The Director had visions of some kind of epidemic sweeping up from these dregs of people and decimating his little kingdom.

He was still considering a course of action when reports from private doctors indicated that the illness, whatever it was, had affected a large number of affluent citizens of s.p.a.ceport in addition to the b.u.ms.

The total in the final count came to a hundred and ninety-three persons sick with the same loss of energy and near-death apathy.

11 At some mind level, Hanardy became aware that PatriciaUngarn was falling to her death.

To save her, he had to get energy from somewhere.

He knew immediately where the energy would have to come from.

For a cosmic moment, as his somnambulism was disrup-ted and replaced by the dreaming state that precedes awakening, he was held by rigidities of his personality.

There was a split instant, then, as some aware part of him gazed in amazement and horror at a lifetime of being a sloppy Joe.

That one glance of kaleidoscopic insight was all that was necessary.

The barriers went down.

Time ceased. For him, all particle flows ended.

In that forever state, Hanardy was aware of himself as being at a location.

Around him were 193 other locations. He observed at once that thirteen of the locations were extremely wavery. He immediately excluded the thirteen from his purpose.

To the remaining 180 locations, he made a postulate. He postulated that the 180 would be glad to make immediate payment.

Each of the 180 thereupon willingly gave to Hanardy seven-tenths of all the available life-energy in their 180 locations.

As that energy flowed to Hanardy, time resumed for him.

The living universe that was Steve Hanardy expanded out to what appeared to be a great primeval dark.

In that dark were blacker blobs, nine of them-the Dreeghs. At the very heart of the black excrescences ran a fine, wormlike thread of silvery brightness: the Dreegh disease, shining, twisting, ugly.

As Hanardy noticed that utterly criminal distortion, he became aware of a red streak in the sinister silver.

He thought, in immense astonishment, "Why, that's my blood!"

He realized, then, with profound interest that this was the blood the Dreeghs had taken from him when they first arrived at theUngarnmeteorite.

They had given Sween most of it. But the others had each eagerly taken a little of the fresh stuff for themselves.

Hanardy realized that that was what the Great Galactic had noticed about him. He was a catalyst! In his presence by one means or another people got well ... in many ways.

In a few days longer, his blood in them would enable the Dreeghs to cure their disease.

The Dreeghs would discover the cure belatedly-too late to change their forcing methods.

For Hanardy, the scene altered.

The nine black blobs were no longer shaped by their disease, as he saw them next. He found himself respecting the nine as members of the only race that had achieved immortality.

The cure of them was important.

Again, for Hanardy, there was a change. He was aware of long linesof energy that were straight and white flowing at him from some greater darkness beyond. In the near dis-tance was a single point of light.

As his attention focused there, all the numerous lines, except from that light-point, vanished.

It occurred to Hanardy that that was the Dreegh ship and that, in relation to earth, it would "eventually be in a specific direction. The thin, thin, white line was like a pointer from the ship to him. Hanardy glanced along that line. And be-cause he was open-oh, so open!-he did the touching. Then he touched other places and did a balancing thing between them and the Dreegh ship.

He oriented himself in s.p.a.ce.

Orientedit!

As he completed that touching, he realized that the Dreegh ship was now slightly over six thousand light-years away.

That was far enough, he decided.

Having made that decision, he allowed particle flow to resume for the Dreeghs. And so-

As time began again, the Dreeghs found themselves in their own s.p.a.ceship. There they were, all nine of them. They gazed uneasily at each other and then made a study of their surroundings. They saw unfamiliar star configurations. Their unhappiness grew. It was not a pleasant thing to be lost in s.p.a.ce, as they knew from previous experience.

After a while, when nothing further happened, it became apparent that-though they would probably never again be able to find the Earth's solar system-they were safe ...

Pat's first consciousness of change was that she was no longer falling. But no longer onEuropa.As she caught her balance, she saw that she was in a familiar room.

She shook her head to clear away the fuzziness from her eyes. And then she realized it was a room in theUngarnmeteorite, her home. She heard a faint sound and swung about-and paused, balancing, on one heel, as she saw her father.

There was an expression of relief on his face. "You had me worried," he said. "I've been here for more than an hour. My dear, all is well! Our screens are back to working; everything is the way it was ...

before. We're safe."

"B-but," said the girl, "where's Steve?"

... It was earlier. Hanardy had the impression that he was remembering a forgotten experience on the Ungarnmeteor-ite-a time before the arrival of Sween-Madro and the second group of Dreeghs.

The Great Galacticof thatearlier time, he who had been William Leigh, bent over Hanardy where he lay on the floor.

He said with a friendly, serious smile, "You and that girl make quite a combination. You with so much owed to you, and she with that high ability for foolhardiness. We're going to have another look at such energy debts. Maybe that way we'll find our salvation."

He broke off. "Steve, there are billions of open channels in the solar system. Awareness of the genius in them is the next step up for intelligence. Because you've had some feedback, if you take that to heart you might even get the girl."

Leigh's words ended abruptly. For at that instant he touched the s.p.a.ceman's shoulder.

The memory faded-

12.

It was several weeks later.

On the desk of the Port Authority lay the report on the illness which had suddenly affected 193 persons.

Among other data, the report stated: It develops that these people were all individuals who during the past fifteen years have taken advantage of a certain low I.Q. person named Steve Hanardy. As almost everyone in s.p.a.ceport is aware, Hanardy-who shows many evidences ofmentalr.e.t.a.r.dation-has year after year been by his own simple-minded connivance swindled out of his entire income from the s.p.a.ce freighter, ECTON-66 (a type cla.s.sification)-which he owns and operates.

In this manner so much money has been filched from Hanardy that, first one person, then another, then many, set themselves up in business at their victim's expense. And as soon as they were secure, each person in turn discarded the benefactor. For years now, while one human leech after an-other climbed from poverty to affluence, Hanardy himself has remained at the lowest level.

The afflicted are slowly recovering, and most are in a sur-prisingly cheerful frame of mind. One man even said to me that he had a dream that he was paying a debt by becoming ill; and in the dream he was greatly relieved.

There's some story around that Hanardy has married the daughter of ProfessorUngarn.But to accept that would be like believing that everything that has happened has been a mere background to a love story.

I prefer to discount that rumor and prefer to say only that it is not known exactly where Hanardy is at present.

The Science Fiction Books of

A. E. VanVogt.

thebooks areusted in chronological order of publication. The publisher of the first world edition is given, and where this was an American edition this is indicated by (US). Following this, all British editions are listed.

Short stories are indicated by (collection), Omnibus Editions have a list of contents and these are cross-indexed by the use of In: references. All reissues of a book under a different t.i.tle are listed with the original t.i.tle.

Books published in hardcover are indicated by (hd) while all others are paperbacks. The date for each edition is also given. An asterisk (*) indicates that the edition was in print when this list was compiled in 1974.

Bibliography.

SLAN.

Arkham House (US hd), 1946;Weidenfeld & Nicolson (hd), 1953; Panther, 1960*.

In:Triad, 1959, andvanVogtOmnibus 2, 1971.

THE WEAPON MAKERS.

Hadley Publishing (US hd), 1946;Weidenfeld & Nicolson (hd), 1954; Digit, 1961; New English Library, 1970*.

t.i.tle change:One Against Eternity.

Ace (US), 1955.

THE BOOK OF PTATH.

Fantasy Press (US hd), 1947; Panther, 1969*.