Big Book of Science Fiction (3 page)

“But . . . but—” Fowler’s
thoughts tumbled awkwardly. “You’re talking to me!”

“Sure thing,” said Towser. “I
always talked to you, but you couldn’t hear me. I tried to say things to you,
but I couldn’t make the grade.”

“I understood you sometimes,”
Fowler said.

“Not very well,” said Towser. “You
knew when I wanted food and when I wanted a drink and when I wanted out, but
that’s about all you ever managed.”

“I’m sorry,” Fowler said.

“Forget it,” Towser told him. “I’ll
race you to the cliff.”

For the first time, Fowler saw
the cliff, apparently many miles away, but with a strange crystalline beauty
that sparkled in the shadow of the many-colored clouds.

Fowler hesitated. “It’s a long
way—”

“Ah, come on,” said Towser and
even as he said it he started for the cliff.

Fowler followed, testing his
legs, testing the strength in that new body of his, a bit doubtful at first,
amazed a moment later, then running with a sheer joyousness that was one with
the red and purple sward, with the drifting smoke of the rain across the land.

As he ran the consciousness of
music came to him, a music that beat into his body, that surged throughout his
being, that lifted him on wings of silver speed. Music like bells might make
from some steeple on a sunny, springtime hill.

As the cliff drew nearer the
music deepened and filled the universe with a spray of magic sound. And he knew
the music came from the tumbling waterfall that feathered down the face of the
shining cliff.

Only, he knew, it was no
waterfall, but an ammonia-fall and the cliff was white because it was oxygen,
solidified.

He skidded to a stop beside
Towser where the waterfall broke into a glittering rainbow of many hundred
colors. Literally many hundred, for here, he saw, was no shading of one primary
to another as human beings saw, but a clear-cut selectivity that broke the
prism down to its last ultimate classification.

“The music,” said Towser.

“Yes, what about it?”

“The music,” said Towser, “is
vibrations. Vibrations of water falling.”

“But, Towser, you don’t know about
vibrations.”

“Yes, I do,” contended Towser. “It
just popped into my head.”

Fowler gulped mentally. “Just
popped!”

And suddenly, within his own
head, he held a formula—the formula for a process that would make metal to
withstand the pressure of Jupiter.

He stared, astounded, at the
waterfall and swiftly his mind took the many colors and placed them in their
exact sequence in the spectrum. Just like that. Just out of blue sky. Out of
nothing, for he knew nothing either of metals or of colors.

“Towser,” he cried. “Towser,
something’s happening to us!”

“Yeah, I know,” said Towser.

“It’s our brains,” said Fowler. “We’re
using them, all of them, down to the last hidden corner. Using them to figure
out things we should have known all the time. Maybe the brains of Earth things
naturally are slow and foggy. Maybe we are the morons of the universe. Maybe we
are fixed so we have to do things the hard way.”

And, in the new sharp clarity of
thought that seemed to grip him, he knew that it would not only be the matter
of colors in a waterfall or metals that would resist the pressure of Jupiter,
he sensed other things, things not yet quite clear. A vague whispering that
hinted of greater things, of mysteries beyond the pale of human thought, beyond
even the pale of human imagination. Mysteries, fact, logic built on reasoning.
Things that any brain should know if it used all its reasoning power.

“We’re still mostly Earth,” he
said: “We’re just beginning to learn a few of the things we are to know—a few
of the things that were kept from us as human beings, perhaps because we were
human beings. Because our human bodies were poor bodies. Poorly equipped for
thinking, poorly equipped in certain senses that one has to have to know.
Perhaps even lacking in certain senses that are necessary to true knowledge.”

He stared back at the dome, a
tiny black thing dwarfed by the distance.

Back there were men who couldn’t
see the beauty that was Jupiter. Men who thought that swirling clouds and
lashing rain obscured the face of the planet. Unseeing human eyes. Poor eyes.
Eyes that could not see the beauty in the clouds, that could not see through
the storms. Bodies that could not feel the thrill of trilling music stemming
from the rush of broken water.

Men who walked alone, in terrible
loneliness, talking with their tongue like Boy Scouts wigwagging out their
messages, unable to reach out and touch one another’s mind as he could reach
out and touch Towser’s mind. Shut off forever from that personal, intimate
contact with other living things.

He, Fowler, had expected terror
inspired by alien things out here on the surface, had expected to cower before
the threat of unknown things, had steeled himself against disgust of a
situation that was not of Earth.

But instead he had found something
greater than Man had ever known. A swifter, surer body. A sense of
exhilaration, a deeper sense of life. A sharper mind. A world of beauty that
even the dreamers of the Earth had not yet imagined.

“Let’s get going,” Towser urged.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere,” said Towser. “Just
start going and see where we end up. I have a feeling . . . well, a feeling—”

“Yes, I know,” said Fowler.

For he had the feeling, too. The
feeling of high destiny. A certain sense of greatness. A knowledge that somewhere
off beyond the horizons lay adventure and things greater than adventure.

Those other five had felt it,
too. Had felt the urge to go and see, the compelling sense that here lay a life
of fullness and of knowledge.

That, he knew, was why they had not
returned.

“I won’t go back,” said Towser.

“We can’t let them down,” said
Fowler.

Fowler took a step or two, back
toward the dome, then stopped.

Back to the dome. Back to that
aching, poison-laden body he had left. It hadn’t seemed aching before, but now
he knew it was.

Back to the fuzzy brain. Back to
muddled thinking. Back to the flapping mouths that formed signals others
understood. Back to eyes that now would be worse than no sight at all. Back to
squalor, back to crawling, back to ignorance.

“Perhaps some day,” he said,
muttering to himself.

“We got a lot to do and a lot to
see,” said Towser. “We got a lot to learn. We’ll find things—”

Yes, they could find things.
Civilizations, perhaps. Civilizations that would make the civilization of Man
seem puny by comparison. Beauty and more important—an understanding of that
beauty. And a comradeship no one had ever known before—that no man, no dog had
ever known before.

And life. The quickness of life
after what seemed a drugged existence.

“I can’t go back,” said Towser. “Nor
I,” said Fowler.

“They would turn me back into a
dog,” said Towser.

“And me,” said Fowler, “back into
a man.”

<>

~ * ~

MEWHU’S JET

by Theodore Sturgeon

“WE
INTERRUPT this program to announce—”

“Jack! Don’t jump like that! And
you’ve dropped ashes all over your—”

“Aw, Iris, honey, let me listen
to—”

—at first identified as a comet,
the object is pursuing an erratic course through the stratosphere, occasionally
dipping as low as—”

“You make me nervous, Jack! You’re
an absolute slave to the radio. I wish you paid that much attention to me.”

“Darling, I’ll argue the point,
or pay attention to you, or anything in the wide world you like when I’ve heard
this announcement; but please,
please
LET ME LISTEN!”

“—dents of the East Coast are
warned to watch for the approach of this ob—”

“Iris, don’t—”

Click!

“Well, of all the selfish,
inconsiderate, discourteous—”

“That will do, Jack Garry! It’s
my radio as much as yours, and I have a right to turn it off when I want to!”

“Might I ask why you find it
necessary to turn it off at this moment?”

“Because I know the announcement
will be repeated any number of times if it’s important, and you’ll shush me
every time. Because I’m not interested in that kind of thing and don’t see why
I should have it rammed down my throat. Because the only thing you ever want to
listen to is something which couldn’t possibly affect us. But mostly because
you
yelled
at me!”

“I did
not
yell at you!”

“You
did!
And you’re
yelling
now!”

“Mom! Daddy!”

“Oh, Molly, darling, we woke you
up!”

“Poor bratlet. Hey—what about
your slippers?”

“It isn’t cold tonight, Daddy.
What was that on the radio?”

“Something buzzing around in the
sky, darling, I didn’t hear it all.”

“A spaceship, I betcha.”

“You see? You and your so-called
science-fiction!”

“Call us a science-faction. The
kid’s got more judgment than you have.”

“You have as little judgment as a
seven-year-old child, you mean. And b-besides, you’re turning her a-against me!”

“Aw, for Pete’s sake, Mom, don’t
cry!”

At which point, something like a
giant’s fist clouted off the two-room top story of the seaside cottage and
scattered it down the beach. The lights winked out, and outside, the whole
waterfront lit up with a brief, shattering blue glare.

~ * ~

“Jacky,
darling, are you hurt?”

“Mom, he’s bleedin’!”

“Jack, honey, say something.
Please
say something.”

“Urrrrgh,” said Jack Garry
obediently, sitting up with a soft clatter of pieces of falling lath and plaster.
He put his hands gently on the sides of his head and whistled. “Something hit
the house.”

His red-headed wife laughed
half-hysterically. “Not really, darling.” She put her arms around him, whisked
some dust out of his hair, and began stroking his neck. “I’m . . . frightened,
Jack.”

“You’re frightened!” He looked
around, shakily, in the dim moonlight that filtered in. Radiance from an
unfamiliar place caught his bleary gaze, and he clutched Iris’ arm. “Upstairs .
. . it’s gone!” he said hoarsely, struggling to his feet. “Molly’s room . . .
Molly—”

“I’m here, Daddy. Hey! You’re
squeezin’!”

“Happy little family,” said Iris,
her voice trembling. “Vacationing in a quiet little cottage by the sea, so
Daddy can write technical articles while Mummy regains her good
disposition—without a phone, without movies within miles, and living in a place
where the roof flies away. Jack—what hit us?”