Captain Future 26 - Earthmen No More (March 1951) (3 page)

“... and those cruise-ships are so much more fun than ordinary space-trips. They have hostesses and games and always something to
do
!”

Carey stumbled out of the stream at last into a little deserted backwater around a tall pillar that stood at the edge of the spaceport.

There was gold lettering on it, only a little dingy from the back-blast of many ships. Carey saw a name he knew.

He looked closer. It was a tall pillar and he had to look high to see the legend that read, TO THE PIONEERS OF SPACE.

Now he saw. Underneath that legend were names, and dates. First the names of the great trail-blazers.

Gorham Johnson — Mark Carew — Jan Wenzi —

Wenzi... Once a small boy had watched with worshipping eyes as a grizzled one-armed man stumped toward a ridiculous rocket-ship.

A little farther down, not much.
Lane Eenner — Etienne Delaporte — William Gaines — yes,
all the
Victrix
crew including John Carey, all with the golden stars beside them that meant
Lost in Space.

Names — names and men, his friends, his shipmates, his rivals. Jim Hardee, the kid who had sat drinking with him the night before he hit for Jupiter. While he had lain dead in space young Hardee had gone on, doing the big things he dreamed of. And now, like the others, he was only a dingy gold-letter name on a forgotten monument.

The voice of the annunciator pleaded monotonously, “Will
Pallas
passengers
please
report at once to Dock Forty-four? Will
Pallas
passengers...”

Old Wenzi and Jim Hardee and young Szandor and Red Miles — yes, and he himself, bucking the black emptiness and the cold death to push the frontiers out...

“Attention, please,” said the mechanical voice. “The liner
Star of Venus
will land at Dock Fourteen at exactly six-ten. Those wishing to greet incoming passengers...”

Carey sat down on the steps of the monument. Otho found him there, staring at the bright crowds going back and forth, listening to the voices and the laughter, the swift proud thunder of the ships.

Otho touched his shoulder and after a while Carey asked him tonelessly, “Did we die for this?”

Chapter 3: Men of Earth

FOR the better part of two days Curt Newton was busy carrying his fight against Lowther into one Government office after another. And during that time, with Otho determinedly sticking to him to keep him out of trouble, Carey wandered about in the city.

It was very large. It had always been so — the largest city on the world of Earth. Now it was no longer merely large but monstrous, bloated, towering, spreading, gorged with humanity and wealth. Yet it seemed less crowded than Carey remembered.

The buildings were taller now, frighteningly tall, and there
were
covered walks of chrome and glassite spanning the dizzy canyons in between, so that a man might go across the city and never touch the ground. Traffic ran on many levels underneath. The streets were quiet and clean and Carey missed the brawling taxicabs, the surge and hum of crowds.

He watched the people who passed him. The tempo had slowed since the days he knew. Men and women strolled now, where before they had almost run. Their faces were a little different too, more relaxed and satisfied. He did not think that they were much happier or wiser, certainly no more kind.

Men and women, well fed, well dressed, making money, spending it. Palaces of entertainment, offering elaborate amusements to suit every taste. Travel bureaus displaying their three-dimensional
living posters,
urging people no longer to visit Quaint Brittany or the Romantic Caribbean but luring them instead with the ancient Martian cities and the pleasure-domes of tropical Venus.

Shop windows, full of marvels. Tenuous spider-silks from Venus, necklaces of Martian rubies like drops of blood to glow against white flesh, jugs of curious wines from the moons of Jupiter, the splendid furs of beasts that hunt across the frozen polar seas of Neptune.

We opened the way,
Carey thought.
We died and they grow fat.

Stone and steel and plastic and rare metals to make the giant towers splendid. Soft colors, soft sounds of music from garden terraces far above, where the sea wind tempered the heat and set the fronds of other-worldly shrubs to rustling.

Terraces where people sat feeding on delicacies brought across space in fleets of special ships, watching languidly the musicians and the dancers who were as alien as the exotic plants. Everywhere was the pervading softness, the silk-wrapped cushioned luxury, the certain ease of men who have never had to fight.

“You might as well see it all,” said Otho. And so Carey visited the places of amusement, the parks and the pleasure gardens, and sat upon the perfumed terraces, a dark and sombre shadow among the butterfly crowds. And often the women turned and looked at him as though perhaps they saw in his face a thing that was lost out of the men they knew.

Every landmark was gone, every place he knew was changed. There was no single street that he remembered. And the names were gone too and the faces, gone and utterly forgotten.

Suddenly Carey glanced up at the overtopping spires that leaned against the sky and said, “I hate this place. I’m going back to the ship.”

Otho smiled a little wryly and they returned to the port.

Curt Newton came back almost as soon as they. Simon was with him and a grizzled leathery-faced man in uniform who was introduced to Carey as Ezra Gurney.

Otho studied Newton’s face. “I was going to ask you how it went,” he said, “but I see — it didn’t go at all.”

Newton shook his head. “No.” He flung himself down, retreating into a brooding silence. Carey saw his hard dangerous anger.

“What happened?” demanded Grag, “You don’t mean to say they’re going to let Lowther get away with it?”

“There doesn’t seem to be any way they can stop him,” said Ezra Gurney. He had a hard honest space-worn look about him that Carey liked. He too was angry.

“The trouble is,” he explained, “that Curt has no proof against Lowther. There’s a half dozen refining companies on Pluto and they’ve all raised their fuel-prices together. Lowther only owns one of them outright and in the open.

“He says and they all say that mining and refinery costs have gone up so that they have to charge more for the fuel, which is legal enough. All right. Now
we
know that Lowther has used dummy corporations and juggled stock and so on until he actually controls the other five companies. But we can’t prove it!

“Curt went to everybody at Government Center. They all said the same thing. Such a charge would require hearings, committees, investigation, all that rubbish — weeks, months, maybe years, because Lowther is smart enough and rich enough to stall indefinitely and the chances of nailing him are mighty slim.”

“And in the meantime,” said Curt Newton slowly, “the starmen are forced either to sell out to Lowther for fuel or to stay here in the System while their wives and families and the communities they’ve worked so hard to build go without the supplies they need.

“They’ll give in, of course, because they have to go back — and Lowther will gain a stranglehold on all the trade between the System and the colonies. In twenty years he’ll be rich enough to buy and sell the Sun.”

Grag held out his two great metal hands and looked at them, flexing the fingers with an ominous small clanking of the joints. “I vote,” he said, “that we pay this Lowther a visit.”

“What form of execution would you prefer?” Otho asked him. “Being melted down for scrap or converted into a nice useful boiler? There’s a law against killing people, even for bucket-headed robots.”

“Who said anything about killing?” boomed Grag. “He could have an accident, couldn’t he?”

“Preferably a bad one,” grunted Ezra. “But I’m afraid that approach won’t do.”

“No,” said Curt slowly, “but I think Grag has the right idea at that. I think we ought to go and talk to Mr. Lowther.” He sprang up. “Come on, Carey, this will interest you as a commentary on the brave new world you helped to build!”

“I think I’ve seen enough of it,” Carey said. “I don’t want to see any more.”

BUT he went with them. Only Simon Wright stayed in the ship. They took a car from the spaceport. Except that it had wheels and seats, it bore little resemblance to the cars Carey had known. Propulsion units sent it rushing smoothly along the underground highways.

By the time they came out onto the great elevated boulevards that led across suburb and country the long summer dusk was falling. Carey turned and looked back. Outlined against the deep blue the enormous bulk of the city blazed with many-colored light. Even at this distance it had an alien look to his eyes.

The sleek suburban areas fled by. Beyond them the country still pretended to be as it had been. But Carey’s more primitive eyes detected the deception. Artful hands had arranged the trees and changed the courses of the brooks and pruned the wild hedgerows into pleasing vistas.

The car left the highway and proceeded along a private road. Presently, upon a slope ahead, Carey saw a graceful structure of metal and glass, shaped by a master hand to fit like a huge synthetic jewel into its setting of terraced gardens.

The translucent walls gleamed softly and strains of music drifted on the evening air. The gardens were full of fairy lights. As they came closer Carey made out the flutter of women’s skirts among the flowers, heard the sounds of laughter.

“Looks like a party,” said Otho. “A big one.”

“We’ll give him a party,” rumbled Grag and cracked his metal knuckles.

They came to the gates, which were artistic but highly functional. Curt Newton got out. He went to the small viewer that was housed at one side and pressed the communicator stud. After a moment Carey saw him returning to the car.

“Mr. Lowther is engaged and can see no one,” he quoted and then added, “Particularly us.” He surveyed the gates. “An electronic locking device, operated by remote control or with a light-key — neither of which helps us. Grag, would you care to see what you can do about it?”

Grag’s photo-electric eyes gleamed as he heaved himself out of the car and strode toward the gates. For a minute his enormous bulk was motionless, leaning forward a little with his hands on the bars, testing the resistance. Then he moved. There was a groaning and snapping and a metallic squeal and the gates were open.

The car drove on into the grounds. “There was an alarm on the gate, of course,” said Newton. “They’ll be waiting for us and I don’t want any trouble. We had better get out here and go ‘round through the gardens.”

The air was heavy with the scent of flowers. It was warm and on the terraces the white shoulders of women turned back the moonbeams. The music ran slow and lilting and there was laughter under the colored lights. Curt Newton walked through the gardens and after him came Grag and Otho and John Carey, who was moving in an unreal dream.

One by one the dancing couples saw them and the laughter stopped. The swirling skirts were still and the faces watched them, not with fear but with an amazement, as children might look at sombre strangers invading their nursery. The music continued, soft and sweet.

Along the paths between the drooping jasmine and the great pale blooms of Venus, across the terraces, through a sliding wall wide open to the night, and into a pastel room with a vast expanse of mirror-like floor surrounded by graceful colonnades — and here too the dancers drew back from the intruders.

Then, from one of the archways, came a group of men headed by a tall man no older than Curt Newton. He wore a dress tunic of black silk and his hair was black and his face had a clear healthy pallor. Carey thought that it was the sort of skin a woman might have, shaped smooth over handsome bones and set with wide dark eyes. Only there was nothing womanish about Lowther’s face if by womanish you meant weak or pitying or possessing any softness of heart.

The men with him were of a type Carey knew and detested. They were the kind who are always somewhere around a man like Lowther.

The two groups came to a halt and eyed each other. Lowther said, “If you came to say something, say it and get out.”

Newton put one hand on Carey’s shoulder and pointed with the other to Lowther. “There he is, Carey — the most important man in the Solar System. Oh, the System doesn’t know it yet but he is. And he’s modest too. He owns all the refineries on Pluto but you’d never know it to look at the records.”

He had raised his voice a bit so that it could be heard clearly above the music. A considerable crowd had collected, drawn in from the gardens, and there were plenty to hear.

LOWTHER came closer to Newton. He started to speak and Newton went on smoothly, politely, drowning him out. “My friend has been away from Earth for a long time, Mr. Lowther. I wanted him to meet you, so that he could see the type of man we produce now, the successful man. I thought it might teach him a lesson while he’s still young enough to profit by it.