Collected Short Fiction, page 35
“I read about him in our history class!” Valence interrupted.
“It seems to have been about the year 2100 that a young man of uncertain nationality again brought interstellar navigation before the world as a serious possibility. That man was an able and untiring scientist, a brilliant orator, and perhaps the greatest explorer of history. His name is so well known that I need hardly repeat it. It is Jean Colon.”
“Oh, mother told me all about Jean Colon!” I cried.
“It took all the genius of the man to win support for his great idea. It was only a result of a quarter century of tireless labor, in the face of constant ridicule and discouragement, that the Metals Corporation, in 2124, advanced funds to Colon with which to construct a space flier.
“SIX years later, in 2130, he left San Diego, California, with three small vessels, the largest of them only fifty feet in diameter. He had found less than a hundred men who were willing to undertake the great adventure with him—and most of those were rather lukewarm in their enthusiasm.
“Those little ships, however, were far in advance of the steel cylinder of Smith. They were globular in shape, like the modern commercial vessels, built of aluminum alloys, and polished mirror-like, to retain the heat, so that they looked like huge spheres of silver. A great wheel, inside, carried the sleeping and eating compartments inside its rim, being rotated at sufficient speed for centrifugal force to replace partially the pull of gravity. At one end of the axis of the great wheel was the bridge-room, at the other, the battery of atomic blast projectors.
“The departure was made at midnight. The literature of the age is full of descriptions of the scene. The men had gone aboard, and the air-locks had been sealed after the last farewells. As the hour drew near, the field about the cradles of the ships was cleared of the vast crowd that had gathered to witness the first act of the great adventure. The ships lay there, huge silver balls, gleaming in the light of the full moon, strange and still.
“The propeller rays were turned on. Vast jets of intense white flame burst from beneath the globes, outlined them in blinding light. Clouds of luminous, weird-colored vapor whirled up about the globes—air bombarded by the radioactive particles became luminous of itself. Veiled in screens of shifting scarlet and green and amber fire, the silver globes stirred, lifted, shot upward.
“On our own day, the sailing of a space flier is hardly so spectacular. That was before the modern refinements in the atomic blast, that have eliminated the secondary heat and light effects, with their vast loss of energy.
“In a few moments, the ships were out of sight, gone to mark an epoch in human history. For many minutes vague mists of shining violet drifted about the field.
“Until radio communication was cut off by the Heaviside layer, the world was in touch with Colon. In fact, the ships were within telescopic view for several hours, during which time a few brief messages were sent from the heliograph on Colon’s ship.
“Then long weeks and months went by, and nothing was heard from the explorers of space. In vain astronomers studied the face of the moon for any sign of human arrival.
“It was four months later that the world was electrified by that famous laconic radiogram, ‘Space is conquered and the moon is ours. Jean Colon.”
“That message awoke America at midnight. It meant that Colon was back inside the Heaviside layer. Within an hour the blazing atomic blast of a space flier was visible over the great southwestern plantations of the Food Corporation; and by dawn the world knew that Jean Colon, a hero overnight, had landed safely on the New Mexico deserts.
“Only one ship returned. One of the others had turned back, against the orders of the intrepid admiral. Crew and commander must have paid for the mutiny with their lives, for no trace of the ship has ever been found. Like a thousand others since, it must have been wrecked by meteoric collision. The other vessel, too badly wrecked in landing on the moon to be repaired, had been left as a sort of fortress, in which a few men stayed to garrison this new territory of the Metals Corporation.
“It was a strange and rich cargo that the single vessel carried. There were huge masses of yellow gold, and great nuggets of the three heavy metals that were now doubly precious, since they were the source of the power of the earth. There was over a pound of radium, and specimens of a thousand minerals, some precious, some new to science. The moon, so stated the enthusiastic Colon, and truly, was a treasure-house of minerals, a golden mine for the earth.
“The ship carried strange plants and stranger moving things from the moon. Colon brought proof that the ancient astronomer, Pickering, had been correct in interpreting his observations as showing life in the craters of the moon. Some of the plants and the grotesque, insect-like creatures were still alive, but none survived terrestrial conditions for more than a few days.
“The weirdest part of the astounding cargo was a dead, monstrous creature from the moon—one of the Selenites, a member of the ruling race of the moon, a being so huge and so formidable that the explorer had not attempted to bring it alive. But Colon had mounted his specimen, in a pose that suggested alien life. It had a huge, flimsy body, with long, slender legs, four in number. From its head depended a single, long tentacular appendage. There was something elephantine in the bulk of the thing, even in shape it vaguely suggested an elephant on stilts.”
“A thing like what we saw in the museum, when we went to see the horse,” I broke in again. But the professor’s lively account went on relentlessly.
“The stories that Colon told of those creatures seemed incredible to the people of the time. They were intelligent, he said, far more intelligent than the elephants they remotely resembled. Their mentality must have approximated that of the Australian aborigine, called blackboy. The most of their kind were wild rovers of the lunar mountains, but one tribe, isolated in the crater of Archimedes, near which Colon had landed, were developing an elementary civilization, learning the use of simple tools and building rude shelters. Most of the gold and platinum on the ship Colon had taken from them, giving them a few bits of food in return—the terrestrial foods, especially the carbohydrates, being foreign to the chemical nature of the Selenites, produced in them a curious state of intoxication.
“Those moon-calves, or Selenites, as they came to be called, are far different from the life of earth, even based upon compounds differing radically from the protoplasm of terrestrial life. The scaly red skin composed largely of silicon compounds, that covered their huge, clumsy bodies, was hard and tough, because of the sharp rocks among which they lived—it was proof against the bullets of the primitive firearms with which Colon had attacked them. But that tough, crimson integument was transparent to ultraviolet light—it has since been demonstrated that these beings draw most of their energy from the sun. The jaws were short and terrifically strong, armed with conical teeth hard enough to grind the rock from which these creatures derive the matter from which they are made.
“The four legs, which support the elephantine body, are oddly long, for jumping the wide crevasses of the moon. The huge eyes, three in number and situated above the trunk-like or elephantine member, are remarkable for their size and for the conspicuous green iris diaphragm, which adapts them for vision both in the dark nights and in the blinding light of day.
“COLON made several more voyages in the larger ships that were soon built by the score. The earthward surface of the moon was explored, science was enriched with countless specimens of minerals, fauna and flora from the moon. The markets of the world were flooded with huge supplies of precious metals captured from the more civilized tribes of Selenites. The huge revenue that the Metals Corporation drew fi-om its lunar possessions enabled it to throw off the last vestiges of political control, and take its place at the head of the new Union of Corporations.
“What does it matter if moralists say that the conquerors did wrong in destroying the most cultured races of the moon-calves, for the sake of a little precious metal? Corporations have souls no more than nations have them.
“A Moon Company, subsidiary to Metals Corporation, was quickly organized. It ruled and exploited the moon as the British East India Company had governed and fattened upon India for two centuries after the expansion of European power.
“In a dozen years after Colon’s landing on the moon, space fliers laden with bands of adventurers had overrun all the earthward face. Two great nations of Selenites, possessing culture that, according to recent ‘lun-archeologists’ had developed to a surprisingly high degree, had been conquered, robbed, and enslaved in the mines.
“The most remarkable, perhaps, of these lunar nations, was that of the K’lnva, in the great crater of Tycho. One of the most interesting topographical features of the lunar surface is this annular crater, 150 miles in diameter, situated at 43° South, 12° East. It is surrounded by a perfect ring of cliffs 15,000 feet high, and from it radiate the white ‘rays’ which so puzzled terrestrial astronomers until it was shown that they were Selenite roads. Protected by the cliff’s, the tribe called K’lnva had built up a marvelous culture in this crater. Conquered, despoiled, and enslaved by Count Vauban and his lawless followers, kept in subjection by intoxication with artificial carbohydrates that wrecked their physical and mental powers, and worked to death in the mines, hardly a one of them was left alive in a hundred years, and now hardly a memory of them survives.
“However, bands of the ferocious wild tribes, the K’Larbah and others, still roam the lunar deserts, sometimes doing a little useful work for the human prospectors and miners, who use them as beasts of burden, but more often intoxicated with the synthetic carbohydrates with which they are paid for their labors, they run amuck, committing frightful outrages.”
“Oh, I read a story about that,” Valence’s sweet voice chimed in. “ ‘The City Behind the Moon!’ A ship was wrecked on the back of the moon. There was a brave man named Charlie. He fought a lot of the wild moon-calves, and saved a girl named Lydia. He carried her and ran. The night was coming, and the mooncalves were running behind him. He came to a city of silver towers, where nobody—”
But the phonographic lecture went steadily on, and father held up his hand to silence her report on the wild romance.
“—years went by, the Moon Company began the importation of human labor. At first the tendency was to send only criminals and undesirables generally. But as civilization became more complex, and the corporations began to encroach more and more on the rights and privileges of the individual, there were many who were willing to pay their own passage to the moon, to win new freedom.
“These hardy settlers found and worked new mines of their own, when the new lunar atmosphere enabled them to live without space suits, trading the metal to the Moon Company for food and supplies from the earth. Farming, on a limited scale, was undertaken in the arable craters; some of the native plants of the moon produce drugs which command a high price in the markets of earth. Manufacturing, though discouraged by the Metals Corporation, was undertaken; and now vast quantities of simple synthetic foods are manufactured on the moon, as well as a variety of metal commodities.
“The Moon Company, originally a small corporation subsidiary to Metals, is now almost altogether in the hands of the inhabitants of the moon, since the lunar cities, as well as the more prominent citizens of the moon, have from time to time purchased blocks of stock, with a view to controlling all their own affairs.
“Metals has never made public the secret of Orloff and Smith’s atomic blast, and the projecting engines had never been placed on sale; hence the corporation maintains a virtual monopoly on trade with the moon, and the directors feel sure of their ability to control the settlers, even while humoring them by letting them have the stock of the Moon Company.
“There are, however, many crews of pirates and smugglers, operating space fliers, that had been obtained by fraud or capture, with which they carried on a lucrative illegal trade, escaping from Metals’ warships, and sometimes capturing a vessel laden with precious metals or equipment. The trade of piracy seems to have no particular dishonor attached to it, though pirate ships are rammed, when possible, on sight, and captured crews are electrocuted.
“At present, the population of the moon is nearly two and a half millions; there are three great cities, Theophilus, Colon, and New Boston, and scores of smaller settlements. The satellite represents an excellent market for terrestrial manufactures; and the value of the metals and chemicals received from the moon is of incalculable value to the earth’s industry.
“Recently there have been hints that the lunar population is becoming discontented with the strict rule of the agents of Metals, and that there is dissatisfaction with the prices paid for metals on the moon, which average less than half their value in Pittsburgh. The speaker cannot recommend too strongly that every means be used to foster the former good feelings between the two planets. It is hard to visualize a greater tragedy for the earth than the loss of the resources she has been drawing for so long from the moon.”
The lively, animated voice stopped abruptly, as the professor had worked his way up to a current political issue. A few brisk bars of music came from the little machine. Then a clear female voice began to speak rapid, persuasive comments upon Cynguff’s Synthetic Beverage Tablets. “A pitcher of water and a purple pill! What shall it be, whisky or cognac, bourbon or gin?” Father pushed the switch, and the words stopped in the middle of a sentence.
“Johnnie and Valence, that’s the moon, the big world where we’re going. We may have a hard life there. But I know that you children will grow to be fine, strong men and women. That’s the thing mother and I are living for—”
“Oh, I see it outside the window,” I cried.
I pointed my childish arm to the bright, mottled silver disk, floating huge and mysterious above the trees in the park.
CHAPTER III
War Between Corporations
IT was late in the year 2306 that my father made his decision to emigrate to the moon. He arranged for passage on the great ship Venus, of two hundred feet diameter, which was to sail in August, 2307. Father was moderately wealthy. Though the rates of passage to the moon were rather high, his fortune was great enough to pay our fare and leave funds for the purchase of a mining prospect and machinery on the moon.
But, before the time for our departure, a serious difficulty arose.
The Transportation Corporation, or “Tranco,” as it is more usually termed, had long been jealous of Metals over the space lines to the moon. Over a hundred years before, when the great trusts had ended a century of warfare by the formation of the Union, it had been agreed that Tranco would have a monopoly of transportation on the earth. And Tranco had always claimed that the operation of space fliers to the moon, by Metals, was a violation of that ancient agreement. Blood had been shed over the matter a score of times; but since Metals had never revealed the secret of the atomic blast projector, its rival was helpless to build space fliers of its own.
To present the situation clearly, I must outline briefly the decline of political government and the rise of the corporations.
The League of Nations had successfully prevented war among the nations after the first half of the twentieth century, and gradually the great standing armies of the world were done away with. In the meantime, the power of the corporations was growing steadily, and presently, as the old political governments grew too weak to enforce law and order, the armed guards and watchmen of the corporations had taken the places of policemen and soldiers.
By the time of the first successful voyage to the moon, the real power of political government was ended throughout the earth, although certain of the old national organizations continue to exist in name, and some of them, such as the United States, exert considerable moral influence, even though devoid of any real authority.
For two centuries great confusion existed under the control of the corporations. At times their wars threatened to destroy the age of industry that had ended the old political regime. The development of the disintegrator ray (or the “D-ray”)—an offshoot of the discovery of Orloff and Smith—made war so terribly destructive that at last the corporations saw it to their advantage to maintain the peace.
Shortly after 2200 a series of great mergers resulted in the formation of a half dozen huge corporations, each controlling one commodity over the entire earth. Of these, the greatest was the Metals Corporation, which was already drawing vast revenues from the moon, though the Food, Power, and Transportation Corporations were formidable rivals.
The Food Corporation had come into possession of most of the farming lands of the earth, Metals claimed the mining sections and the great manufacturing cities, Transportation owned seaports and rights-of-way, Power owned cities and transmission lines. Each corporation maintained a vast army of guards to see that its property and trade rights were not encroached upon, and the complexity of the map furnished room for a thousand disputes.
Early in 2307, months before the time set for our departure for the moon, officials of the Metals Corporation were much perturbed by a rumor that the secret of the atomic blast projector had been rediscovered, and that the discoverer was disposing of the long-kept secret to the Transportation Corporation.
At first the report was indignantly denied by Tranco. But Metals possessed, at that time, a system of espionage that is probably the most perfect that has ever been devised. Within a few weeks the fact was discovered that one of the great floating islands, designed by Tranco engineers centuries ago, to facilitate transoceanic aerial communication, had been moved to a lonely position in the South Pacific, and had some secret activity going on upon it.
