“Now here’s where I fall off at the first curve. The machine, boy, dematerializes itself and turns itself into a concept and comes right along with us because it’s part of the ship. That’s where I find the philosophical flaw. If we exist only in the mechanical brain of a machine as a concept, how in Gehenna can that mechanical brain be a part of the concept. It’s like the snake eating his own tail!”
It made me sick.
He reached over my shoulder and picked up an onion. “You think this is an onion? Well, it isn’t, boy. It’s a mechanical thought of an onion being whisked across space at just the same speed that you are. You know what? You can open a port and throw that onion out!”
I was getting dizzy. “But the air... space...”
“No, boy. The concept is of a ship with the air in it. And of ports with hinges. So you can open the port of the concept but you can’t let the air out of the concept. What’s the matter, boy,” he said, peering into my face. “You look sickish.”
“Look, Doc,” I asked, “so the onion is a concept. And so am I. So why do I want to eat the onion? Why do I have to?”
“Because the thought picture of you is so accurate that you’re built with every urge and hunger intact. You’d be damn uncomfortable if you stopped eating!”
Inside of three days I got a little used to the dreamy look of everything, the faraway sounds, the soft feeling of the steel plates. But I knew that I could never be matter-of-fact about it. In my sleep I dreamed about what would happen if the machine didn’t materialise us at the end of the trip. I had nightmares about going on and on forever, a thought that had missed its target.
Looking around, I could see that it got on the nerves of the others too. Nobody seemed to have enough to do. There were interminable bull sessions, many of them turning into bitter quarrels over our exact status — whether or not we existed, and if so, where we were.
I took a lot of riding from the others because of it being my first Rip. They kept asking me how I liked it until the question got as boring as that hot weather question about whether it’s warm enough for you.
One stocky, goodnatured engineer told fine stories about the adventures of Silas McCurdy, the first space pilot, and what happened when McCurdy, trying to achieve the speed of light with a physical drive, ran afoul of Fitzgerald’s Contraction and, for a time, disappeared entirely. Another one that was good was about how McCurdy helped the scientists find the right frame of space.
Jameson was morose and gloomy, ignoring everybody. He kept looking at me in a funny way that made me uncomfortable.
Four of us were in the same cabin. I had as little to say to Jameson as he had to me. The days turned into weeks and soon there was that air of expectancy aboard that always signals a port ahead.
We were due to come out of the Rip at noon the next day when the stocky engineer caught me just outside my cabin and said, “Kid, I don’t want to upset you or anything, but that Jameson is a bad actor. He’s got a reputation that isn’t so hot. You must have been snotty to him the first day out because he’s had it in for you ever since. I figure the least I can do is warn you. I think the guy is going off his wagon.”
He meant what he said. “But what can I—”
He forced a small automatic into my hand. “Here, Kid. You borrow Betsy. She’s loaded and ready. If Jameson goes off his rocker completely, he’ll surer than hell come after you with that sheath knife of his. Just keep an eye on him.”
He went off down the corridor. I put the automatic inside my blouse and went into the cabin. Jameson was on his bunk, staring at me. His deep-set eyes seemed to glow and his mouth was a tight, brutal line.
I knew then that the engineer was right.
If I reported Jameson to the captain, I might be laughed off the ship. I asked Doc for his advice. He told me to keep my mouth shut and keep the gun handy.
All that evening Jameson stared at me and his eyes seemed to glow brighter every hour. I went to sleep at last, after several hours of tossing and turning.
In the morning it was even worse. When I went to the mess hall, Jameson was right behind me. I could almost feel the point of that knife in my back.
At eleven-thirty Doc sent me back to my bunk. Jameson was there. The other men in the cabin were watching him as though they were afraid of him.
The silence and tension mounted.
Jameson sat on the edge of his bunk, took out the knife and began to clean his fingernails. After each nail he glanced over at me.
The PA startled me when it said, “Five minutes’ warning.”
By instinct I looked up at the speaker mesh. When I looked back Jameson was nearly on me, the knife upraised. The other men yelled. There was no chance of avoiding the thrust. With his face twisted, he sunk the knife deep into my belly with all his strength. He moved back and his lips writhed like grey worms. My hand closed on the butt of the gun. I pulled it out and emptied it into his chest. The slugs drove him back and he fell and lay still, a trickle of grey blood coming from the corner of his sagging mouth.
I knew that I could not live through it. I stared down at the knife handle in horror. The life was draining out of me.
“Hold your hat, guys,” the PA said abruptly.
Coming out of the Rip was unimportant compared with death.
There was a spinning madness and the vast club which had smashed through me at the beginning of the Rip smashed up in the other direction, filling in the vagueness, solidifying that which had been misty for so long.
I blinked in the brighter light, my mind reeling under the sudden impact of color.
Then there was loud laughter and Jameson, a wide smile on his face, was coming toward me with his hand out. My first thought was that the gun had been loaded with blanks. He wanted me to shake hands with him, and me with a knife that he had driven into me! But the knife was in its sheath at his belt and there wasn’t any hole in me.
Doc came in yelling, “How’d he take it? How’d the Kid take it? Any guts?” He turned to me and said, “Boy, they take it easier these days. Why, on my first Rip they told me that the ship was lost and then they opened a port and every damn man jack jumped out into space and left me alone. Thought I’d go nuts. Of course, since this is only a concept when you’re in Rip, everything goes back to exactly the way it was when we started the Rip.”
Jameson found my hand. His grip was solid and good.
“Come on, space rat,” he said. “I know where there’s a good bar!”
The Great Stone Death
Originally published in Weird Tales, January 1949.
It was a mountain, it was a stone... it was a monster!
Once the horse turned its head around and John Logan got a glimpse of black rubbery lips lifted away from strong yellow-white teeth. The teeth clopped together close to his leg and, in panic, he yanked hard on the reins, dug in with the spurs.
The arched back was like an enormous steel spring. He whirled dizzily, fell heavily on his shoulder and hip. He was looking up at the deep blue of the sky through a wild plum hedge loaded with fruit. He got to his feet, heard Steve Fowler’s distant yell, saw the recapture of his horse.
John Logan had hoped that the horse wouldn’t be recaptured. It was Steve’s idea that they take the trail up into the massive wilderness of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains so that Logan could “learn the country.”
He had no desire to learn the country. The air-conditioned bar down in the hotel in the valley suited him perfectly. He wanted nothing to do with horses, campfires or the out-of-doors.
But Steve had been insistent. The insides of his thighs were sore after only a few hours slow riding.