Then I tried Amazing, and again it was rejected.
That meant the story was dead, or would have meant so were it not for the fact that science fiction was entering a small “boom” as the 1930s approached their end. New magazines were being founded, and toward the end of 1939, plans were made to publish a magazine to be called Astonishing Stories, which would retail for the price of ten cents. (Astoundingcost twenty cents an issue.)
The new magazine, together with a sister magazine. Super Science Stories, were to be edited on a shoestring by a young science fiction fan, Frederik Pohl, who was then just turning twenty (he was about a month older than myself), and who, in this way, made his entry into what was to be a distinguished professional career in science fiction.
Pohl was a thin, soft-spoken young man, with hair that was already thinning, a solemn face, and a pronounced overbite that gave him a rabbity look when he smiled. The economic facts of his life kept him out of college, but he was far brighter (and knew more) than almost any college graduate I’ve ever met.
Pohl was a friend of mine (and still is) and perhaps did more to help me start my literary career than anyone except, of course, Campbell himself. We had attended fan-club meetings together. He had read my manuscripts and praised them -and now he needed stories in a hurry, and at low rates, for his new magazines.
He asked to look through my manuscripts again. He began by choosing one of my stories for his first issue. On November 17, 1939, nearly a year and a half after “Stowaway” was first written, Pohl selected it for inclusion in his second issue of Astonishing. He was an inveterate title changer, however, and he plastered “The Callistan Menace” on the story and that was how it was published.
So here it is, the second story I ever wrote and the earliest story to see professional publication. The reader can judge for himself whether Campbell’s critique, given above, was overly kind and whether he was justified in foreseeing a professional writing career for me on the basis of this story.
“The Callistan Menace” appears here (as will all the stories in this volume) exactly as it appeared in the magazine with only the editing and adjustment required to correct typographical errors.
The Callistan Menace
“Damn Jupiter!” growled Ambrose Whitefield viciously, and I nodded agreement.
“I’ve been on the Jovian satellite run,” I said, “for fifteen years and I’ve heard those two words spoken maybe a million times. It’s probably the most sincere curse in the Solar System.”
Our watch at the controls of the scoutship Ceres had just been relieved and we descended the two levels to our room with dragging steps.
“Damn Jupiter-and damn it again,” insisted Whitefield morosely. “It’s too big for the System. It stays out there behind us and pulls and pulls and pulls! We’ve got to keep the Atomos firing all the way. We’ve got to check our course- completely-every hour. No relaxation, no coasting, no taking it easy! nothing but the rottenest kind of work.”
There were tiny beads of perspiration on his forehead and he swabbed at them with the back of his hand. He was a young fellow, scarcely thirty, and you could see in his eyes that he was nervous, and even a little frightened.
And it wasn’t Jupiter that was bothering him, in spite of his profanity. Jupiter was the least of our worries. It was Callisto! It was that little moon which gleamed a pale blue upon our visiplates that made Whitefield sweat and that had spoiled four nights’ sleep for me already. Callisto! Our destination!
Even old Mac Steeden, gray mustachioed veteran who, in his youth, had sailed with the great Peewee Wilson himself, went about his duties with an absent stare. Four days out- and ten days more ahead of us-and panic was reaching out with clammy fingers.
We were all brave enough in the ordinary course of events. The eight of us on the Ceres had faced the purple Lectronics and stabbing Disintos of pirates and rebels and the alien environments of half a dozen worlds. But it takes more than run-of-the-mill bravery to face the unknown; to face Callisto, the “mystery world” of the Solar System.
One fact was known about Callisto-one grim, bare fact. Over a period of twenty-five years, seven ships, progressively better equipped, had landed-and never been heard from again. The Sunday supplements peopled the satellite with anything from super-dinosaurs to invisible ghosts of the fourth dimension, but that did not solve the mystery.
We were the eighth. We had a better ship than any of those preceding. We were the first to sport the newly-developed beryl-tungsten hull, twice as strong as the old steel shells. We possessed super-heavy armaments and the very latest Atomic Drive engines.
Still-we were only the eighth, and every man jack of us knew it.
Whitefield entered our quarters silently and flopped down upon his bunk. His fists were clenched under his chin and showed white at the knuckles. It seemed to me that he wasn’t far from the breaking point. It was a case for careful diplomacy.
“What we need,” said I, “is a good, stiff drink.”
“What we need,” he answered harshly, “is a hell of a lot of good, stiff drinks.”
“Well, what’s stopping us?”
He looked at me suspiciously, “You know there isn’t a drop of liquor aboard ship. It’s against Navy regulations!”
“Sparkling green Jabra water,” I said slowly, letting the words drip from my mouth. “Aged beneath the Martian deserts. Melted emerald juice. Bottles of it! Cases of it!”
“Where?”
“I know where. What do you say? A few drinks-just a few-will cheer us both up.”
For a moment, his eyes sparkled, and then they dulled again, “What if the Captain finds out? He’s a stickler for discipline, and on a trip like this, it’s liable to cost us our rating.”
I winked and grinned, “It’s the Captain’s own cache. He can’t discipline us without cutting his own throat-the old hypocrite. He’s the best damn Captain there ever was, but he likes his emerald water.”
Whitefield stared at me long and hard, “All right. Lead me to it.”
We slipped down to the supply room, which was deserted, of course. The Captain and Steeden were at the controls; Brock and Charney were at the engines; and Harrigan and Tuley were snoring their fool heads off in their own room.
Moving as quietly as I could, through sheer habit, I pushed aside several crates of food tabs and slid open a hidden panel near the floor. I reached in and drew out a dusty bottle, which, in the dim light, sparkled a dull sea-green.
“Sit down,” I said, “and make yourself comfortable.” I produced two tiny cups and filled them.
Whitefield sipped slowly and with every evidence of satisfaction. He downed his second at one gulp.
“How come you volunteered for this trip, anyway, Whitey?” I asked, “You’re a little green for a thing like this.”
He waved his hand, “You know how it is. Things get dull after a while. I went in for zoology after getting out of college-big field since interplanetary travel-and had a nice comfortable position back on Ganymede. It was dull, though;
I was bored blue. So I joined the Navy on an impulse, and on another I volunteered for this trip.” He sighed ruefully, “I’m a little sorry I did.”
“That’s not the way to take it, kid. I’m experienced and I know. When you’re panicky, you’re as good as licked. Why, two months from now, we’ll be back on Ganymede.”
“I’m not scared, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he exclaimed angrily. “It’s-it’s,” there was a long pause in which he frowned at his third cupful. “Well, I’m just worn out trying to imagine what the hell to expect. My imagination is working overtime and my nerves are rubbing raw.”
“Sure, sure,” I soothed, “I’m not blaming you. It’s that way with all of us, I guess. But you have to be careful. Why, I remember once on a Mars-Titan trip, we had-”
Whitefield interrupted what was one of my favorite yarns- and I could spin them as well as anyone in the service-with a jab in the ribs that knocked the breath out of me.
He put down his Jabra gingerly.
“Say, Jenkins,” he stuttered, “I haven’t downed enough liquor to be imagining things, have I?”
“That depends on what you imagined.”
“I could swear I saw something move somewhere in the pile of empty crates in the far corner.”
“That’s a bad sign,” and I took another swig as I said it. “Your nerves are going to your eyes and now they’re going back on you. Ghosts, I suppose, or the Callistan menace looking us over in advance.”
“I saw it, I tell you. There’s something alive there.” He edged towards me-his nerves were plenty shot-and for a moment, in the dim, shadowy light even I felt a bit choked up.
“You’re crazy,” I said in a loud voice, and the echoes calmed me down a bit. I put down my empty cup and got up just a wee bit unsteadily. “Let’s go over and poke through the crates.”
Whitefield followed me and together we started shoving the light aluminum cubicles this way and that. Neither of us was quite one hundred per cent sober and we made a fair amount of noise. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Whitefield trying to move the case nearest the wall.