“What’s the meaning of this?” demanded Drummond, pointing out yet another vast pile of motionless “things” which lay open-mouthed in a tunnel, not even moving when run over by the tank.
“That’s the way ‘things’ are,” said Gedso indifferently.
“I . . . I’d like to know how they are,” said Drummond.
“You’ll probably get a copy of my report,” said Gedso. “To the left here, Stewie.”
“I probably won’t get that for a long time,” said Drummond, pouting. “I ought to know so as to regulate the activities in my command.” He looked pleadingly at Gedso. “What did going ‘outside’ have to do with this?”
“Had to find out about the Black Nebula,” said Gedso matter-of-factly. “Right, Stewie. Right and down.”
“Well, damn it, what about the Black Nebula?”
Gedso turned toward him patiently in surrender. “The Black Nebula isn’t a barrier in the sky. I’m not sure what it is. A fold, perhaps. I don’t know. I had to get pictures of this area from out there.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a photomontage. “Reduced the pictures after they were taken with an inverted telephoto. Got this.”
“Why, that looks like a leaf,” said Drummond. “And what is that on the leaf?”
“A leaf,” said Gedso, “and on the leaf, to you, a caterpillar worm.”
“You mean this is a picture of the ‘outside’?”
“Yes. The Crystal Mines are in the liver of that worm and the crystals are so valuable because they are, of course, highly condensed cellular energy.”
Drummond was round-eyed with awe. “Then . . . then I am the outpost command of a world beyond the Black Nebula, a world so gigantic that even a worm is thousands of kilometers long!”
“When I inspected the Black Nebula,” said Gedso gently, “I discovered that it was not a barrier in space, but a fold or some such thing. As I say, I don’t know. I only know the effect. Ships approaching the Crystal Mines undergo a sort of transformation. The reason so many never return is because they fail to reverse that transformation and so hurtle through the hundreds of light-years forever, no larger than microscopic bullets.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, according to what we found, a diminution of size takes place. The worm is just an ordinary worm on an ordinary leaf. And the ‘things’ are just ordinary phagocytes. If we proceed in the future to burn out the heart of the worms we mine, then we will have to do no fighting. Because of a changed time factor a dead worm will last for years. And if we watch certain manifestations in the spaceships, we can get them to keep penetrating the Black Nebula until they are again restored to size. I took a chart of the interior of these worms out of a text on entomology, once I had determined the kind of worm it was—”
“Then . . . then my command—”
“Why, yes,” said Gedso, “I think it is so. You need have no worries about your command. No more fighting, better conditions, more crystals mined—”
“But,” gagged Drummond, deflated and broken, “but my command . . . is just the liver of an ordinary worm . . . perhaps in a tree in some farmer’s yard—”
Stewie grinned as he steered across the plane to the wall of the Crystal Mines. He took another glance at the haggard General Drummond and pulled up at the wall.
When fifty thousand convicts, the following day, cheered themselves to a frenzy carrying Gedso Ion Brown, Technician, Extra-Territorial Scienticorps, to his waiting transport, General Drummond was not there. In the dimness of his quarters, amid his presentation pistols and battle trophies, he heard the racking waves of triumphant sound sweep the mines again and again for minutes at a time.
General Drummond sank into a chair and cupped his face in his hands.
Wearily he repeated, “The guts . . . of a worm.”
Glossary
STORIES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE reflect the words and expressions used in the 1930s and 1940s, adding unique flavor and authenticity to the tales. While a character’s speech may often reflect regional origins, it also can convey attitudes common in the day. So that readers can better grasp such cultural and historical terms, uncommon words or expressions of the era, the following glossary has been provided.
aiguillette: a decorative cord with hanging points worn on the shoulder of some military uniforms.
Alpha Centauri: the triple-star system that is closest to the Earth.
batteries: groups of large-caliber weapons used for combined action.
bilged out: failed in one’s studies and resigned under compulsion.
butt: portion of a year.
dog cell: a small enclosure, so called from its likeness to a dog’s kennel.
EV: extra-velocity.
freebooter: a person who goes about in search of plunder; pirate.
gangway: a narrow, movable platform or ramp forming a bridge by which to board or leave a ship.
G-men: government men; agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
graps: grappling hooks; devices with iron claws, attached to ropes or cables and used for dragging or grasping.
hard-boiled: tough and cynical.
ironplast: formed or molded with iron.
Jonah: somebody who brings bad luck.
Parthenon: the chief temple of the Greek goddess Athena built on the Acropolis at Athens between 447 and 432 BC. It is the most famous surviving building of ancient Greece.
PC: Post Command; military installation where the command personnel are located.
pillboxes: small fortified shelters with flat roofs in which large guns are located.
pilot: a publication containing detailed information of an area for use in navigation. Originally from coast pilot, a manual published by a government for mariners, containing descriptions of coastal waters, harbor facilities, etc., for a specific area. A somewhat similar publication for aviators is called an air pilot.
Scheherazade: the female narrator of The Arabian Nights, who during one thousand and one adventurous nights saved her life by entertaining her husband, the king, with stories.
Vega: the fifth brightest of all stars and the third brightest in the northern sky.
West Point: US Military Academy in New York. It has been a military post since 1778 and the seat of the US Military Academy since 1802.
Published by
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© 2008 L. Ron Hubbard Library. All Rights Reserved.
Any unauthorized copying, translation, duplication, importation or distribution, in whole or in part, by any means, including electronic copying, storage or transmission, is a violation of applicable laws.
Mission Earth is a trademark owned by L. Ron Hubbard Library and is used with permission. Battlefield Earth is a trademark owned by Author Services, Inc. and is used with permission.
Cover art; The Crossroads and Borrowed Glory story illustrations; Fantasy, Far-Flung Adventure and Science Fiction illustrations; Story Preview cover art; and Story Preview and Glossary illustrations: Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction copyright © by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Penny Publications, LLC. Horsemen illustration from Western Story Magazine is © and ™ Condé Nast Publications and is used with their permission.
ISBN 978-1-59212-532-6 ePub version
ISBN 978-1-59212-368-1 print version
ISBN 978-1-59212-241-7 audiobook version
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007928019
Contents
THE CROSSROADS
BORROWED GLORY
THE DEVIL’S RESCUE
GLOSSARY
The Crossroads
The Crossroads
IT was not like Eben Smith to resign himself to the fates and vagaries of an e
conomic muddle he could not fathom, not even to the AAA or the HOLC or the FLC or the other various unsyllabic combinations which he regularly, each morning, collected in his RFD box.
“It ain’t right,” he said that dawn to Maria his wife and Lucy his horse. “I can grow crops and I know crops and there ain’t nobody in Jefferson County that can grow more corn per acre and what’s more better corn per stalk than me. And when it comes to turnips and squash and leaf lettuce I reckon I ain’t so far behind. And by cracky there must be some place where the stuff can be sold so folks can eat.”
“The guvvermunt paid you right smart for all that plowing under you did, Eben,” cautioned his wife.
“Well I reckon I don’t give a spit how smart they paid me because it all went out in taxes so they could pay me agin. No sir, Maria,” and here he had to pause and grunt while he made Lucy take the bit, “it ain’t right. Them city papers when they ain’t atalking about some furriner fightin’ some other furriner is saying how people is starving in the streets. Well, I can’t figure it out. Here I’m the best corn raiser in Jefferson County and I got lots of corn . . . and squash and turnips and leaf lettuce too, by gum . . . and still the guvvermunt says I got to stop raisin’ what I planted and plow under what I was goin’ to plant. It’s like that guvvermunt man said yesterday when I asked him what the dingdong it was all about, the economic problems is acute. And by golly our economic problems is going to get even more acute if we don’t get some hams and things for this winter. Like my grandfather Boswell that traded a spavined mare for the purtiest prize bull in Ohio used to say, ‘Politics is a subjeck for men that’s got full bellies . . . otherwise it ain’t politics, it’s war.’ We ain’t no paupers that we got to be supported by no charity and if they’s folks starvin’ in the city, why, I reckon they got somethin’ or other to trade for turnips and truck.”
“Now, Eben,” said Maria, anxiously wiping her hands on her apron, “don’t you go doin’ nothin’ to get the guvvermunt mad with you. Mebbe this thing you’re goin’ to do ain’t got any place in this here economic system acuteness.”
“Never did hear anythin’ wrong with a man fillin’ his belly so long as he didn’t have to steal to do it,” said Eben, picking up the lines and trailing them to the box seat of the spring wagon.
“Mebbe them city folks’ll trade you right out’n everything and you’ll have to walk home,” protested Maria as she worriedly swept an unruly strand of gray hair from her tired eyes.
“Listen at the woman!” said the offended Eben to Lucy the mare. “Maria, I reckon as how you’re forgettin’ that time I swapped a belt buckle for one of them newfangled double-action hand-lever self-draining washing machines for you. Giddap, Lucy.”
The heavily sagging wagon finally decided to follow along on the hoofs of Lucy and while Maria held open the gate, creaked out into the ruts of the dirt road. Eben’s hunting setter came leaping excitedly after, having been awakened in the nick of time by the noisy wheels.
“Git for home, Boozer!” said Eben severely.
Mystified, the dog stopped, took a few hesitant steps after the wagon and then, seeing Eben shake his whip as a warning, halted, one foot raised, eyes miserable, tail drooping, to stand there staring after, while the spring wagon’s yellow dust got further and further away, smaller and smaller until it vanished over a slight roll in the limitless prairie.
Eben looked like a simile for determination. His lean, wind-burned, plow-hardened, tobacco-stained, overalled, shrewd-eyed self might have served as a model for a modern painter in the need of a typical New Englander type peculiar to the Middle West. But Eben was not quite as sure as he appeared. What Maria had said about the city folks had shaken him. Dagnab women anyhow. Always makin’ a man feel uncertain of hisself! Wasn’t he Vermont stock? Hadn’t his folks, in Vermont, England, China and Iowa, to say nothing of the Fiji Isles and Ohio, bargained and businessed everybody in sight out of their shirts? Yankee traders or the direct descendants of them were just plain impossible to trim unless it was by each other. Still . . . he’d never been away from this expanse of green and yellow prairie and, no matter his own folks, he wasn’t sure. Things had changed out in the world. Mebbe them stores in the city wasn’t as easy to deal with as Jeb Hawkins’ down at Corn Center. He looked with misgivings at his wagonload. Under the tarp were turnips and lettuce and corn and some early apples, making the canvas cover bulge. They were tangibles. With his own hands he had brought them into strength in this world and by golly there weren’t turnips or lettuce or corn like that anywhere else in Jefferson County.
Plow them under?
If folks was starving then by golly they needed food. That was simple. And if they had anything at all Eben knew he could bring whatever it was back and trade it to Johnny Bach or Jim Johnson or George Thompson. They had all the lettuce and apples and corn and turnips they needed and they had hams and a lot of other truck Eben needed. And Jeb Hawkins’ store would trade him whatever else . . . Surely it was a simple transaction.
He began to maunder on what things he might get for his produce and how he would convert them and how he would go about trading for them or something else and so passed the hours of the morning.
Because he lived down at the south end of Jefferson County and had always traveled north to Corn Center, he was not sure of his road nor, indeed, sure of his destination. People spoke of the city and pointed south and that was little enough to go upon. Twice he paused and asked directions, getting vague replies, and drove on until noon. Lucy nuzzled her feed bag and Eben ate the lunch Maria had prepared and then sat half an hour under a tree beside a brook wondering indistinctly on his project.
Through the better portion of the afternoon he continued on southward. The country became more level and less inhabited and he began to be homesick. His eyes did not like looking for ten miles to a flat horizon without so much as a poplar, a ditch or a rolling hill to ease the sameness. He was even less sure of himself than he had been at noon. He’d spend the night beside the road, a fact which did not worry him, and he couldn’t starve with a load of vegetables. But if this city was many days away, why, Lucy would run plumb out of grain and he didn’t like to think of how she’d begin to look at him if she had to eat nothing but dusty grass.
Dusk came and then darkness and Eben, disliking to stop because he might yet see the city in the distance, continued onward, wrapping a sheepskin around his feet to keep them warm.
When the stars said it was about eight and when Eben was about to give up for the night, he came to a crossroads.
“Whoa,” he said to Lucy. And then looked about him.
Here four roads made an intersection and so irregular was their departure from this spot and so widely different was their quality that Eben was very perplexed. One road was concrete or at least white and hard like that one the WPA had put down through Corn Center. The road to the right of that, going away from Eben, was full of large green-gray boulders and seemed nearly impassable to anything except foot traffic. The next was hard and shiny and metallic and threw back the stars so that, at first, Eben thought it was wet. Then, of course, there was his own, a double rut worn into twin prisons for narrow wheels and baked there by the September sun.
Eben got down and felt of each one, appreciative of the quality of the shiny metal one except that a horse would probably fall down on it the first rain. The white, hard one wasn’t quite like that road in Corn Center because it was dusty, besides it showed the tracks of horses but no wheels and that one in Corn Center showed nothing. Although he had been certain that the country was all flat, the boulder-strewn way came down a hill to this place and, crossing it, ran up a hill and vanished.
Then an oddity struck Eben. For the past few minutes that he had been on this intersection the sun had been at high noon! He put his thumb in his eye and peered at it accusingly and then because it was quite definitely the sun and obviously there
, he shook his head and muttered:
“Never can tell what the goldurned guvvermunt is going to do next!”
Lucy was eyeing him forlornly and he forgot about the sun to remember that she was probably hungry and that he was nearly starved himself. He hung the feedbag on her nose and, making her move the wagon so that it was not on any of the right of ways, took out the remains of the lunch Maria had fixed and munched philosophically with the warm sun on his back. He felt drowsy after that and, stretching out, slept.
He did not know how long he had been lying there for when he awoke the sun was still at high noon.
“Wilt the whole lot!” he grumbled, spreading the canvas more tightly and thoroughly over his load. He hunted around until he found a spring among the boulders and, after watering Lucy, sluiced the canvas.
Methodically, then, he took up the problem of the roads. One of these must lead to the city but with four from which to choose he rapidly became groggy with indecision. He sat down in the wagon’s shadow and waited for somebody to come along with information.
The hours drifted by though the sun did not move and Eben was nearly upon the point of continuing along his own dirt track when he saw something moving among the rocks up the hill. He got up and hailed and the something moved cautiously down toward him, from boulder to boulder.
The newcomer was a bearded old fellow in a greasy brown robe which was his only covering. Bits of tallow and sod clung in his gray whiskers and a hunted look lurked in his watery eyes.
“Long live the Messiah!” said the old man.
“What Messiah?” said Eben, offended at the vigor if the old man meant what he thought he meant.
“Long live Byles the Messiah!” said the old man.
“Never heard of him,” said Eben.
The old man stared in amazement and then slowly began to examine Eben from toe to straw hat, shaking his head doubtfully.