Searing the lot of them, the trooper in particular, Bidworthy rasped, "Get back on board. No arguments.
No funny business. We"re taking off."
"Hear that?" asked one, nudging the nearest. "Get back on board. If you can"t jump thirty feet, you"d better flap your arms and fly."
"No sauce from you," roared Bidworthy. "I"ve got my orders."
"He takes orders," remarked the trooper. "At his age."
"Can"t understand it," commented another, shaking a sorrowful head.
Bidworthy scrabbled the lock"s smooth rim in vain search of something to grasp. A ridge, a k.n.o.b, a
projection of some sort was needed to take the strain.
"I warn you men that if you try me too-"
"Save your breath, Biddy," interjected the trooper. "From now on, I"m a Gand." With that, he turned and
walked rapidly toward the road, four following.Getting astride his bike, Harrison put a foot on a pedal. His back tire promptly sank with a loud whee-e e.
"Come back!" howled Bidworthy at the retreating five. He made extravagant motions, tried to tear the ladder from its automatic grips. A siren keened thinly inside the vessel. That upped his agitation by several ergs.
"Hear that?" With vein-pulsing ire, he watched Harrison tighten the rear valve and apply his hand pump.
"We"re about to lift. For the last time-"
Again the siren, this time in a quick series of shrill toots. Bidworthy jumped backward as the seal came down. The lock closed. Harrison again mounted his machine, settled a foot on a pedal but remained watching.
The metal monster shivered from nose to tail then rose slowly and in utter silence. There was stately magnificence in the ascent of such enormous bulk. It increased its rate of climb gradually, went faster, faster, became a toy, a dot and finally disappeared.
For just a moment, Harrison felt a touch of doubt, a hint of regret. It soon pa.s.sed away. He glanced toward the road.
The five self-elected Gands had thumbed a coach which was picking them up. That was co-operation
apparently precipitated by the ship"s disappearance. Quick on the uptake, these people. He saw it move off on huge rubber b.a.l.l.s, bearing the five with it. A fan-cycle raced in the opposite direction, hummed into the distance.
"Your brunette," Gleed had described her. What gave him that idea? Had she made some remark which
he"d construed as complimentary because it made no reference to outsize ears?
He had a last look around. The earth to his left bore a great curved rut one mile long by twelve feet deep.
Two thousand Terrans had been there.
Then about eighteen hundred.
Then sixteen hundred.
Less five.
"One left-me!" he said to himself.
Giving a fatalistic shrug, he put the pressure on and rode to town.
And then there were none.
About the Authors
Lloyd Biggle, Jr. wrote more than a dozen novels, many of them dealing with the nearly omnipotent Council of the Supreme, which details a galaxy in which mankind is governed by a huge supercomputer. He also wrote swift-moving nonseries fiction, including Alien Main, coauth.o.r.ed with T.L. Sherred. He founded the Regional Collections department for the Science Fiction Writers of America, and served as the president of the Science Fiction Oral History a.s.sociation. He lived and worked in Ypsilanti, Michigan until his death in September 2002.
* * * Christopher Anvil is the pseudonym of Harry C. Crosby, Jr., a gifted short story author whose work was published in Astounding Science Fiction and a.n.a.log more often than any other author from the mid1950s to the mid-1960s. He also wrote four novels, including The Day the Machines Stopped, Strangers in Paradise, and Pandora"s World, but, like so many of his contemporaries, it is for his short fiction that he is best known. Stories such as "Mind Partner," considered by many to be his best work, "The Great Intellect Boom" and "Uncalculated Risk" show off his examination of social mores and ideas, and often turning them on their head.
* * * Vernor Vinge won the 2000 Hugo award for best novel for his book A Deepness in the Sky, the sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep. Other novels by him include Grimm"s World, The Witling, and Across Realtime. His short fiction has been collected in the anthologies True Names . . . and Other Dangers and Threats . . . and Other Promises. Born in Wisconsin, he currently lives in San Diego, where, along with writing excellent novels and short stories, he works as a professor of mathematics at San Diego State University.
* * * Murray Leinster (18961975) was the pseudonym for William Fitzgerald Jenkins, a consummate professional who wrote for a wide number of venues during his varied career. Although he wrote more than forty novels during his fifty-year career, it is his short fiction, including stories such as "The Lonely Planet," "First Contact," and "Sidewise in Time" that he is best remembered. Fascinated with the idea of alternatives to reality as we or his protagonists know it, he pioneered the concept of the multiple points along one time continuum, or the simple concept of parallel worlds. Well regarded in the science fiction community, he was the Guest of Honor at the 21st World Science Fiction convention in 1963.
* * * Alfred Elton (A.E.) van Vogt (19122000) burst onto the science fiction scene in 1939 with his first published science fiction story, "Black Destroyer," which was immediately hailed as a cla.s.sic in the field, and the arrival of a bold new voice in speculative fiction. His first novel, Slan, appeared in 1940 and cemented his reputation as the most popular and exciting author of the era. Although his work has been criticized for deficiencies in plot, logic, and sometimes rationality, his stories operated on an emotional depth that swept readers along into new and exciting worlds filled with strange and alien ideas and races. Born in Manitoba, Canada, he discovered Amazing Stories when he was 14 and became a lifelong reader of science fiction. After joining the Canadian civil service at 19, he also took a writing course, and sold his first fiction piece in 1932. Novels such as The World of Null-A, the first science fiction novel from a major publisher, Simon and Schuster, and his cla.s.sic work The Weapon Shops of Isher, based in part on the novella in this book, show the work of this Grand Master in full bloom.
Katherine MacLean has used her novels and short stories to explore complex ethical issues about medical and scientific experimentation. In novels such as Cosmic Checkmate, written with Charles de Vet (and based on the short story included in this anthology), Missing Man, and Dark Wing she has explored the rights of the individual versus the good of the society. She is especially effective at shorter lengths, with stories such as "The Origin of the Species," "Contagion," and "The Other." Her short fiction has been collected in the anthologies The Diploids, and Flights of Fancy, Trouble With Treaties, and The Trouble with You Earth People.
* * * Although Frank Herbert (19201986) wrote more than twenty novels and many short stories during his career, it is his six-novel galaxy- and millennium-spanning epic Dune series that towers above all his other work. This is not to say that his other books are any less important or imaginative. Novels such as The Dosadi Experiment, The G.o.d Makers, Destination: Void, and The Jesus Incident reveal his gift for unparalleled world-building, complete yet complex and varied alien races, and the unfolding of monumental events that affected entire civilizations and generations to come, often hinging on a group or even one man"s choices and actions. Born in Tacoma, Washington, he was a reporter and editor for various West Coast newspapers, then went to the University of Washington as a lecturer in general and interdisciplinary studies. He was awarded the Nebula award in 1965 for Dune, the Hugo award in 1966, also for Dune, and the Prix Apollo award in 1978.
* * * Eric Frank Russell (19051978) first achieved recognition with the publication of Sinister Barrier, the novel that launched John W. Campbell"s Unknown magazine in 1939. Usually at the forefront of the science fiction scene for the next two decades, he was adept at tackling such humanistic issues as race relations, transposing them to the science fictional realm. Although he wrote several novels, including Three to Conquer and Sentinels From s.p.a.ce, it is his short fiction that garnered the most attention. A founding member of the British Interplanetary Society, his short story "Allamagoosa" won the Hugo award for best short fiction of the year in 1955.
THE END.
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