The Seed of Evil

I backed against the wall, letting my own weapon fall in my surprise. Rim edged to me, displaying his jagged glass proudly and making thrusting motions. Then he threw it aside at the last moment and aimed one of his best hammerblows at my jaw.

That was when I temporarily left the scene in the living quarters, for the happier climes of unconsciousness.

When I recovered he’d suited up and left. I didn’t know how long it had been but I guessed it was five or ten minutes.

I felt too groggy to follow, though. I climbed to my feet, groaned a little, felt sorry for myself for a while, then became supine again, this time on the couch. My head felt really bad, and I don’t think it was just the beer.

For the first time in my life I felt a twinge of remorse. Why that should be, I couldn’t make out: Rim should be the one going through all that conscience stuff, not me. Still, I staggered over to a mirror and gazed long, if unsteadily, at the horrifying sight I presented.

“You look wretched,” I accused miserably. “You look as bad as him.”

I took solace in the thought that perhaps I didn’t look quite as bad as Rim, then turned my attention to what he was doing, switching on the main view-screen to show the alien ship. Bringing up the magnification a few degrees, I saw my partner puttering at the vessel’s lower aft part; soon he backed off, and a neat explosion blew a large chunk out of the fabric.

Rim darted forward immediately and slipped inside the hole. Even in those few seconds I saw him twist and waver as if he’d been caught in a swift current, but I lost interest in him in the course of the next minute, because I was so completely fascinated by what was happening to the ship.

When the space rushed in, she began to sink. That is, she took on greater, more meaningful proportions, became more majestic. As more of her bulk was submerged, the enigma of her appearance was resolved, and at last she reached the point where she revealed her real shape to us fishes. There was a keel, now, and a curving bulge of prow, sides and stern. Even a steering oar became visible.

Slowly, the true nature of the vessel heeled over into the sidereal universe as currents of space swirled in and around her. And then, when she was totally submerged, I saw it—the open deck, the drowned crewmen, the great expanse of square sail. Then I saw the nobles which the ship carried: the poet-faced youth, with a golden circlet about his neck, a short dagger of authority at his side, and his arm around a beautiful lady, dressed in a loose flowing robe, her hair gorgeously arrayed, but both their faces relaxed now in the repose of death by drowning. Of course, they were about thirty feet tall. …

Within a few minutes the ship began to break up. I saw a tiny figure struggling through the disintegrating bilges, and automatically flicked on the intercom to hear his hoarse gasping breath. Nothing amiss there. He jetted a short distance away and looked up at the lord and lady, a blunt midget against their gracious forms.

Immersed in space, their bodies dissipated, fading away in spinning particles, brief glimmers and spiracles. Even the ship itself had become water-logged—space-logged, and was shredding into fragments which dispersed into non-existence.

“Oh,” quavered Rim, “I’m a murderer.”

Ten minutes later there was only black, empty space on the view-screen. Rim clumped through the airlock and grumpily told me he hadn’t learned a thing about what it was like without space.

So we both returned to the bottle.

All that Rim put on his research report this year was: “Found a sailing ship. Sank it.” I hope we don’t lose our jobs because of that; we’d be pretty lucky to find another easy number like this one. Still, we’ve got beer enough for another three months, so we’ll find out then.

Actually, I think we’ll get through the beer in two months, or even one.

The other day Rim started laughing. “I just can’t get over it,” he said. “Creatures to whom space is a heavy liquid! I’d like to see their aeroplanes.”

“Yeah,” I answered. “What about when they get the idea of submarines?”

The Radius Riders

The last dive of the subterrene vessel Interstice began as a test mission to prove her worth. She had but recently been launched: half her galleries were empty shells, waiting to be fitted with munitions and crew quarters. Nevertheless, we carried a good load, a crew of two hundred, and our technical plant, including armaments, was complete. Two magazines, one fore, one aft, were stacked with torpedoes; and the whole mass lay sedately in the grip of the polariser fields, by means of which our newly-built ship travelled through solid matter.