Edmond Hamilton - The Haunted Stars

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THE HAUNTED STARS, by

Edmond Hamilton

Jack Williamson who

knows the star ways.

A Pyramid Book, published by arrangement with Torquil Press

Pyramid edition: first printing, February

1962

Printed in the United States of America

much later, Robert Fairlie was to remember the simple act of boarding the evening plane at Boston

airport as the mo-ment when he first began to move into a new, frightening universe. But at the time, it

seemed to him only a pleasing break in his quiet academic routine.

Right after take-off, he opened the newspaper he had bought in the terminal. He spared only a glance at

the front page, with its headline of SOVIET ACCUSES U.S. OF VIOLATING MOON

AGREEMENT. He was not much in-terested in that continuing controversy—the Russians had been

blustering about something or other ever since World War Two ended, more than twenty years ago. He

went through the inner pages, searching the columns.

“Of course,” he thought a bit self-consciously, “there’s likely to be nothing about me at all. But there

might be.”

There was. But it was only a paragraph buried opposite the woman’s page, and it misspelled his name.

It informed that Doctor Robert Parley, professor of linguistics at Massa-chusetts University and noted

authority on Carian “hiero-glyphics”—he winced at that word—had been called to Washington to assist

the Smithsonian Institution in a matter of philological research.

Not much, Fairlie thought disappointedly. But a news-paper wasn’t very important. There would be

more about ft. in the Journal of Philological Studies. For a young scholar— thirty-three was young, in

his field—it was a thing that would definitely add prestige.

“Chap I met down at the Smithsonian,” he could casually ;

say at faculty meetings, “was telling me .. .” -*;

He wondered what the Smithsonian had for him to do. They had merely written that his work on the

Carian ln« ? scriptions had convinced them he could aid them, and would • he make arrangements for a

temporary substitute and coofe-ii

THE HAUNTED STARS

down and consult? He would, and he had. Teaching bored sophomores Grimm’s Law was easily left

when there was prospect of real research.

Night came, and Fairlie put down the newspaper. The passenger beside him, a middle-aged

businessman by the look of him, nodded down at the headline and said, “We ought to just tell those

bastards to shove it.”

Fairlie, reluctant to be drawn into an exchange of cliches, said, “Perhaps you’re right.”

“Sure I’m right,” said the other. “Everything that happens, they yell warmonger at us. Berlin, and then

Suez, and now this Gassendi business. What the hell is it to them what we do in Gassendi?”

His voice droned on, and presently Fairlie closed his eyes and pretended to doze. Then he did doze,

until a stewardess touched his shoulder and said they were coming down into Washington airport.

When Fairlie walked down the steps from the plane, he hastily scrambled into his topcoat. A raw March

wind was driving across the airport and had scoured the starry sky clean and glistening. He went into the

bright crowded ter-minal and was starting for his luggage when a man came up to him and held out his

hand.

“Mr. Fairlie? I’m Owen Withers, representing the Smith-sonian.”

Fairlie felt surprised, and then flattered. “I didn’t imagine anyone was going to meet me.”

Withers smiled faintly. He was a vaguely dusty-looking little man of perhaps forty who looked like a

small-town lawyer.

“You’re more important than you realize. Ill see to your suitcase. And I have a car.”

The car was a dark sedan and Withers drove it expertly away from the terminal amid a herd of taxicabs

and against a cataract of headlights in the other lane. Presently he turned off that heavily travelled

highway onto a peripheral boulevard. They were not going now toward the glow of downtown

Washington, but Fairlie assumed that the other was taking a less congested route.

His assumption was shattered when Withers said casually, Tes, we were lucky enough to get you a ride

right out there, so you won’t have to stop over in Washington at all.”

THE HAUNTED STARS

Fairlie turned and stared at him. “A ride out where?*

“Why, out to New Mexico,” said Withers. “Where your work will be.”

“No one told me that!”

It was Withers’ turn to look surprised and a little dis-mayed. “They didn’t? Oh, Lord—another example

of bureau-cratic bumbling.”

“But why New Mexico?” Fairlie asked. “Why does die Smithsonian want me to go out there?”

Withers made a shrugging movement without taking his hands off the wheel. “I don’t know—I’m just

administrative hired help. All I know is that it’s a field study project”

Then he added, “Here we are.”

In the darkness off the road was a far-flung pattern of lights, and a tower with many lights on it. A high

fence of chain-link closed all this away from the road, and Withers was turning into an entrance that had

a small guardhouse. He stopped, and a serious-faced young man in uniform came out and looked at the

papers Withers handed to him.

“Okay, you can go right on through to the flight line,” he said.

Withers drove on through the gate.

“What is this-an Air Force field?” asked Fairlie.

Withers nodded. “That’s right. As I said, we were lucky enough to hitch you a ride on an AF plane

going out there tonight. Saves your time, and our money. Our appropriation isn’t unlimited, you know.”

He drove past a long, low building and onto the dark tarmac. Fairlie looked around. He had never been

in a military installation before and he found it confusing. He had always imagined a great uproar of

planes landing and taking off, but it was not like that. There were the lights stretching far away in lines,

and an occasional small jet dark and silent on the flight line, and not much else.

He felt upset. He had expected a visit to the Institution to-morrow, a quiet office, a leisurely discussion

with fellow scholars. Instead, in the most offhand fashion, he was to be passed on to New Mexico,

where probably some problem in Indian languages was all there was. Whatever it was, Fairlie thought

resentfully, they might have made sure somebody told him. It seemed like sloppy procedure for a

scientific institution.

-f

THE HAUNTED STARS

Withers stopped the car near another of the small planes. Fairlie was vague about airplane types, but this

looked like a fast jet. There were lights near it, and a mechanic in a coverall was going away from it,

wiping bis hands. “This is it,” said Withers. “Ill take your suitcase.” Fairlie stared. “This plane? But I

thought—“ “Get you out there in just a few hours,” Withers assured him heartily. “It’s an R-404—a

reconnaissance job going west with an empty seat.” And as a man came down out of the plane, “Ah,

here’s Captain Kwolek. Captain, Mr. Fairlie.”

Fairlie felt a revulsion. Good Lord, this was one of those crazy tin skyrockets that went hooting and

screaming across tiie sky at insane speeds. He didn’t want to ride a thing like this. He mentally damned

Withers for being so helpful about getting him a ride.

But both Withers and Kwolek seemed to take it all as a matter of course. Probably people down here in

Washington thought nothing of casually jettinjg out to New Mexico, or to Formosa or England, on a

March midnight. Captain Kwolek, a broad-faced young man with a button nose, gave him a hard

handshake and an appraising stare that made Fairlie suddenly conscious of his own lank, weedy and

undynamic appearance. He stifled the protest he had been about to make. His male vanity wouldn’t

permit him to look scared.

“Thanks for giving me a lift, Captain,” said Fairlie, with what he hoped was a convincingly casual air.

“No trouble,” said Kwolek. “Climb up, will you? IT! take that case. So long, Mr. Withers.”

Fairlie climbed up, catching his foot once on the tail of his topcoat and feeling like a fool, and poked and

scrambled into a bewilderingly crowded interior that smelled of oily metal. Another young man in

uniform, dark and good-looking and tough-looking, came deftly back and helped Fairlie squeeze into a

bucket-seat beside which was an odd metal framework. “I’m Lieutenant Buford,” he told Fairlie. “Here

you are-better strap right in. This is the photog”s seat but we’re run-ning without Charlie tonight.”

That meant very little to Fairlie. He had trouble getting ttie strap around his topcoat, and meanwhile

Kwolek was squeezing past him and taking one of the seats up front.

Presently a hellish roar exploded and Fairlie would have jumped erect if it had not been for the strap. He

peered out

THE HAUNTED STARS

the window but they were not moving. Kwolek did some-thing with his hands and the roar lessened. The

pilot turned and said, “We’ll get clearance in a minute, Mr. Fairlie.”

“Oh, yes,” said Fairlie. He felt angry because they treated him like a nervous elderly passenger on a

transport. He was only six or seven years older than they were, at most, and while this was all new to him

. . .

The roar became loud again and the plane lurched and Fairlie felt things happen to the pit of his stomach.

He clutched the camera-standard beside his seat and tried to look unconcerned. He was damned if he

would let these two tough young men patronize him. They went up fast, the lights dropping away, and

oddly the roar seemed to diminish as the plane ripped through the night on the leading edge of its own

screeching fury.

Kwolek looked back again, and raised his voice. “All right?”

Fairlie nodded. “All right.” After a moment he asked, “Where do we land in New Mexico?”

“Morrow Base,” said Kwolek, without turning.

Fairlie stared at the back of a neck and cap that were all he could see of the pilot. After a moment, he

said, “There must be some mistake.”

Kwolek shrugged. “No mistake.”

But there wasl Fairlie thought. He knew about Morrow Base. The whole world did. It was that area of

arid land in New Mexico from which the rockets of the American lunar expedition had risen, and from

which the supply rockets still went out to the base in Gassendi. And it was a guarded place. It had been

said that it would be easier to get into the Fort Knox vaults than into Morrow, especially now with the

angry international controversy about the American and Rus-sian lunar bases going on.

Fairlie unstrapped and went forward, scrambling and shp-ping, and held onto the back of Kwolek’s seat

and spoke emphatically into his ear. “Listen, there’s been a mix-up somewhere. I’m Professor Robert

Fairlie of Massachusetts University, Department of Linguistics. I have no business at Morrow, and I

don’t want to go any farther with this error that someone has made.”

Kwolek shook his head. “No error. Please strap in again,

Mr. Fairlie.” :

THE HAUNTED STARS

“But use your common sense, maul” said Fairlie. “They wouldn’t want a linguist at Morrow.”

Kwolek shrugged. “I’ve got my orders. Pick up passenger Robert Fairlie at Washington and bring him

to Morrow fast. Yon see? No error at all.”

the R-404 hounded through the night in pursuit of yester-day’s daylight. There was darkness beneath

with infrequent lights, and dark skies above with scattered stars, and the plane could not quite outrace

the turning earth so it could not catch the daylight. But it tried.

Fairlie sat cramped in his bucket-seat and worried. His rump ached, and the belt chafed his middle, and

he was cold. “Why in the world would they want me out there? It doesn’t make sense!”

The study of language was a science. To Fairlie, it was a thrilling one, the delving into man’s known and

forgotten tongues, the shape of human speech and thought for ages. But what could it have to do with

Morrow?

He puzzled over it, trying to remember all that he could about the whole lunar project. He found that he

didn’t re-member much, it was too far out of his field. Like most people he’d been startled when the irst

Sputnik went up, back in 1957. The newspaper headlines had kept one informed of the race for space,

the American Atlas rocket of 1958, the Russian New Year’s moonshot that missed, the first manned

satellite flights, and finally the first landings on the Moon.

Russian and American parties had made it almost simul-taneously. Now the Soviets had two bases, one

in Kepler crater and one in Encke crater, and the Americans had one base, in Gassendi crater. It had

been, of course, a tremend-ous sensation at first. But just as had been the case with atomic energy, the

wonder of it had soon faded out in a dull and dreary mess of charges and counter-charges. There had

been a Neutralization Agreement in which all nations prom-ised not to use the Moon for military

purposes. And the Soviets were filling the UN with charges that the United

THE HAUNTED STARS

States was fortifying Gassendi as a missile base. If they weren’t, why wouldn’t the Americans allow

qualified ob-servers to inspect Gassendi? If warmongering capitalist pow-ers tried to carry their plots to

the Moon. . . .

That was about all Fairlie could remember, the colorful stories of the first landings and the wrangle about

Gassendi that had been going on ever since. He had not been too greatly interested. He had always

believed, like the chap in Scot Fitzgerald’s novel, that life was best seen through the single window of

your own special interest and that the most limited of persons was the all-round man.

He flushed a little when he remembered how he had said that at a discussion of the landings and what

old Hodgkins of Psychology had said to him in answer.

“You know what, Fairlie? You’re not interested in anything outside philology because you’re afraid. You

retreat into your nook of scholarly research because you dislike and fear the real world, real people.”

Fairlie had resented that. He wasn’t a scholarly prig, just because he liked his work and was absorbed in

it. He just didn’t have time to devote to every sensation that came along. But he wished now that he had

learned a little more about this lunar business. It might give him some clue as to why they had sent a fast

jet to bring him to Morrow.

He looked at his watch. No need to wonder about ft. He would soon find out.

Time passed. And finally Kwolek turned his head and nodded, his lips forming a word.

Morrow.

The door to the Moon, the gateway into space. From here men stepped off into the cold black vacuum

to take supplies out to Gassendi. Fairlie craned forward to see.

The jet tilted and turned and then through the cockpit transparency he saw a pattern of lights in the

darkness be-low, rushing past and falling behind them. The lights clotted and clustered more brightly

around long barny metal build-ings that looked like airplane hangars, and then a tall control tower with

many-colored lamps on it flashed by them.

Darkness again, then far ahead a glimpse of a skeletonal tower, a looming scaffolding of girders and

behind it, touch--ing it, the sheer shining curve of something tall and arrogant and awesome. That too

dropped back out of sight and as

THE HAUNTED STARS

Kwolek swung the jet down on a sharper turn, Fairlie saw two other distant glittering towers far, far, in

the darkness. Of a sudden he realized that they were rockets and their gantries.

He felt an unexpected electric thrill of excitement. It was one thing to read newspaper stories about the

lunar project, to watch telenews pictures of rockets blasting off, to discuss seriously the political

implications of the space age. But to swoop out of darkness and glimpse the majesty of the rockets

themselves, poised for their leap into infinity, to see the shin-ing shapes that had perhaps been out there

and back and had the scars of another world still upon their sides, that was another thing completely.

When the jet touched ground and he finally climbed down out of it, Fairlie turned to look back. But the

towering rockets had receded miles away in those few moments and were now only distantly visible.

Closer to him were the barny structures and their lights. Closer still was a small cluster of lights around

several low, flat buildings.

The air was surprisingly light, dry and warm, so sharply different from a March night in Boston or

Washington that it recalled Fairlie to the strangeness of being here at all.

Fairlie turned to Kwolek. “Now what?”

Kwolek nodded toward the headlights of a car that was coming toward them. “Now it’s up to them. All

I have to do is deliver you here.”

The headlights were those of a jeep that pulled up beside them. A civilian, a blond, alert young man,”got

down from it and said “Okay” to Kwolek. Then to Fairlie he said, “Hello, Mr. Fairlie, my name’s Hill. Ill

take you on in.”

“I’d like,” Fairlie began stiffly, “some explanation of why—“

“Of course, they’ll explain everything,” Hill broke in sooth-ingly. “My job is just to check you in. Get in,

please.”

“Security, you know,” said Hill. “But since Withers checked you at the other end, it’s only routine.”

Fairlie, clinging to the edge of the seat as the jeep bounced over the field, felt a little shock. “Then

Withers was a Security man? But I thought-“ Withers had said that he represented the Smithsonian.

Then that was a big fat lie? But why would the Smithsonian lend itself to such a thing?

The New Mexican landscape looked dark and lonesome under the stars, the lights scattered out ahead

of them and

THE HAUNTED STARS

beyond in the distance the blur of low, dark hills. They were heading, not toward the barny buildings or

the far-off rockets, but toward the flat structures.

“Administration,” said Hill, nodding ahead.

He stopped the jeep in front of a long, low stuccoed building with a veranda in front.

“This is a building for special personnel,” he told Fairlie. “Now if you’ll just come along with me.”

He opened a door and light poured out. Fairlie walked in-side and then stopped. He had expected some

kind of an office. This was a not-too-large and rather ratty-looking lounge room. There were three men

talking in one corner of it and they turned as Fairlie entered.

“Please wait—they’ll be over from Administration in just a little while,” said Hill, behind him.

The door closed, and Fairlie turned around but Hill was gone. He turned back as his name was spoken.

“Bob Fairlie. I’ll be damned, they got you in on this too?**

One of the three men in the lounge was coming toward him. Fairlie knew him at once. Jim Speer. Doctor

James Speer of Pacific University, Department of Linguistics. They were good friends although they saw

each other infrequently. Speer was fortyish, stocky and plumper than Fairlie re-membered him. “Fatter”

was the right word. His round pink face was creased with lines of surprise.

“Got me in on what?” Fairlie said, as he shook hands. “What’s this all about, Jim?”

Speer laughed. “What a question. I’ve been asking it for six hours now, since I got here. So have Bogan

and Lisetti since they got here. But wait, do you know them?”

Fairlie felt a shock. He recognized the other two men now. He had watched them and listened to them at

more than one philological convention. They were big men, in his field. The biggest.

Doctor John Bogan was the dean of American philologists, and he knew it. A massive old man with a

saturnine face and a great mane of white hair, he had all the arrogance of a “grand old man” of anything.

He merely grunted at Fairlie.

But Lisetti was a different type. He was a famous linguist who looked like the polished villain of an old

stage melo-drama. He was over fifty but his dapper black hair and mustache made him look younger,

and he almost hissed in

THE HAUNTED STARS

theatrical fashion as he asked Fairlie, “What did they tell you—I mean, to get you here?”

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THEHAUNTEDSTARS,byEdmondHamiltonToJackWilliamsonwhoknowsthestarways.APyramidBook,publishedbyarrangementwithTorquilPressPyramidedition:firstprinting,February1962©1960byEdmondHamiltonAllRightsReservedPrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmericamuchlater,RobertFairliewastorememberthesimpleactofboardingtheeveningp...

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