A. E. Van Vogt - Transgalactic

Transgalactic

Table of Contents

PREFACE

CLANE OF LINN

Child of the Gods

Hand of the Gods

Home of the Gods

The Barbarian

Part II: The Wizard of Linn

THE EZWAL

The Second Solution

MISSION TO THE STARS

The Storm

The Mixed Men

TRANSGALACTIC

A. E. Van Vogt

Edited by

Eric Flint

and

David Drake

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any

resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Book Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403 Riverdale,

NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN 10: 1-4165-2089-9

ISBN 13: 0-978-4165-2089-4

Cover art by Bob Eggleton

First Baen printing, October 2006

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: t/k

Printed in the United States of America

A note on the edition:

The text of the stories included in this volume is that of the original magazine editions first

published inAstounding Science Fiction , not the later versions which

A. E. van Vogt reworked for various novelizations.

The editors

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

"A Son is Born" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in May, 1946.

"Child of the Gods" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in August, 1946.

"Hand of the Gods" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in December, 1946.

"Home of the Gods" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in April, 1947.

"The Barbarian" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in December, 1947.

"The Wizard of Linn" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in a three-part serial,

April-June, 1950.

"Co-Operate—Or Else!" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in April, 1942.

"The Second Solution" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in October, 1942.

"Concealment" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in September, 1943.

"The Storm" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in October, 1943.

"The Mixed Men" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in January, 1945.

PREFACE

The Golden Age of SF is universally dated from the July 1939, issue ofAstounding because that's when

"Black Destroyer," A. E. van Vogt's first SF story, appeared. Isaac Asimov's first story also appeared in

the same month but nobody—as Asimov himself admits—noticed it.

People noticed "Black Destroyer," though, and they continued to notice the many other stories that van

Vogt wrote over the following decade. With the encouragement and occasionally the direction of John

W. Campbell, Heinlein, deCamp, Hubbard, Asimov, and van Vogt together created the Golden Age of

SF.

Each of those great writers was unique. What as much as anything set van Vogt off from other SF

writers (of his day and later) was the ability to suggest vastness beyond comprehension. He worked with

not only in space and time, but with the mind.

Van Vogt knew that to describe the indescribable would have been to make it ludicrous, and that at best

description turns the inconceivable into the pedestrian. More than any other SF writer, van Vogt

succeeded in creating a sense of wonder in his readers by hinting at the shadowed immensities beyond

the walls of human perception. What we've tried to do in our selections forTransgalactic is show some

of van Vogt's skill and range; but we too can only hint at the wonders of the unglimpsed whole.

Eric Flint and Dave Drake 2005

CLANE OF LINN

Part I: Empire of the Atom

A Son is Born

Junior scientists stood at the bell ropes all day, ready to sound forth the tidings of an important birth. By

night time, they were exchanging coarse jests at to the possible reason for the delay. They took care,

however, not to be overheard by seniors or initiates.

The expected child had actually been born a few hours after dawn. He was a weak and sickly fellow,

and he showed certain characteristics that brought immediate dismay to the Leader household. His

mother, Lady Tania, when she wakened, listened for a while to his piteous crying, then commented

acidly:

"Who frightened the little wretch? He seems already afraid of life."

Scientist Joquin, in charge of the delivery, considered her words an ill-omen. He had not intended to let

her see the monstrosity until the following day, but now it seemed to him that he must act swiftly to avert

calamity. He hurriedly sent a dozen slave women to wheel in the carriage, ordering them to group around

it in close formation to ward of any malignant radiation that might be in the bedroom.

Lady Tania was lying, her slim body propped up in bed, when the astonishing procession started to

squeeze through the door. She watched it with a frown of amazement and then the beginning of alarm.

She had patiently borne her husband three other children, and so she knew that what she was seeing was

not part of any normal observance. She was not a soft spoken creature, and even the presence of a

Scientist in the room did not restrain her. She said violently:

"What is going on here, Joquin?"

Joquin fluttered his head at her in distress. Did she not realize that every ill-tempered word spoken at this

period only doomed the handicapped child to further disasters? He noted, startled, that she was parting

her lips to speak again—and, with a silent prayer to the atom gods, he took his life in his hands.

Three swift strides he made towards the bed, and clapped his palm over her mouth. As he had

expected, the woman was too astounded by the action to utter a sound. By the time she recovered, and

began to struggle weakly, the carriage was being tilted. And over his arm, she had her first glimpse of the

baby.

The gathering storm faded from her blue eyes. After a moment, Joquin gently removed his hand from her

mouth, and slowly retreated beyond the carriage. He stood there, quailing with the thought of what he

had done, but gradually as no verbal lightning struck at him from the bed, his sense of righteousness

reasserted. He began to glow inwardly and ever afterwards claimed that what he had done saved the

situation as far as it could be saved. In the warmth of that self-congratulatory feeling, he almost forgot the

child.

He was recalled by the Lady Tania saying in a dangerously quiet tone:

"How did it happen?"

Joquin nearly made the mistake of shrugging. He caught himself in time, but before he could say anything,

the woman said, more sharply:

"Of course, I know it'd due to the atom gods. Butwhen do you think it happened?"

* * *

Joquin was cautious. The scientists of the temples had had much experience with atomic mutation,

enough to know that the controlling gods were erratic and not easily pinned down by dates.

Nevertheless, mutation did not occur after an embryo baby was past the fish stage, and therefore a time

limit could be estimated. Not after January, 470 A.B., and not before— He paused, recalling the

approximate birth date of the Lady Tania's third child. He completed his figuring aloud— "Not before

467 A.B."

The woman was looking at the child now, more intently. What she saw made her swallow visibly.

Joquin, watching her, thought he knew what she was thinking. She had made the mistake a few days

before her confinement of boasting in a small company that four children would give her an advantage

over her sister, Chrosone, who only had two children, and over her stepbrother, Lord Tews, whose

acid-tongued wife had borne him three children. Now, the advantage would be theirs, for, obviously, she

could have no more normal children, and they could overtake or surpass her at their leisure.

There would also be many witty exchanges at her expense. The potentialities for personal

embarrassment were actually almost endless.

All that, Joquin read in her face, as she stared with hardening eyes at the child. He said hurriedly:

"This is the worst stage, Lady. Frequently, the result after a few months or years is

reasonably—satisfactory."

He had almost said "human." He was aware of her gaze swinging towards him. He waited uneasily, but

all she said finally was:

"Has the Lord Leader, the child's grandfather, been in?"

Joquin inclined his head. "The Lord Leader saw the baby a few minutes after it was born. His only

comment was to the effect that I should ascertain from you, if possible, when you were affected."

She did not reply immediately, but her eyes narrowed even more. Her thin face grew hard, then harsh.

She looked up at the scientist at last.

"I suppose you know," she said, "that only negligence at one of the temples could be responsible."

Joquin had already thought of that, but now he looked at her uneasily. Nothing had ever been done

about previous "children of the gods," but it had been growing on him that the Linns at least regarded this

as a special case. He said slowly:

"The atom gods are inscrutable."

The woman seemed not to hear. Her cold voice went on:

"The child will have to be destroyed, I suppose. But you may be sure that, within a month, there will be a

compensatory stretching of scientific necks such as the world has not seen in a generation."

She was not a pleasant person when roused, the Lady Tania Linn, daughter-in-law of the Lord Leader.

* * *

It proved easy to trace the source of the mutation. The previous summer, Tania, tiring of a holiday on one

of the family's west coast estates, returned to the capitol before she was expected. Her husband, General

of the Realm, Creg Linn, was having extensive alterations made to the Hill Palace. No invitation was

forthcoming from her sister at the other end of the city, or from her stepmother-in-law, the wife of the

Lord Leader. Tania, perforce, moved into an apartment in the Town Palace.

This assortment of buildings, though still maintained by the state, had not been used as a residence for

several years. The city had grown immense since it was built, and long since the commercial houses had

crowded around it. Due to a lack of foresight, by an earlier generation, title had not been taken to the

lands surrounding the palace, and it had always been deemed unwise to seize them by force.

There was one particularly annoying aspect of the failure to realize the profitable potentialities of the

area. This was the scientists' temple that towered in the shelter of one wing of the palace. It had caused

the Lady Tania no end of heartache the previous summer. On taking up residence, she discovered that

the only habitable apartment was on the temple side, and that the three most gorgeous windows faced

directly onto the blank lead walls of the temple.

The scientist who had built the temple was a member of the Raheinl group, hostile to the Linns. It had

titillated the whole city when the site was made known. The fact that three acres of ground were available

made the affront obvious.

It still rankled.

The agents of the Lord Leader discovered at the first investigation that one small area of the lead wall of

the temple was radioactive. They were unable to determine the reason for the activity, because the wall at

that point was of the required thickness. But the fact was what they reported to their master. Before

midnight of the second day after the child was born, the decision was in the making.

Shortly before twelve, Scientist Joquin was called in, and told the trend of events. Once more he took

his life in his hands.

"Leader," he said, addressing the great man direct, "this is a grave error into which your natural irritation

is directing you. The scientists are a group, who, having full control of atomic energy dispensation, have

developed an independent attitude of mind, which will not take kindly to punishments for accidental

crimes. My advice is, leave the boy alive, and consult with the Scientists' Council. I will advise them to

remove the temple of their own volition, and I feel sure they will agree."

Having spoken, Joquin glanced at the faces before him. And realized that he had made a mistake in his

initial assumption. There were two men and three women in the room. The men were the grave, lean

Lord Leader and the plumpish Lord Tews, who was the Lady Leader's eldest son by her first marriage.

Lord Tews was acting General of the Realm in the absence of Lord Creg, Tania's husband, who was

away fighting the Venusians on Venus.

The women present were the Lady Leader Linn, wife of the Lord Leader, and stepmother-in-law to the

two other women, Chrosone, Tania's sister and Lady Tania, still in bed. The Lady Tania and her sister

were not on speaking terms, for a reason that need not be gone into here.

Joquin assumed that these five had called him for consultation, as they had on past occasions. Now,

looking at them, realization came that their interest in him was psychological rather than logical. They

listened intently to his words, but what he said apparently merely confirmed their previously held opinion.

Lord Tews looked at his mother, a faint smile on his plumpish face. She half lowered her eyelids. The

two sisters remained frozen faced, staring at Joquin. The Lord Leader ended the tension by nodding a

dismissal to the scientist.

Joquin went out, quivering. The wild idea came, to send a warning to the endangered temple scientists.

But he quickly abandoned that as hopeless. No message from him would be allowed out of the palace.

He retired finally, but he was unable to sleep. In the morning, the fearful rescript that he had visualized all

through the night was posted on the military board, for all to read. Joquin blinked at it palely. It was

simple and without qualification.

It commanded that every scientist of the Raheinl temple was to be hanged before dusk. The property

was ordered seized, and the buildings razed to the ground. The three acres of temple land were to be

converted into a park.

It did not say that the park was to be added to the Town Palace of the Linns, though this later turned out

to be the fact.

The rescript was signed in the firm hand of the Lord Leader himself.

Reading it, Joquin recognized that a declaration of war had been made against the power of the temple

scientists.

* * *

The Scientist Alden was not a man who had premonitions. And certainly he had none as he walked

slowly along towards the Raheinl temple.

The morning glowed around him. The sun was out. A gentle breeze blew along the avenue of palms

which stalked in stately fashion past his new home. In his mind was the usual cozy kaleidoscope of happy

reminiscences, and a quiet joy that a simple country scientist had in only ten years become the chief

scientist of the Raheinl temple.

There was but one tiny flaw in that memory, and that was the real reason for his swift promotion. More

than eleven years ago, he had remarked to another junior that, since the gods of the atom had yielded

certain secrets of mechanical power to human beings, it might be worthwhile to cajole them by

experimental methods into revealing others. And that, after all, there might be a grain of truth in the vague

legends about cities and planets ablaze with atomic power and light.

Alden shuddered involuntarily at the brief remembrance. It was only gradually that he realized the extent

of his blasphemy. And when the other junior coolly informed him the following day that he had told the

chief scientist—that had seemed like the end of all his hopes.

Surprisingly, it turned out to be the beginning of a new phase in his career. Within a month he was called

for his first private conversation with a visiting scientist, Joquin, who lived in the palace of the Linns.

"It is our policy," Joquin said, "to encourage young men whose thoughts do not move entirely in a

groove. We know that radical ideas are common to young people, and that, as a man grows older, he

attains a balance between his inward self and the requirements of the world.

"In other words," the scientist finished, smiling at the junior, "have your thoughts but keep them to

yourself."

It was shortly after this that Alden was posted to the east coast. From there, a year later, he went to the

capital. As he grew older, and gained power, he discovered that radicalism among the young men was

much rarer than Joquin had implied.

The years of ascendancy brought awareness of the foolishness of what he had said. At the same time, he

felt a certain pride in the words, a feeling that they made him "different" from, and so superior to, the

other scientists.

As chief he discovered that radicalism was the sole yardstick by which his superiors judged a candidate

for promotion. Only those recommendations which included an account of unusual thinking on the part of

the aspirant, however slight the variance from the norm, were ever acted upon. The limitation had one

happy effect. In the beginning, his wife, anxious to be the power behind the power at the temple,

declared herself the sole arbiter as to who would be urged for promotion. The young temple poets visited

her when Alden was not around, and read their songs to her privately.

And then they discovered that her promises meant nothing. Their visits ceased. Alden had peace in his

home, and a wife suddenly become considerably more affectionate.

His reverie ended. There was a crowd ahead, and cries. He saw that people were swarming around the

Raheinl temple. Alden thought blankly, "An accident?"

He hurried forward pushing through the outer fringes of the throng. Anger came at the way individuals

resisted his advance. Didn't they realize that he was a chief scientist? He saw mounted palace guardsmen

urging their horses along the edge of the crowd a few score feet away, and he had his mouth open to call

on them to assist him, when he saw something that stopped his words in his throat.

His attention had been on the temple proper. In his endeavor to move, his gaze flicked over the

surrounding park.

Five of Rosamind's young poets were hanging from a tree limb at the edge of the temple grounds farthest

from the temple. From a stouter tree nearby, six juniors and three scientists were still kicking

spasmodically.

As Alden stood paralyzed, a dreadful screaming came from four initiates whose necks were just being

fitted with rope halters.

The screaming ended, as the wagon on which they were standing was pulled from under them.

* * *

The Lord Leader walked the streets of Linn. The downtown markets were crowded with traders from

the hills and from across the lake, and there was the usual pack of wide-eyed primitives from the other

planets. It was no effort at all to start a conversation.

He talked only to people who showed no sign of recognizing the unshaven man in the uniform of a

private soldier as their ruler. It didn't take long to realize that the thousand persuasive men he had sent out

to argue his side of the hangings were doing yeoman service. No less than three of them approached him

during the course of the afternoon, and made skillful propaganda remarks. And the five farmers, three

merchants and two laborers, to whom he talked, all answered his rough criticism of the Lord Leader with

pro-government catchphrases they could only have heard from his own men.

It was gratifying, he told himself, that the first crisis he had forced was turning out so well.

The Linnan empire was only a generation out of the protracted civil war that had brought the Linn family

to the leadership. His tax collectors were still finding the returns lean. And trade, though it was reviving

swiftly in Linn itself, was making a much slower recovery in other cities, which were not favored by

special exemptions.

Several wars of conquest were under way, three of them on Venus against the Venusian tribes.

Ostensibly, these wars were being fought to punish the tribes for their raids against Earth. But the Lord

Leader knew of at least two more important reasons. First, there was not enough money at home to pay

the soldiers who, his generals reported, were still in a dangerously revolutionary mood. And second, he

hoped to replenish the treasury with loot from conquered cities.

The Lord Leader paused mentally and physically before the open air shop of a dealer in ceramics. The

man had the Linnan cast of feature and was obviously a citizen, or he wouldn't be in business. Only the

opinions of citizens mattered. This one was in the throes of making a sale.

While he waited, the Lord Leader thought of the temples. It seemed clear that the scientists had never

recovered the prestige they had lost during the civil war. With a few exceptions they had supported

Raheinl until the very day that he was captured and killed. (He was chopped into pieces by soldiers

wielding meat axes.) The scientists promptly and collectively offered an oath of allegiance to the new

regime, and he was not firmly enough entrenched in power to refuse.

He never forgot, however, that their virtual monopoly of atomic energy had nearly re-established the

corrupt republic. And that, if they had succeeded, it was he who would have been executed.

The merchant's sale fell through. He walked over grumpily, but at that moment the Lord Leader noticed

a passerby had paused, and was staring at him with half recognition.

The Lord Leader without a word to the merchant turned hastily, and hurried along the street into the

gathering dusk.

The members of the Scientists Council were waiting for him when, satisfied that his position was

inassailable, he returned finally to the palace.

* * *

It was not an easygoing gathering. Only six of the seven members of the council of scientists were

present. The seventh, the poet and historian, Kourain, was ill, so Joquin reported, with fever. Actually, he

had suffered an attack of acute caution on hearing of the hangings that morning, and had hastily set out on

a tour of distant temples.

Of the six, at least three showed by their expressions that they did not expect to emerge alive from the

palace. The remaining three were Mempis, recorder of wars, a bold, white-haired old man of nearly

A. E. Van Vogt - Transgalactic

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