Edmond Hamilton - The Godmen (A SF Pulp Space Epic) (v1.0) [html]

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THE TWO THOUSAND CENTURIES: ERA OF INTERSTELLAR EXPLORATION 2300-2621

THE GODMEN

Classic Space Opera from the Golden Age of the Pulps

EDMOND HAMILTON

ISBN 1-58873-970-8

Reprinted by permission Spectrum Literary Agency

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.

For information contact:

PageTurnerEditions.com

PageTurner Editions/Futures-Past Science Fiction

A Renaissance E Books publication

INTRODUCTION

Edmond Hamilton (1904-1977) has been hailed as one of the three pioneers of the space opera. Indeed,

of the three writers credited with creating this beloved science fiction subgenre, Hamilton, Edward E.

Smith, Ph.D., and Jack Williamson, Hamilton's first space opera, “The Comet Doom,” beat both his

colleagues into print, by almost a year, in the case of Smith's unprecedented universe-spanning epic, The

Skylark of Space, and by almost three years in the case of Williamson's “The Cosmic Express.” Since

Smith had begun his book around 1919, clearly neither he nor Hamilton influenced the other, while

Williamson has tipped his hat to the inspiration of both. So, in the final analysis, sole credit must be given

to Edmond Hamilton and E. E. Smith as the progenitors of the space opera as so many know and love it

today.

In the 1930s Hamilton was approached by a pulp editor who wanted him to create a science fictional

equivalent of the then bestselling Doc Savage novels which appeared in the magazine that bore his name.

Hamilton's character was Curt Newton, Man of Tomorrow, known to the world as Captain Future (also

the magazine's title). Captain Future opposed interplanetary crime as well as menaces from beyond the

solar system, accompanied everywhere by his closest friends, the giant metallic robot, Grag and the

pasty-faced android Otho, who bickered comically throughout the books over which was the most

valuable to the Captain. Titles of some of the novels Hamilton wrote about Curt Newton included

Calling Captain Future, The Magician of Mars, Outlaw World, The Comet Kings (ghosted by his

wife, Leigh Brackett, and hands-down best of the CF novels), Planets in Peril, and Red Sun of Danger

. In the 1970s the French produced a Captain Future television cartoon series so loosely based on

Hamilton's novels that most fans of the original felt it did an actual disservice to Curt Newton and his

comic side-kicks.

But Edmond Hamilton's contributions to science fiction and to popular culture don't end with the creation

of space opera. They begin there. As science fiction matured, Hamilton's colorful adventure sagas

matured, and he produced a series of poignant, poetic space operas that helped extend the form and

widen its possibilities. Among them were Battle for the Stars, The City at World's End, The Star of

Life, and The Haunted Stars.

At the same time, one of Hamilton's magazine editors, Mort Weisinger, had been picked to helm the DC

comic book line, including its new hits, Superman and Batman. Soon Weisinger had tapped several top

SF pulp writers, including Hamilton, to become full-time scripters for the company's comic books. As a

result he became a trailblazing pioneer in a new medium, creating characters like Adam Strange, whose

science fictional adventures appeared in the comic Mystery in Space, and superhero teams like the

Legion of Superheroes, whose euphonious comic book has been hailed for its strong, feminist slant (not

surprising considering he was married to tomboy and tough-guy novelist Leigh Brackett). And it was

Hamilton who was responsible for scripting the first-ever Superman-Batman team-up.

Most of this is a matter of public record. What few people seem to know, for as far as can be

determined the fact appears in no history of SF so far written, is that Hamilton was a genre pioneer in

another way. Most SF histories credit Robert A. Heinlein with the creation of the first future history (a

consistent idea of how things might turn out over several hundred or even thousand years against which a

number of stories are set). Heinlein first disclosed the existence of his future history in the March 1941

issue of Astounding, creating a sensation among both his readers and his fellow SF authors. Isaac

Asimov, for instance, would be at work on his future history, the famous Foundation saga, within a year.

Yet Hamilton's revelation, a year earlier that he had set the majority of his stories against a common

future background covering some two thousand centuries went almost unnoticed (perhaps because it

appeared in the less distinguished pulp magazine, Thrilling Wonder Stories). But the credit for being first

definitely belongs to Hamilton. The first story set in his future history, The Comet Doom, was published

in the issue of Amazing Stories that appeared on the newsstands in December 1926, while the initial

story in Heinlein's history did not appear until twelve years later in 1939. (Although every story in this

future history has not yet been identified, it is clear that most of his novels, and more than fifty short

stories and novelettes, belong to it including the novels mentioned above, his famed Captain Future

series, and the two novellas showcased here.)

A fuller description of this future history, and a selection of key stories showing its development across

centuries will appear in a forthcoming PageTurner Editions ebook. Hamilton himself did not title this

history, but we have chosen to call it “The Two Thousand Centuries.” However, in brief, Hamilton tells

us that: “By the end of the 20th Century, atomic-powered rockets guided by radar had reached the

Moon, Mars and Venus."

There followed:

The Era of Interplanetary Exploration and Colonization—1971-2011.

The Era of Interplanetary Frontiers—2011-2247.

The Era of Interplanetary Secession—2247-2621.

The Era of Interstellar Exploration—2300-2621.

The Era of Interstellar Colonization—2621-62,339.

The Era of the Federation—62,339-129,999.

The Era of the Star Kings—130,000-202,115.

The Godmen and The Stars, My Brothers take place during the Era of Interstellar Exploration, of which

Hamilton writes: “Interplanetary exploration and exploitation had increased rapidly. But the vast distances

to other stars remained unconquerable until late in the 22nd Century, when three great inventions made

interstellar travel possible. Using these inventions to build starships, mankind took at once to interstellar

space. Alpha Centauri, Sirius and Altair were quickly visited."

The Godmen occurs during the earlier days of this era, and tells of the problems that arise when

humankind first encounters a nonhuman intelligence. The Stars, My Brothers takes place several

centuries later, and shows how the question of humanity's relationship to alien races was finally

answered—by a man from our own time! Together they point the way toward the concord among alien

races that produced the Era of the Federation and the United Worlds.

Jean Marie Stine

July 12, 2006

BOOK ONE

THE GODMEN

CHAPTER I

Break free, little Earthmen, break free of Sol and Earth!

He had broken free. Forgotten and petty now were the first feeble attempts, the Sputniks, the moon and

Mars rockets that had followed them, all those stumbling baby steps. Now, with the star-drive, man had

broken free and for the first time the stars were conquered—

And suddenly it seemed to Mark Harlow that all the universe was laughing at him, at the vanity of man, a

cosmic laughter ringing across the galaxies.

But you are not the first, little Earthmen! The Vorn did it long ago!

And the gargantuan laughter of that jest rocked and shook the constellations, and Harlow cried out in

disappointment and shame.

He cried out, and awoke.

He was not in space. He was in his bunk in the Thetis, and he was sweating, and Kwolek, his second

officer, was looking down at him in wonder.

"I came to wake you, sir—and you gave a yell."

The fading echoes of that cosmic laughter still rang mockingly in Harlow's ears. He got out of the bunk

and stood on the plastic deck and he was thinking.

"If it's true, it is a joke on all of us. And the joke may have cost Dundonald his life."

The Thetis rested quietly upon the soil of an alien planet, and alien pink sunlight came through the ports

of his little cabin. The small starship was a thing of Earth, and the nineteen men aboard it were men of

Earth. They had come far, and worked hard, and the feeling that it had never been done before had

sparked them all the way, and now if they found out they had been anticipated, how would they feel?

Harlow told himself to forget that; there was no use dwelling upon it. Dundonald had brooded too much

on that cosmic mystery, had gone forth to solve it, and where was Dundonald now? Where, indeed? It

was up to him to find out, and that was why he was here at ML-441, and he was getting exactly nowhere

in his search.

He stretched wearily, a stocky, broad-shouldered man in jacket slacks, looking more rumpled than a

Star Survey captain should look. He asked, “What is it, Kwolek?"

Kwolek's round red face was worried. “Nothing's happened. But that's what makes me uneasy. Not one

of those people have come near us all day—but they keep watching us from the edge of their town."

Harlow came alert. “N'Kann hasn't sent any word?"

"No.” And Kwolek added, “You ask me, those saffron so-and-sos have just been stalling you."

Harlow grunted. “You may be right. But I'll wait till sunset. If he doesn't send a message, I'll go and have

it out with him."

"It's your neck,” said Kwolek, a characteristic fine, free lack respect. “But they look kind of ugly to me."

Harlow went through the narrow metal corridors and out of the lock, stepping onto withered,

orange-colored grass. The heat and glare, reflected by the shining metal flank of the Thetis, hit him like a

blow.

A dull-red sun glared from low in the rosy sky. It was not a very big or important star. It had no name,

only a number in the Star Survey catalogues. But it had two planets, of which this was the innermost, and

it was a big enough sun to make this world hot and humid and slightly unbearable.

The orange-colored grassy plain on which the Thetis had landed ten days before rolled gently away to

hills crowned by yellow forests. But only a mile away upon the plain rose the strange crimson stone town

of the people who called themselves the Ktashas in their own language. The red light of the setting sun

painted their weird monolithic city an even deeper crimson.

Harlow could see the gay-colored short robes of the golden-skinned people who stood in irregular rows

at the edge of the town, and stared toward the Thetis.

"What gets me,” said Kwolek, “is that they're so blasted much like us."

He had followed Harlow out of the ship, and so had Garcia, the Third Officer, a young Mexican whose

trimness was a constant reproach to Harlow and Kwolek. The Star Survey was strictly UN, and the

Thetis had a dozen different nations represented in its crew.

"I should have thought you would have got over your surprise at that, by now,” said Garcia.

Kwolek shrugged. “I don't believe I'll ever get over it. It was too big a shock."

Yes, thought Harlow, that had been the first surprise men had got when, after the first trips to the

disappointingly lifeless nearer planets, they had got to other stars. The discovery that an Earth-type

world would usually have human and animal life reasonably close to the Terran had been unexpected. But

then the quick-following discovery that the old Arrhenius theory had been correct, that there were spores

of life in deep space, had explained it. Wherever those spores had come from, whatever faraway

fountainhead of life, they were identical and when they fell upon a world like Earth they had quite

naturally developed the same general types of life.

A big surprise, yes, but not a dismaying one. Earthmen were still ahead, sometimes far ahead, of these

other human and humanoid races in achievement. After all, they had said, we were the first race of all to

conquer space, to invent the ion-drive and then the spacewarp, and travel between the stars. We men of

Earth—the pioneers.

And that, thought Harlow, was where the second surprise had come. As ships of the Star Survey

landed on far-separated star-worlds, as their linguists learned alien languages and spoke with these

peoples, they gradually got the surprise. Almost all these peoples of the stars had a common belief, a

legend.

"You Earthmen are not the first. Others have traveled the stars for a long time and still do. The Vorn."

* * * *

The name was different on different worlds, but the legend was always the same. Earthmen were not first.

The Vorn had been first. They had been, and still were, star-travelers. And—

"The Vorn use no ships like yours. They come and go, but not in ships."

Small wonder that scientists of the Star Survey, like Edwin Dundonald, had felt a feverish curiosity to get

at the bottom of this legend of the Vorn. There had to be something behind it. Peoples forever separated

by light-years could not make it up in their own heads simultaneously.

And Dundonald's party had set out in their Starquest, and that had been the start of it, for Harlow. For

no communic-message could come back from Dundonald at these vast distances. And when Dundonald

himself had not come back, after months, the Survey became worried. Which was why the Survey had

sent Harlow to find Dundonald, who was his friend and also a valuable scientist. Since his plans had

included this star-system, they had come to ML-441 to find his trail.

"We've been here all this time,” Kwolek was saying pessimistically, as they stared at the silent, distant

figures and the town. “We've learned their language, and that's all we have learned. It's a washout. And

now I think they want us off their world."

"We're not leaving,” Harlow said, “until we talk to that man Brai."

Brave words, he thought. What had he been doing here all this time but trying to find Brai, and failing.

Failing in the very first step of his search for Dundonald.

As they stood there, the sun touched the horizon and washed lurid light over everything. Harlow turned.

"I'm going in to see N'Kann. I'm going to have this out with him."

"I'll go with you,” said Kwolek, but Harlow shook his head.

"And I don't want you coming after me, either. Wait."

As Harlow walked forward, he was conscious of the sullen hostility in the gay-robed, immobile, silent

group at the edge of the monolithic town. The very first Star Survey ship to touch here had accurately

estimated the half-civilized state of the Ktashan culture, and it was the Survey's policy to deal with all

such peoples with a careful absence of patronage or domination.

That, Harlow thought, was what had made it difficult for him all along. He didn't think it would be any

easier now, when his persistent questions about Dundonald and the Vorn had roused superstitions.

The sun went out like a lamp and the moonless dark clapped down. Torches flared as he walked across

the plain, and he headed toward them. And there in the torchlight amid other tall, impassive,

golden-skinned men stood N'Kann. His powerful face was hostile, and his voice rolled harshly in the

slurred language that Harlow had learned.

"There is nothing for you here. Take your ship and go!"

Harlow walked up to him, his hands hanging loosely at his sides. He kept his voice carefully calm and

casual.

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