A Cosmic Christmas Read online

  By the time he climbed down from the wall and beat a hasty retreat through the fields to Hoffnungshaus, making sure to lay a false path so no one would think this was him—even if they believed a single person could make the calculations to change the holos—he knew that from down in the zipway people flying towards Friedstadt would see an angel all in white fly away to disappear into the dark snowy night.

  Jarl half dreamed that Jane and Carl would be out again, on one of their missions of mercy, and would see it, and know he was well and had got their message.

  Angels he had met right here.

  INTRODUCTION

  MAD HOLIDAY

  Leaving Earth now, the destination is Venus Equilateral, a huge space station positioned in Venus’s orbit so that it is equidistant from Venus and the Sun, making an enormous equilateral triangle, which happens to be a very stable place to put a satellite. The station was designed to facilitate communications in space, and is, libertarians please note, a capitalistic venture rather than a government project, though the station does have to meet certain standards to maintain its franchise. An unethical wheeler-dealer would like to take over that very profitable franchise—and if that requires interrupting a Christmas celebration and committing murder? No problem . . .

  George O. Smith (1911-1981) was the “other” Smith in science fiction (and Astounding’s) Golden Age, along with E. E. Smith, better known as Doc Smith. George O. was equally a master of space opera, though his were on a smaller scale than Doc Smith’s galaxy-hopping, star-smashing epics. He was also one of the first exponents of hard science fiction, where, aside from a speculative element, the science in the story is straight from the textbooks, rather than made up to fit the story. An electronics engineer, he worked on secret projects for the U.S. during WWII, including developing the proximity fuse. Arthur C. Clarke wrote that Smith “was probably the first writer—certainly the first technically qualified writer—to spell out [space stations’] uses for space communications.” Smith’s works besides the Venus Equilateral series include Pattern for Conquest, Hellflower, Fire in the Heavens, The Path of Unreason, and two notable novels set entirely on Earth, Highways in Hiding, written in a Raymond Chandler-like style, and The Fourth R, which told the story of a young boy educated by direct mental input.

  * * *

  MAD HOLIDAY

  By George O. Smith

  “Yeah,” Wes Farrell drawled, “but what makes it vibrate?”

  Don Channing looked down at the crystal. “Where did you get it?” he asked.

  Walt Franks chuckled. “I bet you’ve been making synthetic elements again with the heterodyned duplicator.”

  Farrell nodded. “I’ve found a new series sort of like the iron-nickel-cobalt group.”

  Channing shook his head. There was a huge permanent magnet that poured a couple of million gauss across its gap, and in this magnetic field Farrell had the crystal supported. A bank of storage batteries drove several hundred amperes—by the meter—through the crystal from face to face on another axis, and down from above poured an intense monochromatic light.

  “Trouble is,” complained Wes, “that there isn’t a trace of a ripple in any of the three factors that work on the thing. Permanent magnet, battery current, and continuous gas-arc discharge. Yet—”

  “It vibrates,” nodded Channing. “Faintly, but definitely it is vibrating.”

  Walt Franks disappeared for a moment. He returned with a portable phonograph, which caused Don Channing to grin and ask, “Walt, are you going to make a recording of this conversation, or do you think it will dance to a Strauss waltz?”

  “It’s slightly bats, so I brought the overture to Die Fledermaus for it,” snorted Franks.

  As he spoke, he removed the pickup from the instrument and added a length of shielded wire. Then he set the stylus of the phonograph against the faintly vibrating crystal and turned up the gain.

  At once a whining hum came from the loudspeaker.

  “Loud, isn’t it?” he grinned. “Can you identify that any better?”

  Wes Farrell threw up his hands. “I can state with positiveness that there isn’t any varying field of anything that I know of that is at that frequency.”

  Channing just grinned. “Maybe it’s just normal for that thing to vibrate.”

  “Like an aspen leaf?” Walt asked.

  Channing nodded. “Or like my wife’s Jell-O.”

  Walt turned the dial of an audio generator until the note was beating at zero with the vibrating crystal. “What frequency does Arden’s Jell-O work at?” he asked. “I’ve got about four-fifty per second.”

  “Arden’s Jell-O isn’t quite that nervous,” said Don, puzzling.

  “Taking my name in vain?” asked a cool and cheerful contralto.

  Don whirled and demanded, “How long have you been keyhole-listening?”

  Arden smiled. “When Walt Franks nearly runs me down without seeing me—and in his great clutching hands is a portable phonograph but no records—and in his eye there is that wild Captain Lightning glint—I find my curiosity aroused to the point of visible eruption. Interesting, fellers?”

  “Baffling,” admitted Channing. “But what were you doing standing on odd corners waiting for Walt to run you down for?”

  “My feminine intuition told me that eventually one of you would do something that will wreck the station. When that happens, my sweet, I want to be among the focus of trouble so that I can say I told you so.”

  Walt grunted. “Sort of a nice epitaph,” he said.

  “We’ll have them words, ‘I tole ya so,’ engraved on the largest fragment of Venus Equilateral when we do.”

  Don grinned. “Walt, don’t you like women?”

  Franks swelled visibly and pompously. “Why, of course,” he said with emphasis. “Some of my best friends are women!”

  Arden stuck her tongue out at him. “I like you, too,” she said. “But you wait—I’ll fix you!”

  “How?” Walt asked idly.

  “Oh, go freeze,” she told him.

  “Freeze?” chuckled Walt. “Now, that’s an idea.”

  “Idea?” asked Don, seeing the look on Walt’s face. “What kind of idea?”

  Walt thought seriously for a moment. “The drinks are on me,” he said. “And I’ll explain when we get there. Game? This is good.”

  Insistent, Walt led them from Wes Farrell’s laboratory near the south end skin of Venus Equilateral to Joe’s, which was up nine levels and in the central portion of the station.

  “Y’know,” Walt said, “women aren’t so bad after all. But I’ve got this feminine intuition business all figured out. Since women are illogical in the first place, they are inclined to think illogical things and to say what they think. Then if it should happen to make sense, they apply it. I used to know an experimenter who tried everything he could think of on the theory that someday he’d hit upon something valuable. Well—this is it, good people.”

  Walter shoved the door open and Wes Farrell grinned as he always did at the sign that read:

  Joe’s

  The Best Bar in

  Twenty-Seven Million Miles

  (Minimum)

  Arden entered and found a place at the long bar. The three men lined up on either side of her and Joe automatically reached for the Scotch and glasses.

  “Now,” said Channing, “what is it?”

  Walt lifted his glass. “I drink to the Gods of Coincidence,” he chanted, “and the Laws of Improbability. ’Twas here that I learned that which makes me master of the situation now.”

  Arden clinked her glass against his. “Walt, I’ll drink to the Gods of Propinquity. Just how many problems have you solved in your life by looking through the bottom of a glass—darkly?”

  “Ah! Many,” he said, taking a sip of the drink. He swallowed. A strange look came over his face. He sputtered. He grew a bit ruddy of face, made a strangling noise, and then choked. “Migawd, Joe! What have you mixed this with, shoe polish?”
<
br />   “Just made it this afternoon,” replied Joe.

  “Then throw it back in the matter bank and do it again,” said Walt.

  Don took a very cautious sip and made a painfully wry face. “The SPCS—Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Scotch—should dip their tongue in this,” he said.

  Joe shrugged. ‘It’s from your own pet brand,” he told Channing.

  Arden smelled gingerly. “Don,” she asked him seriously, “have you been petting dragons?”

  Wes, chemistlike, dipped his forefinger in the drink, diluted it in a glass of water, and touched it to his tongue. “It’ll never be popular,” he said.

  Joe turned back to his duplicator and shoved a recording into the slot. The machine whirred for a few seconds, and Joe opened the door and took out the new bottle, which he handed to Walt. Walt cut the seal and pulled the cork, and poured. He tasted gingerly and made the same wry face.

  “What in the name of hell could have happened?” he asked.

  “It’s the same recording,” asserted Joe.

  “But what happened to it?”

  “Well,” admitted Joe, “it was dropped this morning.”

  “In what?” Walt demanded.

  “Just on the floor.”

  Wes Farrell nodded. “Probably rearranged some of the molecular patterns in the recording,” he said.

  Joe put both bottles in the duplicator and turned the switch. They disappeared in seconds, and then Joe took another recording and made a bottle of a different brand.

  Again Walt tasted gingerly, smiled hugely, and took a full swallow. “Whew,” he said. “That was almost enough to make a man give up liquor entirely.”

  “And now,” said Don Channing. “Let us in on your big secret—or was this just a ruse to get us in this gilded bistro?”

  Walt nodded. He led them to the back of the bar and into the back room. “Refrigerator,” he said.

  Arden took his arm with affected sympathy. “I know it’s big enough, but—”

  Walt swung the huge door open and stepped in.

  “I didn’t really mean—” continued Arden, but her voice died off, trailing away into silence as Walt, motioning them to come in, also put his finger on his lips.

  “Are you going to beef?” demanded Channing.

  “No, you big ham,” snorted Walt. “Just listen!”

  Wes blinked and slammed the door shut behind them.

  And then in the deep silence caused when the heavy door shut off the incident sounds from Joe’s restaurant and bar, there came a faint, high-pitched hum.

  Don turned to Arden. “That it?” he asked. “You’ve got better pitch sense than I have.”

  “Sounds like it,” Arden admitted.

  “Cold in here,” said Wes. He swung open the door and they returned to the bar for their drink. “We can establish its identity easily enough,” he told them. He finished the drink, and turned from the bar. “Walt, you bring the pickup and amplifier; Don, you carry the audio generator; and I’ll bring up the rear with the rest of the gadget.”

  They left, and Joe threw his hands out in a gesture of complete helplessness.

  “Trouble?” Arden asked cheerfully.

  “I didn’t mind when they used the tablecloths to draw on,” he said. “I didn’t really object when they took the tablecloths and made Warren use ’em as engineering sketches to make things from. But now, dammit, it looks like they’re going to move into my refrigerator, and for God knows what! I give up!”

  “Joe,” said Arden sympathetically, “have one on me.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” chuckled Joe laconically. “If I’m to be shoved out of mine own bailiwick, I might as well enjoy these last few days.”

  He was finishing the drink as the technical section of Venus Equilateral returned, laden with equipment.

  Arden shrugged. “Here we go again,” she said. “Once more I am a gadget widow. What do you recommend, Joe? Knitting—or shall I become a dipsomaniac?”

  Joe grinned. “Why not present Don with a son and heir?”

  Arden finished her glass in one draught, and a horrified expression came over her face. “One like Don is all I can stand,” she said in a scared voice. Then she smiled. “It’s the glimmering of an idea, though,” she added with brightening face. “It stands a fifty-fifty chance that it might turn out to be a girl—which would scare Don to death, having to live with two like me.”

  “Twins,” suggested Joe.

  “You stay the hell out of this,” said Arden good-naturedly.

  Walt Franks reappeared, headed out of the restaurant, and returned a few minutes later with another small case full of measuring equipment.

  “And this,” said Arden as Walt vanished into the refrigerator once again, “will be known as the first time Walt Franks ever spent so much time in here without a drink!”

  “Time,” said Joe, “will tell.”

  Halfway between Lincoln Head and Canalopsis, Barney Carroll was examining a calendar. “Christmas,” he said absently.

  Christine Baler stretched slender arms. “Yeah,” she drawled, “and on Mars.”

  Her brother Jim smiled. “Rather be elsewhere?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “On Terra, where Christmas originated? Where Christmas trees adorn every home, and the street corners are loaded with Santa Clauses? Where—?”

  “Christmas is a time for joy,” said Christine. “Also, to the average party Christmas means snow, wassail, and friends dropping in. Me, I’m acclimated—almost—to this chilly Martian climate. Cold weather has no charm for your little sister, James.”

  “Oh,” said Barney.

  “Oh,” Jim echoed, winking at his sidekick.

  “Don’t you ‘Oh’ me,” snorted Christine.

  “Oh?” Barney repeated. “Okay, woman, we get it. Instead of the cold and the storm, you’d prefer a nice warm climate like Venus?”

  “It might be fun,” she said evasively.

  “Or even better,” said Jim Baler to Barney Carroll, “we might visit Venus Equilateral.”

  Christine’s evasive manner died. “Now,” she said, “you’ve come up with a bright idea!”

  Barney chuckled. “Jim,” he said, “call Walt Franks and ask him if he has a girl for us?”

  “He has quite a stock in his little black book,” remarked Jim.

  “We’ll drop in quietly, surpriselike,” announced Christine. “And if there’s any little black book, I’ll see that you two Martian wolves divide ’em evenly.”

  “Walt is going to hate us for this,” Jim chuckled. “Accessories to the fact of his lost bachelorhood. Okay, Chris, pack and we’ll—”

  “Pack, nothing,” laughed Christine. “I’ve packed. For all three of us. All we need is our furs until we get to Canalopsis. Then,” she added happily, “we can dress in light clothing. I’m beginning to hate cold weather.”

  “How about passage?” asked Barney. “Or did you—”

  Christine nodded. “The Martian Girl leaves Canalopsis in about three hours. We pause at Mojave, Terra, for six hours; and thence to Venus Equilateral on the special trio that takes Christmas stuff out there.”

  Jim Baler shrugged. “I think we’ve been jockeyed,” he said. “Come on, Barney, ‘needs must when a woman drives.’”

  “The quotation pertains to the devil,” objected Barney.

  “No difference,” said Jim, and then he ducked the pillow that Christine threw at him.

  A half-hour later they were heading for Canalopsis.

  “Walt?” smiled Arden. “Oh, sure. Walt’s fine.”

  “Then?”

  “Yeah,” Barney added good-naturedly, “do we find ’em in Joe’s or elsewhere?”

  “The Joe Section of the engineering has been completed,” said Arden with a grin. “They nearly drove Joe nuts for about a week.”

  “What were they doing?” asked Jim. “Building an electronically operated martini?”

  “When I tell you, you won�
��t believe me,” said Arden. “But they’ve been living in Joe’s refrigerator.”

  “Refrigerator?” gasped Christine.

  “Just like a gang of unhung hams,” said Arden. “But they’re out now.”

  “Well! That’s good.”

  Arden paused in front of three doors on the residence level near her apartment. Jim, Christine, and Barney each put their traveling bags inside. Then Arden led them high into the station, where they came to a huge bulkhead in which was a heavy door.

  Arden opened the door and an icy blast came out.

  “Jeepers!” Christine exploded.

  “Hey! Icemen!” called Arden.

  From the inside of the vast room came Don, Walt, and Wes. They were clad in heavy furs and thick gloves. Channing was carrying a small pair of cutters that looked a bit ridiculous in the great gloves.

  “Well, holy rockets!” asked Channing. “What gives?”

  “Merry pre-Christmas,” said Jim.

  Don whipped off a glove and Jim wrung his hand unmercifully. Wes Farrell greeted Barney Carroll jovially, while Walt Franks stood foolishly and gaped at Christine Baler.

  Christine looked the heavy clothing over and shook her head. “And I came here to be warm,” she said. “Come out from behind that fur, Walt Franks. I know you!”

  “What is going on?” asked Barney.

  “It all started in Joe’s refrigerator,” said Wes. “We found that the cold had crystallized a bit of metal in the compressor. We discovered that it was radiating one of the super-frequencies of the crystal-alloy level. When warm, it didn’t. So we’ve set up this super-cooler to make checks on it. Looks big.”

  Channing waved toward the door. “We’ve got the ultimate in super-coolers in there,” he said. “Remember the principle of the sun power tube—that it will drain power out of anything that it’s attuned to? Well, we’re draining the latent heat energy out of that room with a power-beam tube—actually we’re transmitting it across space to Pluto.”