The World Between and Other Stories Read online

  Table of Contents

  THE WORLD BETWEEN AND OTHER STORIES The World Between I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  The Moon Moth

  Brain of the Galaxy

  The Devil on Salvation Bluff

  The Men Return

  THE WORLD BETWEEN AND OTHER STORIES

  JACK VANCE

  * * *

  ACE BOOKS, INC. 1120 Avenue of the Americas New York, N.Y. 10036

  Copyright ©, 1965, by Ace Books, Inc.

  Individual stories copyright, 1951,1952,1954,1956, by Jack Vance.

  All Rights Reserved

  Printed in U.S.A.

  The World Between

  I

  Aboard the exploration-cruiser Blauelm an ugly variety of psycho-neural ailments was developing. There was no profit in extending the expedition, already in space three months overlong; Explorator Bernisty ordered a return to Blue Star. But there was no rise of spirits, no lift of morale; the damage had been done. Reacting from hypertension, the keen-tuned technicians fell into glum apathy, and sat staring like andromorphs. They ate little, they spoke less. Bernisty attempted various ruses: competition, subtle musics, pungent food, but without effect. Bernisty went further; at his orders the play-women locked themselves in their quarters, and sang erotic chants into the ship’s address-system. These measures failing, Bernisty had a dilemma on his hands. At stake was the identity of his team, so craftily put together—such a meteorologist to work with such a chemist; such a botanist for such a virus analyst. To return to Blue Star thus demoralized—Bernisty shook his craggy head. There would be no further ventures in Blauelm.

  “Then let’s stay out longer,” suggested Berel, his own favorite among the play-women.

  Bernisty shook his head, thinking that Berel’s usual intelligence had failed her. “We’d make bad matters worse.”

  “Then what will you do?”

  Bernisty admitted he had no idea, and went away to think. Later in the day, he decided on a course of immense consequence; he swerved aside to make a survey of the Kay System. If anything would rouse the spirits of his men, this was it. There was danger to the detour, but none of great note; spice to the venture came from the fascination of the alien, the oddness of the Kay cities with their taboo against regular form, the bizarre Kay social system.

  The star Kay glowed and waxed, and Bernisty saw that his scheme was succeeding. There was once more talk, animation, argument along the gray steel corridors.

  The Blauelm slid above the Kay ecliptic; the various worlds fell astern, passing so close that the minute movement, the throb of the cities, the dynamic pulse of the workshops were plain in the viewplates. Kith and Kelmet—these two warted over with domes—Karnfray, Koblenz, Kavanaf, then the central sun-star Kay; then Kool, too hot for life; then Kerrykirk, the capital world; then Konbald and Kinsle, the ammonia giants frozen and dead—and the Kay System was astern.

  Now Bernisty waited on tenterhooks; would there be a relapse toward inanition, or would the intellectual impetus suffice for the remainder of the voyage? Blue Star lay ahead, another week’s journey. Between lay a yellow star of no particular note…It was while passing the yellow star that the consequences of Bernisty’s ruse revealed themselves.

  “Planet!” sang out the cartographer.

  This was a cry to arouse no excitement; during the last eight months it had sounded many times through the Blauelm. Always the planet had proved so hot as to melt iron; or so cold as to freeze gas; or so poisonous as to corrode skin; or so empty of air as to suck out a man’s lungs. The call was no longer a stimulus.

  “Atmosphere!” cried the cartographer. The meteorologist looked up in interest. “Mean temperature—twenty-four degrees!”

  Bernisty came to look, and measured the gravity himself. “One and one-tenth normal…” He motioned to the navigator, who needed no more to compute for a landing.

  Bernisty stood watching the disk of the planet in the viewplate. “There must be something wrong with it. Either the Kay or ourselves must have checked a hundred times; it’s directly between us.”

  “No record of the planet, Bernisty,” reported the librarian, burrowing eagerly among his tapes and pivots. “No record of exploration; no record of anything.”

  “Surely it’s known the star exists?” demanded Bernisty with a hint of sarcasm.

  “Oh, indeed—we call it Maraplexa, the Kay call it Melliflo. But there is no mention of either system exploring or developing.”

  “Atmosphere,” called the meteorologist, “methane, carbon dioxide, ammonia, water vapor. Unbreathable, but Type 6-D—potential.”

  “No chlorophyll, haemaphyll, blusk, or petradine absorption,” muttered the botanist, an eye to the spectrograph. “In short—no native vegetation.”

  “Let me understand all this,” said Bernisty. “Temperature, gravity, pressure okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “No corrosive gas?”

  “None.”

  “No native life?”

  “No sign.”

  “And no record of exploration, claim or development?”

  “None.”

  “Then,” said Bernisty triumphantly, “we’re moving in.” To the radioman: “Issue notice of intent. Broadcast to all quarters, the Archive Station. From this hour, Maraplexa is a Blue Star development!”

  The Blauelm slowed, and swung down to land. Bernisty sat watching with Berel the play-girl.

  “Why—why—why!” Blandwick the navigator argued with the cartographer. “Why have not the Kay started development?”

  “The same reason, evidently, that we haven’t; we look too far afield.”

  “We comb the fringes of the galaxy,” said Berel with a sly side-glance at Bernisty. “We sift the globular clusters.”

  “And here,” said Bernisty, ruefully, “a near-neighbor to our own star—a world that merely needs an atmosphere modification—a world we can mold into a garden!”

  “But will the Kay allow?” Blandwick put forth.

  “What may they do?”

  “This will come hard to them.”

  “So much the worse for the Kay!”

  “They will claim a prior right.”

  “There are no records to demonstrate.”

  “And then—”

  Bernisty interrupted. “Blandwick, go croak your calamity to the play-girls. With the men at work, they will be bored and so will listen to your woe.”

  “I know the Kay,” maintained Blandwick. “They will never submit to what they will consider a humiliation—a stride ahead by Blue Star.”

  “They have no choice; they must submit,” declared Berel, with the laughing recklessness that originally had called her to Bernisty’s eye.

  “You are wrong,” cried Blandwick excitedly, and Bernisty held up his hand for peace.

  “We shall see, we shall see.”

  Presently, Bufco—the radioman—brought three messages. The first, from Blue Star Central, conveyed congratulations; the second, from the Archive Station, corroborated the discovery; the third, from Kerrykirk, was clearly a hasty improvisation. It declared that the Kay System had long regarded Maraplexa as neutral, a no-man’s-land between the two Systems; that a Blue Star development would be unfavorably received.

  Bernisty chuckled at each of the three messages, most of all at the last. “The ears of their explorators are scorching; they need new lands even more desperately than we do, what with their fecund breeding.”

  “Like farrowing pigs, rather than true men,” sniffed Berel.

  “They’re true men if legend can be believed. We’re said to be all stock of the sa
me planet—all from the same lone world.”

  “The legend is pretty, but—where is this world—this old Earth of the fable?”

  Bernisty shrugged. “I hold no brief for the myth; and now—here is our world below us.”

  “What will you name it?”

  Bernisty considered. “In due course we’ll find a name. Perhaps ‘New Earth’, to honor our primeval home.”

  The unsophisticated eye might have found New Earth harsh, bleak, savage. The windy atmosphere roared across plains and mountains; sunlight glared on deserts and seas of white alkali. Bernisty, however, saw the world as a diamond in the rough—the classic example of a world right for modification. The radiation was right; the gravity was right; the atmosphere held no halogens or corrosive fractions; the soil was free of alien life, and alien proteins, which poisoned even more effectively than the halogens.

  Sauntering out on the windy surface, he discussed all this with Berel. “Of such ground are gardens built,” indicating a plain of loess which spread away from the base of the ship. “And of such hills—” he pointed to the range of hills behind “—do rivers come.”

  “When aerial water exists to form rain,” remarked Berel.

  “A detail, a detail; could we call ourselves ecologists and be deterred by so small a matter?”

  “I am a play-girl, no ecologist—”

  “Except in the largest possible sense.”

  “—I can not consider a thousand billion tons of water a detail.”

  Bernisty laughed. “We go by easy stages. First the carbon dioxide is sucked down and reduced; for this reason we sowed standard 6-D Basic vetch along the loess today.”

  “But how will it breathe? Don’t plants need oxygen?”

  “Look.”

  From the Blauelm, a cloud of brown-green smoke erupted, rose in a greasy plume to be carried off downwind. “Spores of symbiotic lichens: Type Z forms oxygen-pods on the vetch. Type RS is non-photosynthetic—it combines methane with oxygen to make water, which the vetch uses for its growth. The three plants are the standard primary unit for worlds like this one.”

  Berel looked around the dusty horizon. “I suppose it will develop as you predict—and I will never cease to marvel.”

  “In three weeks the plain will be green; in six weeks the sporing and seeding will be in full swing; in six months the entire planet will be forty feet deep in vegetation; and, in a year we’ll start establishing the ultimate ecology of the planet.”

  “If the Kay allow.”

  “The Kay can not prevent; the planet is ours.”

  Berel inspected the burly shoulders, the hard profile. “You speak with masculine positivity, where everything depends and stipulates from the traditions of the Archive Station. I have no such certainty; my universe is more dubious.”

  “You are intuitive, I am rational.”

  “Reason,” mused Berel, “tells you the Kay will abide by the Archive laws; my intuition tells me they will not.”

  “But what can they do? Attack us? Drive us off?”

  “Who knows?”

  Bernisty snorted. “They’ll never dare.”

  “How long do we wait here?”

  “Only to verify the germination of the vetch, then back to Blue Star.”

  “And then?”

  “And then—we return to develop the full scale ecology.”

  II

  On the thirteenth day, Bartenbrock, the botanist, trudged back from a day on the windy loess to announce the first shoots of vegetation. He showed samples to Bernisty—small pale sprigs with varnished leaves at the tip.

  Bernisty critically examined the stem. Fastened like tiny galls were sacs in two colors—pale green and white. He pointed these out to Berel. “The green pods store oxygen, the white collect water.”

  “So,” said Berel, “already New Earth begins to shift its atmosphere.”

  “Before your life runs out, you will see Blue Star cities along that plain.”

  “Somehow, my Bernisty, I doubt that.”

  The head-set sounded. “X. Bernisty; Radioman Bufco here. Three ships circling the planet; they refuse to acknowledge signals.”

  Bernisty cast the sprig of vetch to the ground. “That’ll be the Kay.”

  Berel looked after him. “Where are the Blue Star cities now?”

  Bernisty hastening away made no answer. Berel came after, followed to the control room of the Blauelm, where Bernisty tuned the viewplate. “Where are they?” she asked.

  “They’re around the planet just now—scouting.”

  “What kind of ships are they?”

  “Patrol-attack vessels. Kay design. Here they come now.”

  Three dark shapes showed on the screen. Bernisty snapped to Bufco, “Send out the Universal Greeting Code.”

  “Yes Bernisty.”

  Bernisty watched, while Bufco spoke in the archaic Universal language.

  The ships paused, swerved, settled.

  “It looks,” said Berel softly, “as if they are landing.”

  “Yes.”

  “They are armed; they can destroy us.”

  “They can—but they’ll never dare.”

  “I don’t think you quite understand the Kay psyche.”

  “Do you?” snapped Bernisty.

  She nodded. “Before I entered my girl-hood, I studied; now that I near its end, I plan to continue.”

  “You are more productive as a girl; while you study and cram your pretty head, I must find a new companion for my cruising.”

  She nodded at the settling black ships. “If there is to be more cruising for any of us.”

  Bufco leaned over his instrument as a voice spoke from the mesh. Bernisty listened to syllables he could not understand, though the peremptory tones told their own story.

  “What’s he say?”

  “He demands that we vacate this planet; he says it is claimed by the Kay.”

  “Tell him to vacate himself; tell him he’s crazy…No, better: tell him to communicate with Archive Station.”

  Bufco spoke in the archaic tongue; the response crackled forth.

  “He is landing. He sounds pretty firm.”

  “Let him land; let him be firm! Our claim is guaranteed by the Archive Station!” But Bernisty nevertheless pulled on his head-dome, and went outside to watch the Kay ships settle upon the loess, and he winced at the energy singeing the tender young vetch he had planted.

  There was movement at his back; it was Berel. “What do you do here?” he asked brusquely. “This is no place for play-girls.”

  “I come now as a student.”

  Bernisty laughed shortly; the concept of Berel as a serious worker seemed somehow ridiculous.

  “You laugh,” said Berel. “Very well, let me talk to the Kay.”

  “You!”

  “I know both Kay and Universal.”

  Bernisty glared, then shrugged. “You may interpret.”

  The ports of the black ships opened; eight Kay men came forward. This was the first time Bernisty had ever met one of the alien system face-to-face, and at first sight he found them fully as bizarre as he had expected. They were tall spare men, on the whole. They wore flowing black cloaks; the hair had been shorn smooth from their heads, and their scalps were decorated with heavy layers of scarlet and black enamel.

  “No doubt,” whispered Berel, “they find us just as unique.”

  Bernisty made no answer, having never before considered himself unique.

  The eight men halted, twenty feet distant, stared at Bernisty with curious, cold, unfriendly eyes. Bernisty noted that all were armed.

  Berel spoke; the dark eyes swung to her in surprise. The foremost responded.

  “What’s he say?” demanded Bernisty.

  Berel grinned. “They want to know if I, a woman, lead the expedition.”

  Bernisty quivered and flushed. “You tell them that I, Explorator Bernisty, am in full command.”

  Berel spoke, at rather greater length than seemed n
ecessary to convey his message. The Kay answered.

  “Well?”

  “He says we’ll have to go; that he bears authorization from Kerrykirk to clear the planet, by force if necessary.”

  Bernisty sized up the man. “Get his name,” he said, to win a moment or two.

  Berel spoke, received a cool reply.

  “He’s some kind of a commodore,” she told Bernisty. “I can’t quite get it clear. His name is Kallish or Kallis…”

  “Well, ask Kallish if he’s planning to start a war. Ask him which side the Archive Station will stand behind.”

  Berel translated. Kallish responded at length.

  Berel told Bernisty, “He maintains that we are on Kay ground, that Kay colonizers explored this world, but never recorded the exploration. He claims that if war comes it is our responsibility.”

  “He wants to bluff us,” muttered Bernisty from the corner of his mouth. “Well, two can play that game.” He drew his needle-beam, scratched a smoking line in the dust two paces in front of Kallish.

  Kallish reacted sharply, jerking his hand to his own weapon; the others in his party did likewise.

  Bernisty said from the side of his mouth, “Tell ’em to leave—take off back to Kerrykirk, if they don’t want the beam along their legs…”

  Berel translated, trying to keep the nervousness out of her voice. For answer, Kallish snapped on his own beam, burned a flaring orange mark in front of Bernisty.

  Berel shakily translated his message. “He says for us to leave.”

  Bernisty slowly burned another line into the dust, closer to the black-shod feet. “He’s asking for it.”

  Berel said in a worried voice, “Bernisty, you underestimate the Kay! They’re rock-hard—stubborn—”

  “And they underestimate Bernisty!”

  There was quick staccato talk among the Kay; then Kallish, moving with a jerky flamboyance, snapped down another flickering trench almost at Bernisty’s toes.

  Bernisty swayed a trifle, then setting his teeth, leaned forward.

  “This is a dangerous game,” cried Berel.

  Bernisty aimed, spattered hot dust over Kallish’s sandals. Kallish stepped back; the Kay behind him roared. Kallish, his face a saturnine grinning mask, slowly started burning a line that would cut across Bernisty’s ankles. Bernisty could move back—or Kallish could curve aside his beam…