Part 1

NO WAR TOMORROW

Feature Novel of Days to Come

By Wallace West

War now would mean the destruction, not merely of one planet, but all the inhabitable worlds. But if a satisfactory substitute could be found....

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Science Fiction Quarterly May 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

1

Captain Frank Sage, S.P., shouldered through the double safety doors of Moon Station Cafe, tossed his gear into a corner and sat down at the bar.

"'Lo, Tom," he said glumly. "Make it black coffee, ham and eggs and apple pie."

"You going right out?" Old Tom stopped his eternal polishing of glasses and gave his bald head a rub with the towel before switching on the hot plate. "I was hoping you could lay over a day and chew the fat."

"Not this time." Sage swished the coffee in its heavy cup to cool it. "I'm pushing off soon as they refuel my crate and calibrate the orbit; I've got troubles."

"Um!" The bartender squinted quizzically at his lean and lanky customer. "I hear the Big Shots are big-shotting it again on Venus."

"Right! They're getting much too big for their britches these days; that's why I'm on this cursed jaunt."

"I sort of thought you and the Space Patrol and my gal Sadie had the Big Shots on the hip up there."

"Sadie!" The captain's voice was bitter as his coffee.

"You kids been fighting again?"

"Fighting _again_! We never stop. If Sadie weren't your daughter, Tom, and if I weren't so crazy about her...." Frank's dour face lit up briefly, "... I'd have sewed her in a sack and dumped her into the Central Sea long ago."

"When she was a kid I often used to think of doing the same thing." Tom juggled a sizzling order onto a plate and slid it across the bar. "What's the trouble this time?"

"It's just that United Stars won't use the Patrol to clean the Big Shots off Venus." The younger man attacked the victuals with a gusto which belied his mood. "We've got things pretty well under control at Venusport. The Incor Underground is growing stronger all over Wildoatia. One more push and...."

"... and Sadie agrees with United Stars?"

"That's right. I don't get it, Tom."

"Look, son." The old man leaned both hamlike hands on the bar and thrust his face within a few inches of the captain's. "Sadie's a mighty smart gal. If Wildoatia ever gets cleaned up, the Incors in the Underground will have to do the job themselves. The Patrol's work is to police Venusport and see that tender-foot Incors get an even break until they head into the bush."

"But why, Tom? Confound it...."

"Didn't you learn at school," the bartender interrupted, "that the state of Wildoatia is the safety valve for United Stars? The people who go there voluntarily--and the ones who are sent there--don't _want_ to live under a decent government. They're incorrigibles who hate and abominate a peaceful, well-ordered civilization. They want to sow their wild oats--to rob, steal, commit murder and do as they damned well please. Maybe they'll--some of them--become good citizens eventually if we leave them alone--give them a chance to grow up. The growth of the Underground suggests that that may happen. On the other hand, if you use outside force to destroy Wildoatia, you upset the whole apple cart. Where, let me ask you, do you send the Incorrigibles? If you don't deport 'em, in no time at all they'd be raising hob on Earth and Mars the way they did before the Cooperative Commonwealth was set up. That wouldn't be pretty, would it?"

"Of course Venus is the only place to exile fascists, crooks, and plain damn fools," Frank agreed as he signalled for his pie, "but why let them run the whole show up there? Oh, you'll spout that that's their most fitting punishment ... to have a free rein to chew each other up. But what if the Big Shots get strong enough to defy United Stars? You should see them strut and goose step when they visit Venusport. They may have no space ships, but I tell you they're up to something devilish."

He shoved his plate away, tossed a five-credit note across the bar and got up. "It must be about blasting-off time. I'd better be getting into my strait-jacket."

"You've plenty of time. The mail packet from Mars has to come in before you can leave. I won't have another customer until then." The bartender removed his apron. "Come on. I'll walk you around the dome."

* * * * *

As soon as they left the cafe, Frank had the uncomfortable feeling that he had shrunk to pigmy size. The metal hemisphere which served as way station for all ships travelling between planets was a quarter of a mile in diameter. The few grease monkeys moving about its vast floor were almost lost among landing cradles and other pieces of machinery.

"This certainly is the mountain that labored and brought forth a mouse," Sage grumbled. "It's been a hundred years since the first trip was made to the Moon and we're still hanging on here by our eye-lashes. For every ship that blasts off from Moon Station for Mars or Venus, ten robot freighters have to stagger up from Earth with fuel and supplies for it."

"Plutonium's not good enough," agreed Tom, who had flown space ships in his time. "Fission just can't supply enough power to make interplanetary travel pay. Fact is, if the Moon weren't here, we'd still be earthbound."

"Um! Think of all the trade that could go on if ships could carry worthwhile payloads. I suppose they'd have closed Moon Base long ago, except for the U 235 which is exported by Wildoatia."

"Oh, I don't know." Old Tom was puffing as he kept up with the younger man's long strides. "We clear a bit of oricalchum from Mars, tungsten and commercial diamonds from Earth, plus a fair trade in jewels and other lightweight luxury items. Tourist traffic is brisk. We manage here, but we'll never get much farther without a better fuel.... Well, here comes the mail packet."

A man in a lead-armored suit had run past them and was wigwagging with a checkered flag. Other men were sweating a twenty-ton cradle into the middle of the floor. Then the mechanics scuttled for the barriers.

Frank and Tom followed their example. As they watched over the top of a thick wall surrounding the "field", a shutter in the center of the roof snapped open. They had a glimpse of the ship cushioning down on her atomic jets before they ducked out of range of the deadly gamma rays.

"One nice thing about landing where there's no atmosphere," said Frank. "You don't have to shift to those confounded peroxide jets." He found that he was shouting, but that his voice sounded far-away and thin. Even with the comparatively small air loss through the shutter opening, pressure within the dome was dropping so rapidly that they found it difficult to breathe. The almost instantaneous loss of air and heat into the absolute zero vacuum of space caused a snowstorm to swirl within the dome. Then the rocket blaze died, the packet dropped neatly into her cradle and the shutter closed.

"Whew! You really take a landing seriously," whistled the S.P. man. "What if a ship should miss the shutter and come down through another part of the roof?"

"Don't mention it." Tom's voice was strained.

* * * * *

Frank stepped from behind the barrier to stare at the new arrival. She was a globe, probably twenty times the size of his one-man ship. She was painted a dead black on one hemisphere and a blazing white on the other so her interior temperature could be regulated by rotating the reflecting and absorbent surfaces toward the sun while in flight. She evidently had had a brush with a meteor, since one section of her hull was badly scratched and dented.

The packet's port spun open. An eight-foot Martian in captain's uniform came tumbling out of it.

"K. M! K. M! K. M!" the Martian was chanting in a magnificent baritone. His great chest pumping like a bellows and his downy red face covered with perspiration, he sprinted for the Communications Room.

"Flash for all stations," he was singing as Frank and Tom hurried up to eavesdrop. "Captain Avron of Packet _Spaceblazer_ reporting. When I came out from under Suspenso two hours ago an unknown comb-shaped vessel was pacing the _Spaceblazer_."

"Another ship in your orbit? And pacing a packet?" The K. M. man shook his head. "That's impossible, Captain."

"Impossible! Impossible!" The Martian hit a High C and fluttered the stumps of his atrophied wings. "The ship was there! When I signalled her, she accelerated and disappeared in fifteen minutes."

"Excuse me, captain," frowned the K. M. officer. "It must have been a meteor. You have the fastest ship in the system, so...."

Frank couldn't hear any more for the man in the lead-covered suit began bawling through a loudspeaker: "Space Patrol Two-Six ready for blast-off in ten minutes. Captain Sage on board, please."

"What do you make of that?" Frank asked, as he and Tom trotted toward the patrol ship.

"Hallucination, probably. Suspenso does strange things to a person sometimes."

"I don't think so. It fits in with rumors I've been hearing at Venusport. The Big Shots are up to something."

"Then here's a word of advice, son." Tom laid a hand on the captain's shoulder as they stopped before his ship. "If that's the way you feel, stop making these fool junkets to New Washington and spend your time finding out what Wildoatia's really up to. If any more trips are absolutely necessary, send Sadie." He smiled crookedly. "Gets sort of lonesome here, now that my ticker won't let me go spacehopping. I'd like to see my girl before I turn up my toes." He shook hands briefly and trudged back toward the cafe, his pudgy shoulders drooping.

Frank climbed into his tiny cabin, dogged the port shut behind him, lashed himself into the anti-shock hammock, shook three Suspenso tablets out of their bottle and signalled for blast-off. Inwardly he fumed because ships could not carry enough air, water and food to allow their crews to remain conscious during a month-long trip. If any strange vessel showed up, he wanted to see it. Finally he broke one of the big pills in two and dropped half of it back into the bottle before gagging over the rest of the bitter dose.

The drug took effect more slowly than usual. Dimly, he felt the pain of the grinding acceleration as the rockets blazed. Before he drifted into suspended animation he saw the silvery Dome plummeting away from him until it assumed perspective in the center of Copernicus Crater.

"Defenseless," he mumbled as his mind clouded. "Moon Station absolutely defense...."

2

"... less," he gasped, regaining consciousness with a spine-shattering start and with the conviction that someone had played a dirty trick on him while he slept. That was always Suspenso's after-effect, along with a ravening hunger and thirst. Sage reached for the canned tomatoes which spacemen favor in getting their starving, dehydrated bodies back to normal. Then he recalled the comb-shaped vessel and squinted blearily through the blister above his hammock. The black sky was empty of everything except gigantic sun, unwinking stars and the blank and shining disc of Venus.

"Guess they ... don't bother with ... small fry," he croaked, opening the can. After finishing its contents he loosened the hammock straps, dragged himself to the control board and cut the atomic drive. The pile could not be damped, and the fantastically high temperatures at which it operated safely in open space would vaporize the ship as soon as it struck atmosphere. Like it or not, he would have to jockey to a landing by means of a reserve tank of feeble hydrogen peroxide fuel.

Twelve hours later, after circling Venus three times to cut down his speed, Frank knifed into the planet's opaque cloud blanket and settled, with hardly a jar, on the Venusport field. As he clambered to the soggy ground he caught sight of Sadie Thompson racing through the mists to be the first to greet him.

"The same old Sadie," he chuckled when she was in his arms, alternately purring and biting like a kitten. "Still wearing just as few clothes as the law allows and still breaking regulations. Don't you know you shouldn't run out on the field like this? At least you've picked up a few pounds since the first time I came to Wildoatia."

"Uh huh. Gottum dimples now." She exhibited a few. "Like?"

"Like!" He proved it, until she had to draw away to catch her breath.

"What did Great White Father in New Washington say?" She lit a damp cigarette after several tries and dangled it expertly from a scarlet upper lip.

"Great White Father say keepum shirt on," he grinned a bit ruefully as he tried to match her mood.

"I told you." She tossed back her red curls, hugged herself and did a dance step. "You just listen to your Sadie and you'll save yourself a lot of spacehopping."

"Now look here! Is that the way to greet a returning prodigal? You keep a civil tongue in your head, my girl, or I'll take the flat of me hand to you."

"Yah! Sorehead! You'll have to catch me first." And she was off across the field with Frank in pursuit. Venusport officials tore up their speeches of welcome and shook their heads in despair.

* * * * *

Sadie was in a much more subdued mood that night as they ate scamour steaks and drank sparkling traskette at Venusport's best cafe. She listened without a single wisecrack as he told how United Stars executives had insisted that no drastic action be taken against the Big Shots. But she leaned forward intently as he described the arrival of the mail packet at Moon Station.

"Why, if what that captain said is true," she gasped, "it means somebody has invented a ship that can make interplanetary hops in three or four days."

"It means more than that, my sweet. (Here. Have some more steak; you can still put on a pound or two.) It means a new fuel has been found which will permit trips to the outer planets, make Moon Station obsolete and open up untold trade possibilities."

"Uh huh!" Her blue eyes opened wide and she reached across the table to grip his wrist. "It also may mean the end of all of us."

"Nonsense. They said that about the first fission bomb."

"And they were nine-tenths right, as you'll admit if you remember the history of the Atomic War. But this may be far worse. Look, let's figure it out. Remember what those bombs did to the cities of Earth. Well, they were loaded with Plutonium, the stuff we now use for rocket fuel.

"But Plutonium furnishes just enough power to lift a ship, its pilot, one or two passengers, and a few pounds of pay load from Venus or Mars to the Earth. A ship escaping from the stronger gravity of Earth can only limp as far as Moon Station without refueling. Do you follow me?"

"So far." Frank finished his traskette and motioned the waiter to bring more. "Go on."

"So if somebody has built a ship ten or fifteen times larger and faster than ours, it means...?"

"... that he has found out how to destroy atomic nuclei instead of merely splitting them by stripping off the electrons. In other words, he is possessed of a source of practically limitless power."

"Right." She patted his hand. "And now we come to the 64-credit question: Who is that somebody?"

"Well, he couldn't be a good citizen of United Stars. In that case he would have turned over his discovery to the Commonwealth at once. It's too hot for one man to handle."

"So he must be either an Incor or a Big Shot! Please pass those credits, Frank."

"Not yet, my pet. He must be a Big Shot, and only a Big Shot. No Incor could get his hands on enough fissionable material to conduct the necessary research. Only the Big Shots could do that."

"The credits are yours. Now ... what can we do about it?"

Frank twirled his empty glass and stared out at the lights of rainswept Venusport. He was fond of the little place and the thought that it stood in the shadow of disaster made him feel ill. When he and Sadie had helped the Underground to take over the town five years before, it had been a dripping pesthole where arriving Incors were robbed of credits and equipment, then shipped off to virtual slavery in Big Shot uranium mines. Now it was a U.S. outpost, clean, rebuilt and thriving.

* * * * *

Adventurous youths who elected to leave the well-ordered societies of Earth or Mars to sow their wild oats under conditions of untrammelled freedom on Venus were well protected while passing through the port. Even criminals and other anti-social exiles were entitled to a stiff S. P. indoctrination course in the weird geography and topsy-turvy customs of their new planet. One and all were guaranteed free return trips to their homes whenever they gave proof that they had reformed.

"I suppose this means another war," Frank said at last. "And if it comes it really will smash everything beyond repair."

"Maybe not." Sadie thrust out her dimpled chin.

"You mean the Big Shots will give up their discovery without a battle?"

"Not a chance."

"If I know them, they'll try to use it to set up a tri-planetary dictatorship."

"Oh, be your age, Frank! Dictatorships are out of date. They won't work; never have worked for more than a few years. You won't catch up-to-the-minute Big Shots betting on a horse that Hitler, and Mussolini, Stalin, and all the others rode to death."

"Then what?" He was beginning to be angry, as he often did when Sadie disagreed with him.

"They'll plan to use the invention as a lever which will allow them to return to positions of power in United Stars. Think what that would mean to them in terms of graft and legalized robbery. They'd be sitting pretty in the middle of everything once more, instead of being tucked away on the fringe of civilization."

"The United Stars would never agree to that; it would mean war."

"I doubt it." The girl picked the strawberry out of her traskette glass and chewed it thoughtfully. "Both Wildoatia and United Stars know that another war is impossible. Say that on Monday the Big Shots wrecked every city on Earth and Mars with a new type of bomb. A month from Monday our V-60's would hit Wildoatia and wipe it off the map. No bomb of any kind could destroy our V-60 dumps without setting off a chain reaction...."

"... which would reduce Earth to a cinder," he snapped.

"A chain reaction wouldn't stop there. It might turn the whole solar system into a Nova ... just one big ball of atomic fire. Nuh uh, my friend! The Big Shots know they couldn't escape a chain reaction ... and they like to live as well as anybody else does."

"What's your solution, Sadie?" Frank stared at her with a sort of wonder. She looked so much like a little girl, despite the gown which she might about as well not have been wearing.

"We've got to beat the Big Shots at their own game; we've got to invent a substitute for war."

"A substitute for _war_!" His respect turned to disgust. "You're nuts; there ain't no such animal."

"Sez you!" As always, when under the strain of great excitement, she dropped into the half-gangster, half-western argot which she had picked up while fighting in the Underground. "Listen, wise guy. I'll bet you five grand I can cook up a substitute the Big Shots will fall for like a ton of bricks."

"Some sort of game, I suppose," he jeered as he picked up the check.

"Game, my eye!" Seeing his bewilderment, she leaned forward and nibbled his ear. "I'll give you just one tip. If an atom bomb explodes, where's the only place it can't do any serious damage?"

"Why ... why. Holy cats. Maybe you've got something there!"

"I've got everything." She rose lithely as if to prove it. "Come on, let's hit the hay; we're going into Wildoatia as Incors tomorrow."

"But the Space Patrol has the authority to inspect every Big Shot mine and factory. Why should we go incognito?"

"Because I like to stay alive, chump," she answered, slipping her hand under his arm.

3

As a slow lightening of the cloud blanket indicated dawn, Sadie and Frank took places among some fifty Incors who were heading out from Venusport into Wildoatia. Like the others, they were dressed in heavy coveralls. Each carried a Tommygun, a knapsack stuffed with food and necessities, and a money belt containing the five thousand gold dollars without which no man or woman was allowed to cross the last frontier.

The Incors were a wild lot; mostly young, high-spirited or spoiled people who rebelled at the strict moral standards of United Stars. In spite of themselves, both Frank and the girl felt strongly drawn to this group. They felt no sympathy for a scattering of older Incors whose hardbitten faces indicated that they had run afoul of U.S. law and were being "shipped over", the only major punishment permitted within the solar system.

"Say, chum." A beetlebrowed youth sidled over to Sadie as they left the port and plunged into the sweating jungle. "Do you reckon it's as tough in Wildoatia as they make out in that indoctrination course?"

"It's plenty tough," she answered out of the corner of her mouth.

"Been there before?"

"What's it to you?" As he started to protest she added: "The first law of Wildoatia is not to ask personal questions."

"Watch him," the girl whispered to Frank as Beetlebrow retreated. "I smell Pumper."

"Oh, he's just a dumb kid."

"Mebbe so. Mebbe so. Watch him anyway."

It was a dismal trip. The eternal drizzle soaked them to the skin; a few hardy jitbugs chewed at them. From time to time bloodsucking plant-animals along the muddy trail snaked out prehensile branches. Then there was much swearing and hacking with machetes until the white-faced victims freed themselves.

The skylarking with which the Incors had celebrated their departure from Venusport dwindled and died. In fact, it became evident as the day progressed that Beetlebrow, at least, was losing his nerve. He snarled curses on the journey; he buttonholed lagging companions and muttered about the advisability of returning to Venusport. He yelled like a frightened child when branches reached for him. Only when more hardy travellers threatened to kick him out of the group did he subside.

"That kid's a menace," Frank groaned at last; "he'll wreck the morale of all of us."

"I'll bet he's doing it deliberately." Sadie squashed a jitbug which had chewed its way through the mosquito netting draped from her helmet. "A Pumper. No doubt of it."

* * * * *

Things came to a head when camp was made for the night on a high and relatively uninfested ridge. There Beetlebrow grew suddenly brave and argued against Sadie's proposal that sentries be posted.

"There ain't no danger," he whined. "Scamours don't climb this high. We all ought to get a good night's sleep so we'll be on our toes when we get to Nirvana tomorrow."

When Sadie's counsel prevailed, the fellow picked up his blankets and stalked into the darkness to sleep by himself.

"I agree with you," said Frank when he and Sadie were rolled snugly in their waterproofs near a smudge. (It held off the humming army of jitbugs which had arrived with darkness.)

"Um." She wriggled into a more comfortable position on the sodden ground. "I told the sentries to keep an eye on him.

"Say," he continued softly, "on your idea for a war substitute.... Why not break down and explain it to me?"

"Haven't explained it to myself yet," she yawned. "That professor who named me Sadie Thompson when we were concentrated once ... because it rains all the time here, you know ... he told me about how, in the Middle Ages, when two armies were too well matched to fight, each would select its best knight to represent it. Now what did he call 'em?"

"Champions?" Frank rose on one elbow.

"That's it. So the champions would ... joust, was it? And the army whose Champ won would be declared the victor."