Part 1

The Black Alarm

FEATURE NOVEL OF TOMORROW

By George O. Smith

Steve Hagen was determined to live his own life, and he chose the dangerous career of the Guardians. But was he as free as he imagined himself to be?

There's a subtle difference between rational and irrational hatred. The latter leads directly to fanaticism--and one definition of a fanatic is "a person who redoubles his efforts after having forgotten his aim".

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

1

Twenty years as private secretary to William Wrightwood had prepared Miss Peters to meet any contretemps except the angry, purposeful arrival of Steve Hagen, who strode through her outer office with no more than a nod at her, and opened the door to Wrightwood's private office.

"Is this another of your tricks--" roared Steve, cutting off his voice by shutting the door behind him abruptly.

Miss Peters had a quiet nervous breakdown, for Hagen was William Wrightwood's stepson, who had renounced his rechristening not long after reaching adulthood. She began to plan an explanation--which would not hold water since Wrightwood was the kind of executive who gives orders not to be disturbed and demands that they be observed. Not even the angry arrival of his estranged stepson was excuse for not having an appointment.

She wondered what was going on, and slyly opened the key of the desk phone.

"You're as devious as a scenic railway and you know it."

"Walter, my boy--"

"My name is Steve Hagen and you know it!"

"If you persist; but to me you will always be my son."

"I wouldn't have you for a father as a gift," roared Steve. "Now tell me how you wrangled this."

"I didn't wrangle anything. Just what makes you think--?"

"This is just too damned trite for accident."

"I've not had any finger in the pie of your little interstellar fire-department, son."

"No? Then explain why and how a rookie out of training school gets an appointment to District One Control Base?"

"You were an honor student, were you not?"

"Not that high. Base One is staffed with men of experience, not raw trainees."

"Never?"

"Not in twenty years, at least. And the last rookie that did it came from school to Base One because he was Marshall Craig's son."

"You should be gratified."

"I'm mad as hell. I want no interference nor help from you--or the likes of you."

"That's not a nice thing to say about a foster father."

"Do I owe you allegiance because I was taken into your clutches at the age of three?" demanded Hagen angrily.

"Your mother--"

"Leave her out of this!" gritted Hagen. "Get back to the subject; just what do you think you're doing?"

"I'm not doing anything!" roared William Wrightwood. "And no one can say that I am."

"If you think for one moment that I'm going to do anything for you--"

The smoothness came back into Wrightwood's voice. "I don't have to play games with new recruits," he said. "Things work out my way in the long run."

"All but one," sneered Hagen; "you haven't been able to steer me."

"Have I ever tried?"

"Hell, yes."

"Then it is the proper responsibility of any man to try to mold and direct the character of his son--"

"Like Fagin, training pickpockets?"

"Son, you've yet to learn that villainy is just a point of view."

"So it may be--but this is my view."

"Wal--Steve, if you insist--just why do you want to join the Guardians instead of taking your place as head of Interstellar?"

"And command a squadron of Large Oak Desks?"

"It takes your kind of brains to run a company as big as Interstellar, but any idiot can buckle on a sword and play pirate."

"So--you've trained me for better things?" sneered Hagen.

"Yes. I have."

"I don't like it. I--"

"I'm not stopping you," said Wrightwood. "Go on and play your game of fireman; I'll wait until you come to your senses. Then, as usual, I'll have my way. But remember--I did not in any way tamper with your affairs. Go look elsewhere for a reason why you were appointed to First Base."

Hagen growled in his throat. "You'd not tell me if you had tinkered," he said. It was lame and he knew it. He turned on his heel and left the office in as precipitate a manner as he had arrived.

* * * * *

Hagen was awake when his first alarm came. For three days he had been wondering just why and how a rookie could be qualified for Base One; this had cheated him of sleep, and made his waking hours a mad pattern of hard duty and pointless wondering. But when the gong rang in his dormitory room at Base One, he reacted eagerly.

Although this was Hagen's first alarm, years of precision drill had given him the instinctive pattern for action. He dressed in the required time, caught up his equipment and met the stream of men pouring out of their rooms; he followed them from the huge building, out across the spaceport, to the myriad of Guardian spacecraft that awaited them.

Steve wondered where they were going, then realized that it was more than probable that the squadron commander himself did not know yet, and would not know until about one second before the flight took off for deep space. Somewhere, down in the bowels of the huge building, computers were digesting information rapidly, spilling out answers that would have to be summed into an equation before anyone would know the source of the alarm.

It was, Steve knew with the rest of the men, an imminent alarm. The machinery had not blown--yet; it might not blow--ever. It might be stopped by the Guardians before it went--or they might arrive in time to save everything but the mere hull of the ship that sped through subspace with the warp generator heading towards failure because of any one, or two, or a hundred various reasons.

It was Steve's job--with the other Guardians--to save what they could--if they could--and if not, to stop the spread of raw energy.

He reached his Guardian ship and settled himself into the crash pads. He pressed the button that told the squadron commander that he was ready, and his warning lamp winked into life on the broad lamp-board in the commander's ship; one more light among the rest. Then Hagen waited.

Forty seconds later came the warning bell, and the squadron began to take off, ship by ship, second by second. With a precision that would have been impossible without the master control of the commander's ship, the squadron took off, and reached the speed of light in one second. Then, second by second, the velocity doubled, re-doubled, and re-re-redoubled until the stars of the nearby galaxy were flowing past them like oncoming headlights along a busy highway.

Along with the driving constants that swept them into deep space, angular vectors were applied that would match their velocity with that of the doomed spacecraft by the time they reached it. The computers in the 'constants' building had supplied the master control panel with all the data during the time between the arrival of the alarm and the departure of the squadron.

Steve Hagen peered into the utter blackness of subspace, watching the space-warped cores of stars stream past, watching for the first sight of the faltering ship. It came before the squadron eventually, decelerating as hard as it could.

"Made it!" came the exultant cry from the spearhead of the squadron.

* * * * *

The fleet divided. Rescue craft darted around the spaceliner and picked up tracers left by fleeing life-craft; they followed these to give aid to crew and passengers fleeing the imminent blowup.

Tractors latched onto the spaceliner and aided the drivers to decelerate the ship, and the command came: "Goggles!"

Steve snapped dark glasses down over his face just as the intolerably bright floodlamps flared. This was not to shed light over the scene; any moment now, there would be a flaring hell of raw energy. The floodlamps were to cut the total contrast between the streamers of ultra-incandescence and utter blackness of subspace.

The barriers nosed forward warily, and Steve took the control of his swamper from the master and edged between two of them. They waited, waited.

For theirs was not yet; the trick at this point was to slow the spaceliner down below the velocity of light before the weakened warp generator went out completely. If the tractors could do this, barriers and swampers and nullers would have nothing to do.

Steve watched the spherical warp, a faint boundary about the spaceliner, and tried to measure whether it was collapsing faster than the speed was diminishing.

And as he watched, it twisted out of its spherical shape. The tractors hurtled back, their beams skewed out of grasp by the twisting of the space warp, their straining drivers hurling them with the release of resistance.

The warp diminished, and the nose of the spaceliner pierced it--

Exposing gross matter to universal space where gross matter cannot exceed the velocity of light.

The mass of the exposed nose increased without limit; the velocity of the nose was smashed back below the speed of light; excess energy poured forth in raw radiation; the intolerable mass curled universal space around it and radiant energy circled the curl.

The artificial space warp--still enclosing the ship that travelled a hundred times the speed of light in subspace--folded over the slowed nose of the ship, buckled, and burst like a soap bubble. The rest of the ship rammed into the curled space and added its mass-energy to the vortex.

A burst of energy flared forth, hit the planes held by barrier ships, flattened against impenetrable planes of force, and hurled the barrier ships back. Their drivers fought, straining to contain the exploding gout of twisted space. Around the edges of the planes seared tongues and sheets of energy.

Steve fanned his cone wide, and he had no time to watch the rest of the swampers dart back and forth to suck away the long reaching tongues.

The warp exploded, hurling bits of its own tangled space invisibly, to emerge as isolated bursts that raved and grew as the twisted space strove to smooth itself out. Nullers darted back and forth, hurling spherical bombs of energy that nullified the growing flames, and the barriers crept forward once more, containing the main vortex.

Steve joined the maelstrom of Guardians that circled and looped through space to kill off the spread of vortexes; he saw Halligan's ship race past his nose and watched a streamer of flame reach out and lick the flank of Halligan's swamper. The skin curled off and fed the flame; air from the ship fanned it out and gave it direction.

Halligan limped away as Hagen swept his cone over the tongue, killing it.

He looked around for more, but saw that the most of the job was done. It had come suddenly; one moment the sky was filled with flowing globes of intolerable brightness and darting ships; then the islands of energy died--apparently in the length of time it had taken Steve to wipe out the tongue that licked at Halligan.

The Fleet circled--watching.

* * * * *

The barriers had enclosed the main warp in a faceted enclosure, their barrier planes intersecting to make a complete prison. Then, in through the surface of the volume went nullifier bombs; once more space exploded as the main vortex was broken. Then it was dash, blot-out, and circle; dart, dodge, and wipe away tongue and finger of flame again until the last scintillating trace of vortex was gone.

Steve wiped his face.

"Halligan!"

"Check, Cap'n."

"Y'all right?"

"Shook up but alive."

"Can y' make it back?"

"I'll be late but I can make it."

"Hagen!"

"Yes sir?" said Steve.

"You follow Halligan for safety."

"Cap'n, maybe I'd better have Norman," came Halligan's voice.

"Hurt worse than you admit, huh? Okay, Norman, you heard him. Hagen, this is no slur; you'll have your chance when you have more savvy."

"I'm aware of my inexperience," said Hagen.

"We'll let you get experience enough; stay with the wipe-up squad."

"Check."

Hagen felt a bit miffed, but he knew that he should not be hurt. This was his first alarm, his first job in the Guardians. Halligan had every reason to prefer a more seasoned man to a raw recruit when his life depended upon it.

Then, automatically, Hagen felt better. He was, at least, appointed to help the clean-up squad. They would patrol this space at random, watching for a trace of flaming vortex. If none appeared for two hours, they would watch for a total of six to be certain before going home. Minute vortexes, space warped into a complete circle with a flow of radiant energy coursing around in them, might maintain for some time invisibly, feeding and growing by their contact with the discrete atoms of interstellar space, attracted by the monstrous force of gravity centered on the vortex. If left unswamped, they might grow into a real menace to navigation.

But the barriers would blanket space, and the swampers would be ready to wipe out any vortex broken against the plane of force. Then, their job done, they could go home for a well-earned rest.

Hagen watched the squadron re-form, watched waiting rescue craft collect from the distant flights, then watched them disappear, heading back the way they all had come. He felt a bit of panic; he felt alone in the depths of interstellar space in a unique spacecraft that was sixty percent accumulator, fifteen percent driver, and fifteen percent swamper-beam. The other zero-percent was put there for his comfort and protection. He was one hundred and sixty pounds of analog computer, employed to serve a monstrosity of spacecraft built for a single purpose. He was there only because no man could cram enough binary circuits and analog differentials to equal one thousandth of the human brain into one hundred and sixty pounds and a few cubic feet.

But Steve Hagen was a Guardian!

2

Steve's return with the clean-up squad was made without mishap. It had been lonely work, for the half-dozen vortex-fighters swept the skies singly, roaming back and forth along the millions of miles across which the explosion had taken place. Sometimes they dropped into the realm below the speed of light to wipe out a bit of wispy cloud that looked as though it might be trouble brewing in the more firm structure of universal space. But mostly they raced back and forth at speeds that multiplied the velocity of light by many times. Nothing they saw reacted with their damping beams; nothing splashed against the nullifying bombs--and then, these, too, had to be destroyed lest they start a counter-vortex of their own.

Steve had been too busy during the mop-up operations to pay attention to his own feelings. On the way home he had taken time to think, and then came that first recoiling in abject fear. Utter emptiness, absolute nothing, sheer black space closed down upon him with an inherent fear as strong as the inherent fear of falling. Man had a million of years of evolution on earth, with a constant of one gravity pulling him down onto something that his senses told him was flat, hard substantial, and everlasting. Of all that man could count upon, the earth was the one thing that he could consider unchanging.

But here in space, with no solid planet below him to rest upon, to succor him and give him strength, Steve felt the abject panic of helplessness. The mighty power leashed in the room behind him was invisible; the surging drivers that hurled him along at a thousand times the speed of light operated without a murmur, a tick, or a sign of their positive power. The warp generator that folded space around him to create his own subspace, a feat of gravitic energy that not even Sol himself could perform, gave him no comfort.

So Steve fought panic and was glad to see the first sight of Base One. He landed in his allotted space, climbed down out of his swamper shakily, and walked off the spaceport slowly, hoping that Lois Morehouse would be there. She was--standing at the edge of the landing area; she waved to him and Steve changed his course to go towards her.

Lois was a good-looking girl of about twenty-three, a bit too healthy-looking to suit the present standard of fragile beauty. She glowed with health, could send a sizzling backhand, sink an iron shot, or ride water-skis with the best of them. She was the daughter of Commissioner Morehouse, the nominal top-brass of the Guardians, and as such was the eye of every single man in the squadron. Just why, in three or four days, Lois had found a raw rookie interesting had never occurred to Steve to question.

For while Hagen had formally and legally renounced his stepfather and his stepfather's business and way of life, Steve could not renounce the upbringing his stepfather had given him. Steve had none of the truly, apologetically, deferential bearing of the average rookie, who usually came of families of average means and worked his way up. Hagen had attended the finest schools, had gone to the best college, had played football and been sought-after by three leading fraternities. None of this had made him a snob; it was just that he saw nothing odd or upsetting about the fact that an attractive girl found him interesting. Had he been brought up according to his present financial, emotional, and social status, Steve would have been inclined to retire and leave the pursuit of Lois Morehouse to men who had experience and position.

* * * * *

He did not realize it himself, but Steve Hagen was trained to be the kind of man who felt no shyness at walking into the office of the Big Brass and sitting down to tell him what he thought. So he saw nothing odd about walking over to Lois Morehouse and smiling affably.

"How was it?" she asked him.

"Rough," he said. "Shucks, Lois, I wouldn't know whether it was rough or whether it was a milk run; this is the first I'd ever seen."

"How was the trip back?"

Steve laughed nervously. "I was never so glad to see solid planet before in my life."

"You sound as though this were your first space run."

"If it had been, I'd be a screaming imbecile by now. Luckily, I've been in space a lot; it's just that this was the first time I've made it in a little over-powered can, completely alone. Brrrrr."

Lois smiled at him. "What happened on your first practise drill?" she asked.

"We didn't go as far."

"But--"

"Well, I'd had that experience softened, too."

Lois nodded. Steve said: "I could use coffee. Want?"

"I want, Steve. But dad will be looking for me," she told him wistfully.

"Good Lord, Morehouse doesn't make you work?" he exclaimed in mock horror.

"What did you think?" she asked him with a quizzical glance.

"I thought it was a case of plain, everyday, common, down-to-earth nepotism."

"So do a lot of people, but it isn't true; I'm told that I earn my salary."

Steve laughed. "I didn't intend that crack of mine to rub salt in an open wound."

"Oh, I'll not take it seriously," she said. "But you go on and saturate yourself with coffee; glad you made it all right."

"See you later," he nodded, and turned from her to walk briskly towards the mess. Seeing Lois had steadied him as he had known it would. Hagen was not given to mental analysis, either of himself or of others, but he did realize the truth of what his professors had taught him in psychology I--that the feeling of kinship with good solid earth and the regard of a woman were the absolute basic things that go toward making a man feel well in heart. So long as he can retain these--

"Steve!" came the call. Hagen whirled instantly and held up a hand to Lois; he turned and started to cross the space between them but Lois waved him back. She cupped her hands to her lips and called: "You'll be at the brawl Saturday?"

"Yes," he called back. "You gotta date?"

Lois shook her head.

Steve beat upon his chest, then polished his fingernails on the lapel of his leather space jacket.

Lois nodded, shaking her auburn hair vigorously. Then she turned and headed towards the office building, and Steve went on towards the mess. Steve Hagen was feeling positively cheerful.

* * * * *

He was still there when Halligan came limping in, to land uncertainly in his accustomed spot. Like the rest, Steve went out to see the man, and they all waved him home, surrounding him and pelting him with both hand-shakes, mild insults and warm greetings. Halligan replied to the insults stoically, grinned at the rest, and peered around the group until he saw Steve. Then he shouldered his way through.

"Steve," he said seriously, "I did not mean anyth--"

Hagen smiled. "Naturally," he said, accepting Joe Halligan's hand. "I'd have been no use to you and I know it. I'll need some more practise."

Halligan laughed. "I need coffee, have some on me?"

"I'll go along for the walk," said Steve. "But I'm loaded to the space-valves right now."

"Come on then, and watch a hungry man tear into a steak."

"I hope you're hungry enough for stew."

Halligan grunted. "Watch a hungry man tear into a plate of stew, then."

Everybody laughed, and in the midst of it, Steve asked: "Aren't you going to check in?"

"I suppose regulations call for it," said Halligan cheerfully. "But Cap'n Charlemagne knows the score, and the commish has heard it from him. Both of them know I'm in safely; also, they'll both feel that an hour of relaxation will do both me and the service more good than an hour of recounting the same tale. I'll go in later."

The crowd began to disperse, and Steve followed Halligan towards the messhall. "You can stand some practise," mentioned Joe. "And you'll get it. But I'll take you on for a round or two if you like."

"I'd like," nodded Steve. "And thanks."

"No thanks necessary," said Halligan. "Just repayment; that was a fast job of wiping out that streamer that caught me."

"I didn't think--"

Halligan laughed. "Of course," he said cheerfully, "what I'm really after is for you to get experience enough to prevent it. Now, you see, after a year or so of vortex-fighting, you'll develop some sort of second-sight or other, and the next guy that runs in the way of a streamer, you'll know what to do about it before the poor bird gets clipped. And if not, you'll not wait until the guy gets out of the way before you squelch it; your aim will be good enough to shave the paint off the hull before the vortex streamer gets it."

"I was afraid to cut too close."

"We'll practise with light beams until you can write your name in three types of script," predicted Halligan. "Then--hello, Edwards. Joining us for coffee?"

Roy Edwards looked unhappy as he stopped before them. "Later maybe," he said. "We've got to attend the inevitable."

"Oh nuts. On an empty meat locker?"

"You might toss a coin; you'll not be needed at the same time."

Steve nodded. "You stoke the boiler," he said to Halligan. To Edwards, he said, "I don't know what this is all about, but Joe's ready to eat raw bear. I've eaten."

"That'll be fine," said Edwards cheerfully. "I hate to bust in on this love-feast, but there's plenty of time later. Grab your chow, Joe, and come in as soon as you can."

Halligan smiled. "Sure thing. And kid, don't let a lot of pompous pin-stripe-and-spats scare you. Treat 'em as you'd treat one of the Guardians; so long."

"What's up?" asked Steve.

"About once a year there's a stink over a blowup," said Edwards. "This is it."

"What kind of stink?"

"Charges of laxity, charges of wastefulness, and so forth."

"Laxity?" exclaimed Hagen.