Invaders of Earth Read online

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  Invaders of Earth

  Ed. by Groff Conklin

  No copyright 2012 by MadMaxAU eBooks

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  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  PROLOGUE:

  The Distant Past

  Murray Leinster: This Star Shall Be Free

  PART ONE:

  The Immediate Past:

  It Could Have Happened Already

  Robert Moore Williams: Castaway

  Eric Frank Russell: Impulse

  David Grinnell: Top Secret

  Allen K. Lang: An Eel by the Tail

  William F. Temple: A Date to Remember

  Donald Wollheim: Storm Warning

  Margaret St. Clair: Child of Void

  Theodore Sturgeon: Tiny and the Monster

  Mack Reynolds: The Discord Makers

  Milton Lesser: Pen Pal

  A. E. Van Vogt: Not Only Dead Men

  PART TWO:

  The Immediate Future:

  It May Happen Yet

  Karl Grunert (translated by Willy Ley): Enemies in Space

  Howard Koch: Invasion from Mars

  Mildred Clingerman: Minister Without Portfolio

  Fredric Brown: The Waveries

  Edward Grendon: Crisis

  Edgar Pangborn: Angel’s Egg

  William Tenn: “Will You Walk a Little Faster?”

  Henry Norton: The Man in the Moon

  Katherine MacLean: Pictures Don’t Lie

  EPILOGUE:

  The Distant Future

  Anthony Boucher: The Greatest Tertian

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  INTRODUCTION

  THERE are two ways of looking at the planet Earth from the science-fiction point of view—two ways, that is, that permit sizable scope. One is that Earth is a springboard from which to range other worlds. This concept was pretty thoroughly examined in Possible Worlds of Science Fiction, the first in the Vanguard series of specialized science-fiction anthologies. The Earth, in that book, served merely as a place of origin, the Home Planet from which explorations began. The actual focus of attention was on other bits of cosmic matter, ranging from our own Moon to various unknown, unseen, and even unguessed-at star systems on the other side of the Galaxy.

  The other, and in some ways more interesting, way of looking at Earth is that it is a place—to arrive at. Active Man has always liked to consider his own adventures among the stars; contemplative Man is often entranced by the idea of alien star adventurers in our midst. The present volume is devoted to a number of possible situations in which creatures from out of space have, for any of a multitude of reasons, decided to pay us a visit. As will be noted by the careful reader of this book, these reasons are more likely than not to be uncomfortable from the human point of view, and this is understandable, since the Unknown is always frightening. On the other hand, the Editor’s favorite stories are those in which our foreign friends are visiting us purely in a spirit of neighborliness or a reasonably accurate facsimile thereof.

  The somewhat minimizing notion that today we are being looked at, used, taken care of, or conquered by alien characters gives rise to a whole new set of speculations. For one thing, our visitants must be more intelligent and scientifically farther advanced than we; otherwise they would not be able to travel in space. We can’t, as yet. How, then, will we hold our own against them?

  According to the stories in this book, that question can be answered in several ways. We won’t be able to. We won’t have to. We won’t want to. We won’t even know that the question exists. You can take your choice. But the one thing you have to accept, if you put any faith at all in the imaginings reflected by these stories, is that Man is not alone. Whether he is the top of the pyramid, the apex, the crown of creation, is something we lack time and space to go into here, but whether he is the only form of intelligent life in the Universe is a question we can answer right off the bat. He probably is not.

  Some people will find this idea belittling to their egos; they won’t like it. For others, the idea that the Galaxy is inhabited with beings of various types, temperaments, environments, physical structures, and chemical organizations is a pleasing one. These are the Terrans (or, if you prefer, Earthians) who feel less alone because they believe that Man is not unique in the visible Universe. It is to readers of this bent that Invaders of Earth should have special appeal. Even those stories in it that reveal inimical life forms in Outer Space still assume that there is life beyond this planet and that—just as on Earth—some forms may be bad for Man and others may be very good indeed for him.

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  The idea that Earth is being invaded from space seems to be a considerably newer one than the concept of Man himself as a traveler in the Cosmos. At any rate, classical examples of invasion stories are rare and hard to come by. The not infrequent type from the preindustrial age imagines a being from another world coming to Earth and viewing it through the spectacles of the author’s particular philosophical system. One of the most famous of these tales, if not the earliest, is that disputatious and witty work by Francois Marie Arouet, otherwise known as Voltaire, which he called Micromégas.

  Micromégas is the name of a being who comes here from the planet Sirius for the purpose of making a fool out of M. de Fontenelle, for whom M. de Voltaire had very little use, and also of pronouncing some Voltairean animadversions about the human race in general and the French in particular. Micromégas is not science fiction, of course. There was no such thing in 1752. Even worse, it is stated that he traveled from planet to planet “like a bird hopping from branch to branch,” which is considerably below the level of the means of space travel used by Cyrano de Bergerac in his efforts to fly to the Moon. Cyrano, who was a real and living Frenchman, a seventeenth-century contemporary of Moliere, as well as a character in a play by Edmond Rostand, at least had a “scientific” method of achieving space flight, odd though it was. He used what we would define today as magnetic skyhooks. Micromégas had no method at all of getting from Sirius to Earth. All he was after was M. de Fontenelle’s hide, which he acquired with neatness and dispatch.

  Other examples, from earlier centuries, of individuals from space visiting Earth need not detain us here. They are generally undistinguished and obviously not science fiction. On the other hand, there is no reason to assume that the concept of an alien invasion sprang fullblown from the brain of H. G. Wells when he wrote the magnificent War of the Worlds (see page 193, this volume) in 1895. He very certainly had precursors of one sort or another, but there is not much chance that their ideas were real science-fiction concepts, since they knew little or nothing of modern science itself.

  However, from the time of Wells to the present, the story of the invasion of Earth by creatures from the Moon, other planets and planetoids, and other parts of the Galaxy has been told and retold, with a constantly increasing ingeniousness and ever greater maturity. The War of the Worlds, superb narrative that it is, nevertheless is not notable for serious semantic content. It is an adventure story and little more, even though it is one of the most magnificent adventure stories of all times.

  Today the tale of alien invasion has become one of the richest and most varied of all the categories of science fiction, idea-wise. This is a remarkable recent development, stemming most probably from the greatly accelerated advances in electronic communications, rocketry, and atomic energy just before and during World War II. Were it not for Willy Ley, we would have no actual example of an alien-invasion story before 1938 in this book—unless we consider Howard Koch’s script as bearing the date of its progenitor, the above-mentioned Wells novel. The Ley translation of a German invasion-from-Mars story, dated 1907, is a genuine find, and special thanks are due to the translator not only
for calling the Editor’s attention to the tale’s existence but also for putting it into English for use in this book.

  All the tales in this book except Ley’s and Koch’s and the horror by Eric Frank Russell are from the forties and the fifties. This is not because there were no outstanding examples of the genre during the thirties or even the twenties. There were several, but they have all been bundled up in my own and other people’s previous anthologies. Actually, the absence of earlier examples in this collection is not too regrettable, for the fact remains that Earth invasion stories—more, perhaps, than any other branch of science fiction—have grown in wisdom and in stature during the past ten to fifteen years.

  Of course, there is plenty of hackneyed and shopworn material around, too, and a lot of painfully amateur, though novel, writing as well. The air is still full of lurid monsters and flying saucers (which, incidentally, are mentioned only once in this book—see the story by William Tenn), but they are primarily trapped within the pages of the science-fiction comic books and the lower-grade pulps. We will let them stay there, undisturbed.

  One important limitation to the types of invasion depicted hereinafter must be emphasized. The book contains only legitimate and “real” travels through physical space to Earth. The protagonists may use unusual means of locomotion, such as hyperspace or telepathy, but they all come from presently existing other worlds. Invaders from the future, time travelers, are a dime a dozen in the current science-fiction magazines, and some of them very wonderful people, too; but none of them class as genuine aliens. They are all paradoxical creatures who really have no business existing, scientifically speaking.

  Similarly, creatures from metaphysical parallel worlds, of the sort probably invented by Homer Eon Flint and Austin Hall in The Blind Spot (1921) and since patented and stamped with the indubitable trade-mark of Murray Leinster, are also barred from this volume, since we want nothing to do in this collection with individuals who claim to be occupying the same space as we ourselves are. What if that space is supposed to be in a different kind of time? The idea is still much too confusing. We will have none of it.

  We have likewise banned the folks who hail from inside our Earth, simply because they are subterranean characters and as such cannot take a flyer in space in order to get at us. . . . Ever since the days of Jules Verne, with his Voyage to the Center of the Earth (1864), the idea that civilizations of various sorts exist underneath our feet has haunted imaginative writers. There is a good book idea there, too—but not this one. . . .

  To sum up, then, our Outlanders, our alien visitors, are exclusively limited to possible beings from the depths of space. Within this scope, the space travelers who in this book are turning their attention upon us provide a rich variety of type, motivation, paraphernalia, and method of approach or attack, as the case may be. One can only marvel at the ingenuity of the writers of the past fifteen years who have invented these miscellaneous peoples, entities, and things, as they may variously be defined. A bright and lively and sometimes startling bunch of characters, full of quips and quiddities. . . .

  As for the general purpose, the underlying moral of this book, it gives the Editor considerable pleasure to announce that, unlike most other books of this nature, this one has not only one—it has two.

  It is intended to entertain—and to edify.

  It is meant to amuse at the same time that it stretches the unused tentacles of the imagination.

  It is planned to help one pass a pleasant hour or so and at the same time insert some uncomfortable queries in the reader’s mind about the importance and the wisdom of Man.

  For—are we really alone in the Universe? How can we know for sure that we are not being watched? What assurances have we, what defenses, against attack from Outer Space? Or, if not attack, investigation? Or—even worse for the anthropocentric-minded among us— guidance? Maybe this book is true, at least in part. Who can know surely?

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  There seem to be a more than usual number of acknowledgments due from the Editor to friends who have helped to make this book. Special thanks to Anthony Boucher for letting me have an original unpublished story, and to Willy Ley for preparing especially for me a translation from the German; and to both these friends, other thanks for other favors, some of which are specified later on in the book.

  To Forrest Ackerman, warm thanks for calling my attention to Donald Wollheim’s fine tale, “Storm Warning.”

  To Philip Klass, a personal and private acknowledgment he knows what for. Ditto to Edgar Pangborn and to Jerome Bixby.

  To Horace and Evelyn Gold, for their magnificent work as Editor and Factotum (in that order) on the new and first-rate science-fiction magazine, Galaxy; and for the mere fact of their existence, particular acknowledgments!

  Thanks for numerous favors to Oscar Friend, Frederik Pohl, Harry Altshuler, and Scott Meredith.

  The Vanguard Press deserves a special word for its open-minded approach to science fiction and its careful preparation of this book.

  And last but not least by a long shot—to Lucy, who has done a disproportionate share of the typing, head-holding, and miscellaneous care-taking of the aberrant Editor while he was in the process of editing, thanks and a great many other nice things as well. . . .

  Groff Conklin

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  THE DISTANT PAST: Prologue

  THE origins of Man and his swift rise to mastery over all that lives on Earth except himself have always been haunting subjects for imaginative writers. In the absence of definite knowledge as to what a few million years may mean in terms of actual evolutionary change through genetic mutation and natural selection, many contemplative penmen have found it convenient to posit some Outside Assistance (non-theological) to speed up the action of the Darwinian-Mendelian mechanisms that have finally produced—us.

  After all, why not? Certainly such a presumption is little more imaginative than is the actual theory of the sober scientists themselves: that the primate mammal, Man, developed over a period of a few paltry million years from the creepy-crawly thing he originally had been, whatever that was.

  The questions of who, what, why, and when these ancient alien invasions might have been are fascinating, but their scope is, after all, rather narrow. Either there was, or there was not, aid for the developing primate from outside the planet. In view of this limitation, we will represent this area of inquiry by only one story. This story is . . .

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  Murray Leinster

  THIS STAR SHALL BE FREE

  We have had all sorts of stories in the science-fiction canon about alien visitants bringing fire, or the machete, or the wheel, or the bow and arrow to Early Man—or actually bringing Early Man himself in a cocoon-like packet. All these are very interesting, and perhaps not unbelievable.

  But here is a really unique invasion story of the ancient past, in which the invaders, bound on a scientific experiment of a fairly ruthless sort, end by believing that they have brought the gift of annihilation to the hopeless savages. It seems, however, that they were slightly mistaken…

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  THE urge was part of an Antarean experiment in artificial ecological imbalance, though of course the cave folk could not guess that. They were savages with no interest in science or, indeed, in anything much except filling their bellies and satisfying other primal urges. They inhabited a series of caves in a chalk formation above a river that ran through primordial England and France before it joined the Rhine and emptied into the sea.

  They did not understand the urge at all—which was natural. It followed the disappearance of the ship from Antares by a full two hours, so they saw no connection between the two. Anyhow, it was just a vague, indefinite desire to move to the eastward—an impulse for which they had no explanation whatever.

  Tork was spearing fish from a rock out in the river when the ship passed overhead. He was a young man, still gangling and awkward. He
wasn’t up to a fight with One-Ear yet, and had a bad time in consequence. One-Ear was the boss male of the cave-dwellers’ colony in the cliff over the river. He wanted to chase Tork away or kill him, and Tork had to be on guard every second. But he felt safe out on his rock.

  He had just speared a fine ganoid when he heard a howl of terror from the shore. He jerked his head around. He saw Bent-Leg, the other adult male, go hobbling in terror toward his own cave mouth, and he saw One-Ear knock two of his wives and three children off the ladder to his cave so he could get in first. The others shrieked and popped into whatever crevice was at hand, including the small opening in which Tork himself slept when he dared. Then there was stillness.

  Tork stared blankly. He saw no cause for alarm ashore. He ran his eyes along the top of the cliff. He saw birch and beech and oak, growing above the chalk. His eyes swept the stream. There were old-men’s stories of sea monsters coming all the way up from the deep bay (which would some day be the English Channel). But the surface of the river was undisturbed. He scanned the farther shore. There were still a few of the low-browed ogres from whom Tork’s people had taken this land, but Tork knew that he could outrun or outswim them. And there were none of them in sight, either.