Joe Gibson

“ The forward lounge was bright, warm, and cheerful, with the ultra-modern interior fittings and deep, foam-rubber chairs and the moonlit snow and trees outside the long port-holes' slits. Gwyn sat between Smitty and Morrow, holding her cup out for Foster to pour her coffee. Foster poured with a deft flourish. He had his jacket tied around his waist as an apron.
"I've always maintained," he observed with mock seriousness, "that the woman's touch is absolutely essential to the success of any project attempted by man!" ”

“ My visions of it freeing peoples from police-state enslavement were all fine and good, and it might conceivably have such result; but what I had here was nothing more than the most fiendish instrument ever inflicted upon human society!
What did I think it might do in the hands of muggers, sex offenders, pickpockets, burglars or worse? Why, our whole civilized culture would be thrown into chaos! No person would dare ever be alone, for fear of ambush. No one could sleep without someone else standing watch! ”

“ The jets' bluish fire dimmed. Thrust dropped from 5 g's to one! They seemed to spurt straight down toward the planet like a bullet from some godly rifle! He had to fight his every instinct to keep from slamming the jets on again, full-thrust.
Donovan winced as his insides heaved sickeningly within him. Then his vision cleared and his breathing became more regular, deeper. With a thankful sigh he climbed to his feet. He grasped the side of the open valve, swung out into the ladderwell, and began climbing.
Audry Gilgannen lifted herself painfully from her bunk and staggered to the wash basin. ”

“ It's too much for one man! he thought bitterly, and dropped his hands to his sides.
He stood gazing into the deep gloom of the workshop, at the huge, black hull gleaming softly in the darkness. Fifty-five feet long and fifteen feet high, the ship rested patiently on the narrow runners that supported its sleek belly. Twenty-five hundred dollars and six weeks of cautious, painstaking work rolled into one beautiful, fantastic-looking black monster with curved fins around the cluster of "rocket" tubes in its tail and streamlined, submarine-type diving vanes near its nose. ”

“ Almost anyone could make the gun. Given the components of a pocket radio, a few pieces of copper wire, a few sticks of chewing gum and a penknife, I could whittle one out of wood or put it into a plastic toy water-pistol.
But what the Armed Forces don't want right now is a new secret weapon! They have their manned satellite now, keeping its vigil over the arsenals of Earth, their big atomic missiles ready to jump off against preset targets—but with the frightful unknown of deep space chilling their backsides. ”

“ Why, the moment you handed me that robot, I could've committed the perfect murder—by changing you into a statue!"
Joe shook his head. "The robot can't influence animate objects," he protested.
"Didn't you make a cat?" Bowen asked sharply.
Joe gulped nervously. Yes, he had! And he'd changed the cat back into new shoes—
"You mustn't deny the danger for a minute, Joe," Bowen went on, gravely. "If ever the wrong people hear about that robot and get their hands on it, you're as good as dead! And the rest of the world will shortly be under the killer's thumb—"
"Father—" Barbara blurted impulsively. ”

“ Morrow wheeled and glared at him, red-eyed. "We aren't jet engineers, Smitty. We're building by guesswork! We can redesign that jet chamber a thousand times and never get the right shape!"
Smitty moved on to the stove and began stoking up the red coals, stacking wood on them. "She does seventy per hour up to seven thousand feet," he said dully. "If that's the best we can do, we'll just have to be satisfied with it."
"It's not good enough!" Morrow protested. "She has to have more speed, Smitty. She'll be at the mercy of every wind that comes along if she hasn't, weightless as she is!" ”

“ The discussion then turned to further speculation of what the future might be with the Cooling gun.
Whitney was not at all convinced it would be good, but, rather, that neither we nor any group of men had the right to decide what humanity should or should not do.
He had strong doubts that it would mean the end of dictatorship. "Dictators dream world conquest, and dreams like that breed war," he said. "But they aren't the only ones to blame. You'll find people who like dictatorships!" ”

“ Like a flaming white comet, she shot down into the Martian sky.
Weight remained the same, one gravity, straight toward the tail jets. Their velocity was too swift to feel more than a slight, tingling uneasiness from the planet's gravitational drag.
Donovan swung out of the ladderwell with an explosive sigh. He staggered across the narrow deck toward a bulging outer bulkhead, dodging around the compact pump mechanisms with their protruding banks of dials and thermostats. He reached the steps, climbed up them to the top of the bulkhead, and tackled the dogs on a round metal cap. ”

“ I'm going with him!"
"Barbara!" Bowen shouted. "What on earth—"
"Not on earth!" she cried, leaping forward. She landed in the narrow airlock, thrusting Joe back into its metal confines. She whirled back to her father, grabbing the door's levers to steady herself. "Not for long!" she added breathlessly. "Don't you see, father? He has to go—but he can't go alone! Someone has to be with him, to take care of him, to see that he eats his meals and—and I'm going with him! Goodbye, father! We'll—we'll be back!" ”

“ They spent the afternoon dividing their attention between the test-flight instruments and the surrounding sky. They hadn't the money to afford elaborate recording mechanisms to graph every moment of the flight onto neat tape-spools; they had to rely on the human eye, the questionably analytical human mind, and the servo-mechanism of a human hand wielding a pencil on a loose-leaf notebook. And they constantly expected to see a razor-winged jet fighter hurtling down from the stratosphere above them, its cannon sparkling the bright flame-color of death. ”

“ Not with these Earthians! When they, the predicted Visitors from Beyond, had arrived, it had performed every feat possible that would assist them. Now it attempted to perform its final duty—to attune their minds telepathically to the great Recorders buried within the planet, where lay the knowledge and culture of a long-dead civilization.
Centuries before, a vast civilization had bloomed and thrived on the young red planet—the civilization of a race of super-intelligence, a race of beings who were in complete telepathic accord with one another and with everyone. ”

“ A round airlock door stood open, waiting.
Joe raised the strange robot globe and depressed the keys. Out on the plain a space ship came into being.
"A—A rocket ship!" Bowen gasped.
"More than that!" Joe was grinning as he moved out toward the open airlock. "She's equipped with water and air purifying devices and food synthesis tanks that'll supply one man as long as ten years! She has antigravity equipment that can lift her right off the Earth—and a rocket drive that'll accelerate to a velocity of two hundred and seventy-eight miles per second! That's roughly a million miles an hour! ”

“ And what about the polarization of that plastic?"
Morrow pursed his lips, contemplatively. "Like all materials on Earth, it's polarized—if you want to use that word—to the gravitational and magnetic fields of Earth. I see what you're driving at, though—the gravitors establish a field in which the Earth's gravity and magnetism are cancelled out, or bent back upon themselves. The mechanism of the gravitors, the hull they support, everything within their field of influence is placed on a basis of its own gravity, mass-attraction, magnetism, what-have-you." ”

“ The world had to be given my new weapon. (I'm even more convinced of it now, after discussing it with Sgt. Falasca. Practically every professional criminal in this country would give almost anything for the Cooling gun. Then they could commit armed robbery with no risk of earning a murder rap!) I could see that both criminals and police officers would welcome it and for one simple reason.
It doesn't kill, maim or injure. Even if it should cause a tremendous increase in robberies and similar crimes, its victims wouldn't be dead. Better a hundred robberies than one man's death. ”

“ And here, within their minds, was that secret which had destroyed the race of Mars. But it was a secret the Earthians, too, had met—and they had conquered. As its searching thoughts touched upon that knowledge, its huge form writhed and twisted in a hell of searing, mental pain. Trembling, twittering, it crept from its lair....
Donovan stirred restlessly in the early morning twilight. Finally, he got up. Audry watched him with quiet amusement as he tied the loincloth about his middle. An animal wouldn't have noticed it, of course. A female had no reason to notice it. ”

“ Barbara stammered.
"Do?" Joe leaped into the airlock, his robot clutched under his arm, and faced them with a laugh. "I'm going to the only place I'll be safe, Barbara! And I'll find out who built the canals on Mars! And what mysteries lie below the cloud-blanket of Venus! And whether any of the moons of Jupiter are inhabitable—"
"Y-you mean," Bowen sputtered, "you're going into space?"
Barbara shook her head. "But—not alone!"
A shadow flicked across Joe's young features. Then he grinned easily. "Why not? I'm no longer safe among men—"
"But you can't go alone!" she stormed. "You—Father! ”