Andre Norton - The Science Fiction anthology

THE

SCIENCE FICTION

ANTHOLOGY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Sentimentalists, by Murray Leinster

The Girls from Earth, by Frank Robinson

The Death Traps of FX-31, by Sewell Wright

Song in a minor key, by C.L. Moore

Sentry of the Sky, by Evelyn E. Smith

Meeting of the Minds, by Robert Sheckley

Junior, by Robert Abernathy

Death Wish, by Ned Lang

Dead World, by Jack Douglas

Cost of Living, by Robert Sheckley

Aloys, by R.A. Lafferty

With These Hands, by C.M. Kornbluth

What is POSAT?, by Phyllis Sterling-Smith

A Little Journey, by Ray Bradbury

Hunt the Hunter, by Kris Neville

Citizen Jell, by Michael Shaara

Operation Distress, by Lester Del Rey

Syndrome Johnny, by Charles Dye

Psychotennis, anyone?, by Lloyd Williams

Prime Difference, by Alan Nourse

Doorstep, by Keith Laumer

The Drug, by C.C. MacApp

An Elephant For the Prinkip, by L.J. Stecher

License to Steal, by Louis Newman

The Last Letter, by Fritz Lieber

The Stuff, by Henry Slesar

The Celestial Hammerlock, by Donald Colvin

Always A Qurono, by Jim Harmon

Jamieson, by Bill Doede

A Fall of Glass, by Stanley Lee

Shatter the Wall, by Sydney Van Scyoc

Transfer Point, by Anthony Boucher

Thy Name Is Woman, by Kenneth O’Hara

Twelve Times Zero, by Howard Browne

All Day Wednesday, by Richard Olin

Blind Spot, by Bascom Jones

Double Take, by Richard Wilson

Field Trip, by Gene Hunter

Larson’s Luck, by Gerald Vance

Navy Day, by Harry Harrison

One Martian Afternoon, by Tom Leahy

Planet of Dreams, by James McKimmey

Prelude To Space, by Robert Haseltine

Pythias, by Frederik Pohl

Show Business, by Boyd Ellanby

Slaves of Mercury, by Nat Schachner

Sound of Terror, by Don Berry

The Big Tomorrow, by Paul Lohrman

The Four-Faced Visitors of…Ezekiel, by Arthur Orton

The Happy Man, by Gerald Page

The Last Supper, by T.D. Hamm

The One and the Many, by Milton Lesser

The Other Likeness, by James Schmitz

The Outbreak of Peace, by H.B. Fyfe

The Skull, by Philip K. Dick

The Smiler, by Albert Hernhunter

The Unthinking Destroyer, by Roger Phillips

Two Timer, by Frederic Brown

Vital Ingredient, by Charles De Vet

Weak on Square Roots, by Russell Burton

With a Vengeance, by J.B. Woodley

Zero Hour, by Alexander Blade

The Great Nebraska Sea, by Allan Danzig

The Valor of Cappen Varra, by Poul Anderson

A Bad Day for Vermin, by Keith Laumer

Hall of Mirrors, by Frederic Brown

Common Denominator, by John MacDonald

Doctor, by Murray Leinster

The Nothing Equation, by Tom Godwin

The Last Evolution, by John Campbell

A Hitch in Space, by Fritz Leiber

On the Fourth Planet, by J.F. Bone

Flight From Tomorrow, by H. Beam Piper

Card Trick, by Walter Bupp

The K-Factor, by Harry Harrison

The Lani People, by J. F. Bone

Advanced Chemistry, by Jack Huekels

Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas, by R. A. Lafferty

Keep Out, by Frederic Brown

All Cats are Gray, by Andre Norton

A Problem in Communication, by Miles J. Breuer

The Terrible Tentacles of L-472, by Sewell Peaslee Wright

Marooned Under the Sea, by Paul Ernst

The Murder Machine, by Hugh B. Cave

The Attack from Space, by Captain S. P. Meek

The Knights of Arthur, by Frederik Pohl

And All the Earth a Grave, by C.C. MacApp

Citadel, by Algis Budrys

Micro-Man, by Weaver Wright

Missing Link, by Frank Herbert

People Soup, by Alan Arkin

The Brain, by Alexander Blade

The Judas Valley, by Gerald Vance

The Moon is Green, by Fritz Leiber

The Next Logical Step, by Ben Bova

The Year When Stardust Fell, by Raymond Jones

Toy Shop, by Harry Harrison

Year of the Big Thaw, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Rhadampsicus and Nodalictha were on their honeymoon, and consequently they were sentimental. To be sure, it would not have been easy for humans to imagine sentiment as existing between them. Humans would hardly associate tenderness with glances cast from sets of sixteen eyes mounted on jointed eye stalks, nor link langorous thrills with a coy mingling of positronic repulsion blasts—even when the emission of positron blasts from beneath one’s mantle was one’s normal personal mode of locomotion. And when two creatures like Rhadampsicus and Nodalictha stood on what might be roughly described as their heads and twined their eye stalks together, so that they gazed fondly at each other with all sixteen eyes at once, humans would not have thought of it as the equivalent of a loving kiss. Humans would have screamed and run—if they were not paralyzed by the mere sight of such individuals.

Nevertheless, they were a very happy pair and they were very sentimental, and it was probably a good thing, considered from all angles. They were still newlyweds on their wedding tour—they had been married only seventy-five years before—when they passed by the sun that humans call Cetis Gamma.

Rhadampsicus noted its peculiarity. He was anxious, of course, for their honeymoon to be memorable in every possible way. So he pointed it out to Nodalictha and explained what was shortly to be expected. She listened with a bride’s rapt admiration of her new husband’s wisdom. Perceiving his scientific interest, she suggested shyly that they stop and watch.

Rhadampsicus scanned the area. There were planets—inner ones, and then a group of gas giants, and then a very cosy series of three outer planets with surface temperatures ranging from three to seven degrees Kelvin.

They changed course and landed on the ninth planet out, where the landscape was delightful. Rhadampsicus unlimbered his traveling kit and prepared a bower. Nitrogen snow rose and swirled and consolidated as he deftly shifted force-pencils. When the tumult subsided, there was a snug if primitive cottage for the two of them to dwell in while they waited for Cetis Gamma to accomplish its purpose.

Nodalictha cried out softly when she entered the bower. She was fascinated by its completeness. There was even running liquid hydrogen from a little rill nearby. And over the doorway, as an artistic and appropriate touch, Rhadampsicus had put his own and Nodalictha’s initials, pricked out in amber chlorine crystals and intertwined within the symbol which to them meant a heart. Nodalictha embraced him fondly for his thoughtfulness. Of course, no human would have recognized it as an embrace, but that did not matter.

Happily, then, they settled down to observe the phenomenon that Cetis Gamma would presently display. They scanned the gas giant planets together, and then the inner ones.

On the second planet out from the sun, they perceived small biped animals busily engaged in works of primitive civilization. Nodalictha was charmed. She asked eager questions, and Rhadampsicus searched his memory and told her that the creatures were not well known, but had been observed before. Limited in every way by their physical constitution, they had actually achieved a form of space travel by means of crude vehicles. He believed, he said, that the name they called themselves was “men.”

The sun rose slowly in the east, and Lon Simpson swore patiently as he tried for the eighteenth time to get the generator back again in a fashion to make it work. His tractor waited in the nearby field. The fields waited. Over in Cetopolis, the scales and storesheds waited, and somewhere there was doubtless a cargo ship waiting for a spacegram to summon it to Cetis Gamma Two for a load of thanar leaves. And of course people everywhere waited for thanar leaves.