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The Legion of Space: The Complete Saga, page 1
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The Legion of Space
The Complete Saga
Jack Williamson
(custom book cover)
Jerry eBooks
Title Page
Bibliography
THE LEGION OF SPACE
THE COMETEERS
ONE AGAINST THE LEGION
NOWHERE NEAR
THE QUEEN OF THE LEGION
THE LUCK OF THE LEGION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
[N] = Novel
[O] = Omnibus
[SER] = Serialized Novel
[SF] = short story/novelette
The Legion of Space, Astounding Stories, April-September 1934 [SER]
The Cometeers, Astounding Stories, May-August 1936 [SER]
One Against the Legion, Astounding Stories, April-June 1939 [SER]
The Cometeers, 1950 [O]
Nowhere Near, One Against the Legion, July 1967 [SF]
Three from the Legion, December 1979 [O]
The Queen of the Legion, January 1983 [N]
The Luck of the Legion, Absolute Magnitude & Aboriginal Science Fiction, Summer-Fall 2002 [SF]
“WELL, DOCTOR GRAY, how do you find me?” Hopefully, old John Delmar searched my face with his oddly keen blue eyes.
“Sound as a bell—except, of course, the knee. I’ve a good patient in you,” I predicted confidently, “for twenty years yet.”
John Delmar shook his gray head, very quiet, very earnest. “No, doctor,” he said, with the same calm certainty in his tone as if he had been stating that the sun was shining; “no, doctor, I shall be dead by eleven o’clock on the morning of the twenty-third.”
“Nonsense!” I protested.
“I know, doctor, that I shall die on the morning of the twenty-third,” he insisted, with the same quiet certainty. “For years, I’ve known. I came this morning simply to see if you could tell me what I’m to die of.”
“You can just forget the notion,” I heartily assured him. “If twenty thousand dollars’ worth of equipment can tell me anything about your condition——”
“Don’t think I question your skill, Doctor Gray. But I’m quite positive. You see, doctor,” he added hesitantly, “I’ve a very unusual gift. I’ve meant, sometime, to tell you about it. If you’d care to hear——”
And he paused, diffidently.
I had wondered, for years, about John Delmar. A faded, stiff little man, with thin gray hair and blue eyes that were curiously bright, strangely young. Still very erect, he walked with a slight, soldierly limp, from a troublesome old bullet wound in his knee.
He was oddly reticent. I had been, I suppose, his most intimate friend; yet he had given me only the barest outline of a life that must have been unusually interesting. I knew that he had begun his long career as a fighting man in the old West; that he had known “Billy the Kid,” had been town marshal, stock detective, express guard, a Texas Ranger. I knew that he had served in the Rough Riders, in the Boer War, under Porfirio Diaz, at last in the British army—to make up, he said, for fighting the British in South Africa. I was aware, too, that he was busy upon some literary project—in his rather shabby rooms I had often seen his desk piled with manuscript. But until he came to the office that morning for the examination, I had no inkling of what his life really was.
No patient was waiting, and his quiet certainty about the hour of his death piqued my curiosity.
“I’d be glad to hear,” I told him.
“IT’S A good thing most fighting men are killed before they get too old to fight,” John Delmar began, a little awkwardly, settling back in his chair and easing his stiff knee with thin old hands. “That’s what I was thinking, one morning in 1919.
“I’d just come home to New York, Doctor Gray. Or I called it coming home; it was a city of strangers, with no time for old fighting men. There was nothing for me to do; I was simply a useless human wreck. One cold, wet spring morning—April 13th, it was, I remember—I sat down on a bench in Central Park to think things over. And I decided—well, that I’d already lived too long.
“I was just getting up from the bench to go back to the room and get my automatic, when I—remembered.
“Memory! I suppose one must call it that. It’s strange, though, to speak of remembering things that haven’t happened yet; that won’t happen, some of them, for a thousand years. But there’s no other word.
“I’ve talked to scientists about it, doctor. A psychologist, first; a behaviorist; and he laughed. It didn’t fit in, he said, with the concepts of behaviorism. A man, he said, is just a machine; everything he does is just mechanical reaction to stimuli.
“But if that’s so, there are stimuli that the psychologists haven’t analyzed yet.
“I found another scientist, who didn’t laugh. A physicist from Oxford, a lecturer on Einstein—relativity. He didn’t laugh. He seemed to believe what I told him and asked questions about my—memories. But there wasn’t much I could tell him, then.
“Space and time, apart, aren’t real, he told me. And they aren’t really different. They fade one into the other all about us. He spoke of the continuum and two-way time. I didn’t understand it all. But there’s no reason, he said, why we shouldn’t remember the future, all of us. In theory, he said, our minds should be able to trace world-lines into the future as well as into the past.
“Hunches and premonitions and dreams, he believed, are sometimes real memories of things yet to come. I didn’t understand all he said; but I did understand enough to know that the thing wasn’t—well, insanity. I had been afraid.
“He wanted to know about what I—remembered. But that was years ago. It was just scattered impressions, then, most of them vague and confused. It’s a power, I think, that all people have, to some degree—it simply happens to be better developed in me. I’ve always had hunches, premonitions. But the first clear memory of the future came that day in the Park. And it was years before I could call them up at will.
“You don’t understand the thing, I suppose, doctor. I’ll try to describe that first experience in the Park. I slipped on the wet pavement and fell back on the bench—I wasn’t so long out of the hospital, then, you know. And then I wasn’t in the Park at all.
“I was still falling, all right, and in the same position. But I was on a weird plain. It was blazing with light, pitted with thousands of craters, ringed with mountains higher than any I had ever seen. The Sun was beating down out of a blue sky dark as midnight and full of stars. There was another queer luminary, huge and green.
“A fantastic black machine was flying over the mountains. Larger than one would believe possible and utterly strange. It had just struck me with some weapon; I was reeling back under the agony of the wound.
“It was some time before I realized that I had been on the Moon, in a great crater; that the green crescent had been the Earth itself. And the realization only increased my bewilderment. It was a year before I understood that I was developing an ability to recall the future; that I’d seen an incident in the conquest of the Moon by the Medusae, in the thirtieth century—they murdered the human colonists.
“The faculty improves with practice, like any other. It’s simply telepathy, I’m convinced, across time, not merely through space. Just remember they’re neither one real.
“At first I got contact only with minds under great stress. Still, there are difficulties. But I’ve followed human history pretty well through the next thousand years. That’s what I’ve been writing—the history of the future.
“The conquest of space thrills me most. Partly because it’s the most difficult thing men ever did, the most daring and the most dangerous. And partly, I suppose, because my own descendants played a pretty big part in it.”
He paused, keen eyes on my face, and I kept silent until he went on, sure that the least show of doubt would stop him.
“Yes, Doctor Gray, I’ve a son, in New Guinea, the last time I heard, looking for gold on the Bulolo River. We’re a roving breed, it seems. Anyhow, his grandson was killed in a rocket that exploded in the stratosphere—I say ‘was’; it happened in 1974.
“His grandson landed on the Moon, asphyxiated before he struck. James Delmar brought his body back in 2140 and discovered radium there. Peden Delmar established the first colony a hundred years later, over the radium mine—he had to build an air-tight city.
“Peden’s son Zane patented the geodyne—a vast improvement over the first clumsy rockets. He died horribly of a strange jungle fever contracted on Venus. But his three sons carried on his work and made a vast fortune from the geodyne.
“In the next century, all the solar system was pretty well explored, as far as the moon of Neptune. It was fifty years more before a John Ulnar reached Pluto—the name was changed about that time from Delmar to Ulnar to fit a new system of identification. His fuel was exhausted, so he couldn’t return. John lived four years alone on the Black Planet and left a diary that his nephew found after two decades of searching. A strange document, that!
“It was Mary Ulnar—a queer Amazonian woman she must have been—who began the conquest of the silica-armored desert life of Mars. And Arthur Ulnar, her son, led the first fleet in the long war with the weird, half-metallic beings who had ext ended their own rule over the four great moons of Jupiter—he was lost, with all his ships.
“More battles, though, were fought in the laboratory than in space. Explorers and colonists met terrific, endless difficulties with bacteria, atmospheres, gravitations, chemical dangers. As planetary engineers, the Ulnars contributed a full share to the science that, with gravity-generators, synthetic atmosphere, and artificial climate control, could transform a frozen, stony asteroid into a veritable paradise.
“And they reaped a generous reward. A dark chapter of the family history begins with the twenty-sixth century. The Ulnars had conquered space and seized the spoil. They almost controlled interplanetary commerce; finally their wealth dominated the system.
“One Eric Ulnar had himself crowned as Eric the First, Emperor of the Sun. For two hundred years the family ruled the system as absolute despots. Their reign, I’m sorry to say, was savagely oppressive. There were endless outbreaks for liberty, cruelly put down.
“Adam the Third, however, was finally forced to abdicate—he had made the mistake of antagonizing science. The Green Hall Council began the first real democratic rule of history. For another two centuries, a genuine civilization existed in the system, defended by a little body of picked, trained fighting men, the legion of space.
“It was a brief golden age, broken when another Eric Ulnar ventured away into space, the first man to reach another star. He got to the sun we know as Barnard’s Runaway Star, the two nearer having proved to possess no planets—and he brought terror and suffering and the shadow of doom upon the human race.
“His mad ambition brought war between our system and another. An invasion of unthinkable horror from an alien star! It was the very crisis of history—almost the end of human history. Then there was an epic achievement by a few men of the legion—one of them another Ulnar—that is perhaps the most heroic thing men ever did. John Ulnar—his name must have come down from me.”
ANOTHER patient was announced just then. And stiff, wrinkled, keen-eyed little John Delmar started to his feet; a vision seemed to fade from his eyes. He protested that he must not waste my time.
“I must be going, Doctor Gray,” he said. And he added quietly: “But you see how I know I’ll die on the morning of the twenty-third.
“I remember!”
“You’re fit as a fiddle,” I insisted again. “I wish I were as sound as you are. But it’s a strange thing you’ve told me. I’m very much interested; I’d like to see the manuscript you mentioned. Why don’t you publish it?”
“Perhaps, Doctor Gray,” he replied. “But so few would believe, and I don’t like to expose myself to charges of fraud.”
And he refused to stay, though I should have been glad to let the other patient wait, while I heard more of his strange “memories.”
He took to bed, a week later, with influenza. I expected at first to have him back on his feet in a few days. But pulmonary complications interfered, and he died at 10:55, on the morning of March 23rd.
Whatever others may decide, I was pretty well convinced, even before his death. He at first wished to have his manuscript destroyed, but I persuaded him to leave it in my hands. As mere fiction, it would be enormously interesting. As a real prevision of future history, it is more than fascinating.
The selection that follows deals with the adventures of John Star—born John Ulnar—a soldier in the legion of space, in the thirtieth century, when the unearthly Medusae brought alien horror and black threat of doom to humanity.
II.
“I’M REPORTING, Major Stell, for orders.”
John Star, lean and trim in his spotlessly new legion uniform, stood at attention before the desk where the erect, white-haired, grim-faced old officer sat toying with the silver model of a space cruiser.
“Are you ready, John Ulnar, to accept your first order in the legion as it should be accepted, to put duty above everything else?”
“I hope so, sir. I believe so.”
John Star was then called John Ulnar; the “Star” is a title of distinction given him later by the Green Hall Council. John Star we shall call him, according to the Green Hall’s edict.
This day, one of the first in the thirtieth century, had been the supreme, the most thrilling day of his twenty-one years. It marked the end of his five arduous years in the legion academy, on Catalina Island.
Where, he wondered eagerly, would his duty begin? On some cruiser of the legion patrol, in the cold wastes of space? At some isolated outpost in the exotic, terrible jungles of Venus? Or perhaps in the guard of the Green Hall itself? He strove to conceal his consuming impatience.
“John Ulnar,” old Major Stell spoke at last, with maddening deliberation, “I hope you realize the meaning of duty.”
“I think I do, sir.”
“Because,” the officer continued as slowly, “you are being assigned to a duty that is peculiarly important.”
“What is it, sir?”
“John Ulnar, you are being given a duty that has previously been intrusted only to seasoned veterans of the legion. It surprised me, I may say, that you were selected for it. Your lack of experience will be a disadvantage to you.”
“Not too much of one, I hope, sir!”
“The orders for your assignment, John Ulnar, came directly from Commander Ulnar himself. Does it happen that you are related to the commander of the legion, and his nephew, Eric Ulnar, the explorer?”
“Yes, sir, distantly.”
“That must explain it, then. But if you fail in this duty, John Ulnar, don’t expect any favor of the commander to save you from the consequences.”
“No, sir. Of course not!”
“The service to which you are being assigned, John Ulnar, is not well known. It is, in fact, secret. But it is the most important that can be intrusted to a soldier of the legion. Your responsibility will be to the Green Hall itself. Any failure, I may warn you, even if due only to negligence, will mean disgrace and very severe punishment.”
“Yes, sir.”
“John Ulnar, did you ever hear of AKKA?”
“Akka? I think not, sir.”
“It isn’t ‘akka.’ AKKA—it’s a symbol.”
“Yes, sir. What does it mean?”
“Men have given their lives to learn that, John Ulnar. And men have died for knowing. Only one person in the system knows precisely what those four letters stand for. That person is a young woman. The most important single duty of the legion is to guard her.”
“Yes, sir.” A breathless whisper. “Because, John Ulnar, AKKA is the most precious thing that humanity possesses. I need not tell you what it is. But the loss of it, I may say—the loss of the young woman who knows it—would mean unprecedented disaster to humanity.”
“Yes, sir.” He waited, painfully. “I could assign you to no duty more important, John Ulnar, than to join the few trusted men who guard that young woman. And to no duty more perilous. For desperate men know that AKKA exists, know that possession of it would enable them to dictate to the Green Hall—or to destroy it.
“No risk, or no difficulty, will deter them from attempting to get possession of the young woman, to force the secret from her. You must be unceasingly alert against attempts by stealth or violence. The girl—and AKKA—must be protected at any cost.”
“Yes, sir. Where is the girl?”
“That information can’t be given you, John Ulnar, until you are out in space. The danger that you might pass it on, unwittingly or otherwise, is too great. The girl’s safety depends on her whereabouts being kept secret. If they became known—the whole legion fleet would be required to defend her.
“But you are assigned, John Ulnar, to join the guard of AKKA. You will report at once, at the Green Hall, to Captain Eric Ulnar and place yourself under his orders.
“Under Eric Ulnar!”
He was astonished and overjoyed to know that he was to serve under his famous kinsman, the great explorer of space, just returned from his daring voyage beyond the limits of the system, to the strange star Yarkand.
“Yes. John Ulnar, I hope you never forget the overwhelming importance of the duty before you. That is all.”
Queerly, John Star’s heart ached at leaving the old campus of the academy, parting from his classmates. Queerly, for he was a-thrill with eagerness. Mystery lay ahead, the promise of peril, the adventure of meeting his famous kinsman. With native optimism, he ignored Major Stell’s grim hints of the possibility of disastrous failure.
