Sold - For a Spaceship

by Philip E. High

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

They had slept in safety while destruction raged above them. When they awoke and emerged from their places of refuge, the world had changed - totally. For man soon discovered that he was no longer the dominant species on Earth. Now there were other creatures, not only ready to dispute the point but well prepared to prove it. It was later, much later, that the bulk of mankind discovered they had forfeited their birthright, traded their home, the planet Earth - for a spaceship.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 170

Sample

Near a huge sealed door was a long oblong box which closely resembled a coffin.

The box had once been transparent but chemical action from within and a layer of dust on the outer surface had turned it to a dull and unreflecting black.

The head of the box rested against a squat black mechanism also encased in a once-transparent substance which had turned black. Tubes, fine wires and heavy insulated cables linked the mechanism to the box.

The mechanism hummed softly and some of the dials on the outer covering were still functioning.

At the foot of the box was a small brass plate—now green with verdigris—but upon which words were still visible.

Name: Clifton—Mark.

Number: 22/9/4478

Age: 33 years, 3 months and 9 days.

Designation: Medical.

Category: Priority.

Inside the box—invisible from without—a chronometer finger crept round a large white dial. Set in the main face of the instrument were subsidiary dials of various colours.

In point of fact, there were three chronometers—the planners had been thorough—but only one still functioned.

Power from a well-nigh inexhaustible pile still drove the finger tirelessly, if jerkily, round the bland white face.

One of the minor dials—a blue one—reached a given point and there was a faint click.

Power surged through an intricate circuit, met with an obstruction and promptly short-circuited.

There was a brief flash, a curl of black smoke but the kickback closed a relay. Power was transferred to the second emergency circuit.

As has been said, the planners had been thorough—there were still three more to fall back on.

Inside the box, lay an emaciated thing which bore only a vague resemblance to a man.

The man had once floated in a special chemical preservative but the planners could not foresee everything. Most of the liquid had been absorbed by a beard which enveloped him like a cocoon and reached his ankles. He now lay in a puddle of black evil-smelling liquid which had long since lost its effectiveness.

Nonetheless an artificial heart still pumped oxygenated blood through the blood-stream. He was still being fed intravenously.

When the dial clicked, certain events took place. A dozen hypodermic needles rose from the base of the box and perforated the skin of the emaciated buttocks.

The needles injected stimulants, selective substances to revive inhibited glandular activity and shock elements to start a heart which had been still a long time.

At the same time, mechanisms within the box began to inflate and deflate the lungs, heart massage began.

Consciousness came back to Clifton slowly in a series of uncertain dreams.

Swirls of pink mist, a see-saw nausea, shafts of light and drifting shadows.

Aching pains filled the dreams, ten thousand agonizing cramps which he felt but were not part of him.

He thought, quite insanely, “I am the greatest musician on earth, only I don’t know what a musician is.”

He could hear the purring of motors or the beat of wings—what the hell were wings?

He was talking to a judge in a red cloak. “Kindly explain why the gardener has planted flowers in my eyes.”

He thought he slept.

When he thought he awoke, he thought he was rational.

God, he ached. One of his toes was certainly missing.

Who had bunged up his eyes?

Bandage? Accident? Certainly an accident.

If I can remember who I am, I shall, no doubt, be able to recall what I was doing.

Who am I?

“Wake up, Clifton.”

Did I think that or did someone say it? Clifton? Was that a name? Whose name?

It seemed that someone was pummelling at his body.

It hurt. It hurt like hell.

Boxing? He must be out on his feet.

“Wake up, Clifton.”

He tried to open his mouth to speak. Searing, hot-knife pains stabbed at his jaw, his neck and behind his ears.

He whimpered to himself. Couldn’t open his mouth—jaw broken.

Ice-cold liquid spurted between his lips and filled his mouth. The liquid seemed to be absorbed by his tongue before it reached his throat.

Something rubbing his face and moving his jaw—brutally.

More liquid. He choked swallowed and choked again in wrenching agony which left him dizzy.

More liquid, more agony but the effort of swallowing was becoming easier now.

Wetness spraying against his eyes. It seemed that the lids creaked protestingly.

“Wake up, Clifton.”

He opened his eyes. There was light somewhere but seen through an opaque and slimy film which turned it to a shapeless blur.

Liquid spurted into his eyes, washing away the slimy film. He could see the light now and his pupils contracted painfully.

He blinked and it hurt. He blinked again and it hurt less.

He was aware of metal—metal arms, pounding, kneading, pressing, sucking, at his body, his arms and legs. He was sprayed first with hot and then with cold liquid and the pummelling continued.

He made a rattling croaking sound which he thought was the word “stop”.

It didn’t stop. It went on and on and on. …

After what seemed centuries, it seemed that he was lifted, carried and laid on a soft flat surface.

Something was thrust between his lips and a warm, thick liquid filled his mouth. Automatically he swallowed and immediately his mouth was refilled.

Warmth filled his stomach, spread upwards and with it an unspeakable fatigue.

He thought, rationally, before he fell into sleep: “The Resuscitation Machine is doing a damn good job.”

When he awoke, he knew who he was and why he was there. His opinions changed in a few days, however. The machine was a sadistic taskmaster without feeling or mercy.

“Raise your right arm.”

“I can’t—it hurts like hell to try.”

“Raise your right arm or I shall be compelled to resort to shock treatment.”

“You go ahead and do your—Oh, God!”

“Raise your right arm.”

“I’m trying, damn you, I’m trying.”

He raised it eventually and was unable to believe it was his or even an arm. It was a thin white stick, all blue veins and stringy tendons.

He had little time to think about it.

“Raise your left arm——”

It was six weeks before he made his first tottering steps from the bed to the wall. Four tottering steps, agonizing and fraught with nausea.

The machine made him do it again four hours later—and four hours after that—then three.

For a week, he walked and slept and was awakened to walk again.

Slowly he began to gain strength and weight.

In the middle of the second week, he raised himself on his elbow and looked about him.

To his right, a massive circular sealed door. To his left, a vast corridor, stretching away beyond his vision.

At regular intervals of three metres were beds, directly facing the beds were the black coffin-like boxes such as he had once occupied. Beside the boxes stood the Resuscitation Machines as if waiting.

He counted wearily, eight beds within his immediate range of vision, occupied.

About six beds away, a naked, emaciated figure tottered towards the wall.

The cracked protesting voice reached him clearly : “How many more times, for God’s sake?”

Clifton’s mouth quirked briefly in sympathy and then became stern again.

Nine visible survivors, including himself, were not good figures.

It was another four weeks before the machine pronounced him fit to take care of himself.

“You have now passed successfully through stage one of your treatment. In the wall cupboard, directly behind your bed, you will find clothing, rations, shaving and cleansing materials. Below these, your surviving personal possessions and, in the final section, your surgical instruments, drugs and a taped medical library. Personal exercise—walking only—fifty paces, every seventy minutes until instructed otherwise.”

The machine stopped abruptly.

When Clifton opened the wall cupboard, there were few of his personal possessions to claim. His wallet, with all its contents, crumbled in his hand. His watch remained at a stubborn eleven-fifteen and refused to start. His keys had survived but that was about all, all else was worthless.

It was some days before Clifton could make the journey to his nearest neighbour.

The meeting was undramatic and almost casual.

“Selby, isn’t it?”

“That’s right—let’s see now—know your face. Ah, yes—Clifton, met you in Vienna last——”

He stopped and laughed harshly. “That was damn silly, I was going to say last year.”

“How long is it?”

Selby told him and Clifton felt suddenly weak again.

“It can’t be! They told us twenty or thirty.”

“I know what they told us but I’ve checked seven of the master chronometers. Again, consider all the things which have fallen to bits or now fail to function.”

Clifton sat down on the edge of Selby’s bed. “I can’t believe it.”

“I couldn’t but I can’t escape the facts—it’s one thousand, two hundred and forty-seven years!”

The doctors started work a month later. Once they began, it was work and work and work. There were only twelve out of a possible twenty.

“Holstead didn’t make it, just a skeleton——”

“Banks was less than that, grey powder, an outline——”

Eighteen months later, all who could be saved had been saved. All were moderately fit and ready for the next great step but the survival percentages were not good. Only twenty-five per cent had made the long journey safely through time. Two thousand five hundred and eight, one thousand and two of whom were women.

All were experts in various fields but some specialities were sorely depleted and, in some, non-existent.

There were, of course, three hundred and twenty similar vaults, many of which were ten times the size of this one, but even so. …

Clifton’s mind drifted back. It seemed like yesterday—as far as he was concerned it was yesterday—he had taken a last look at the world he knew.

It had not been an inspiring picture. A late winter afternoon and steadily falling rain. Everything grey and sad and, in the distance the gleaming roofs of countless vehicles. A virtual river of abandoned automobiles—his own among them—trucks, buses, bulldozers and God knew what.

Closer to hand was a tangle of rusty tracks and fallen-in and broken machinery. This sector was ‘going to ground’ in a long-abandoned coal mine.

There was new machinery, new building beside him—the strengthened mine entrance and elevator machinery but hemming it in—desolation. Slag heaps covered in coarse brown grass, low sheds with the roofs falling in, rotting pit props, rusty buckets, all dripping dismally with water.

The cause of it all had begun soon after he had left school.

Some scientist or other had invented a device called a Surprascope which had instantly replaced the radar telescope.

He had been too young at the time to grasp the range of the device but a year later the Surprascope had detected a comet far out in space. So far out in space, that it would take fifteen years to reach the solar system. There was a possibility, stated the report—five lines, back page—that the comet might pass close to the solar system.

A year later—other nations now equipped with their own Surprascope—hinted that the comet might pass through the solar system.

Ten lines, column six, page four.

A year after that, however, a statement by the leading astronomers of eighteen nations got banner headlines on the front page of every national newspaper in the world.

The comet would pass directly through the solar system.

Intense calculation with computer backing confirmed that there would be no actual collision but it was going to be too damn close for comfort.

In the first place, there would be gigantic and unprecedented solar storms.

In the second, the comet was going to pass close enough to Earth to shift oceans and, possibly, land masses. It could well—scientists were chary of committing themselves—shift the Earth from its axis, change its orbit or alter its rotation.

Most certainly life would be untenable on the surface for a very long period.

Only ten years remained, however, when Governments stopped quoting soothing platitudes and woke up to the danger.

Every branch of science was called in while the rest of humanity began to dig. They dug and they dug. Abandoned mines, natural caverns, underground fortresses, were extended, reinforced and extended again.

Mankind would be unable to inhabit his own planet for at least—the very least—five hundred years.

“Well, I suppose we’d better begin.”

The remark jerked Clifton abruptly back to the present.

Hobart, the only surviving Co-ordinator, said: “Well, Culbertson.”

“Oh, ah, yes.” Culbertson, the Chief Technician, had a conglomeration of tools and equipment on a low portable trolley.

He l. . .