The Extra Man

by E.C. Tubb

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

Synopsis

There were two: Rosslyn, the pilot, and Comain, the dreamer. Rosslyn died in space, frozen, preserved for two centuries until found and resurrected by a miracle of future surgery. Comain . . . ? Comain remained on Earth and crystallised his dreams, and when Rosslyn returned he found a civilisation beyond his wildest imaginings. Women ruled the planet, guided solely by the automatic and relentless predictions of a tremendous and frightening machine. A machine that foretold the future and determined the actions of an entire world with devastating accuracy. Into this assured and new civilisation Rosslyn came - and the impact of his presence brought near chaos. He had to be assimilated - or eliminated.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 128

Sample

Although The Extra Man was written in the Autumn of 1953, it was not published until November 1954. E. C. Tubb had submitted his manuscript to the newly established UK paperback firm of Milestone Limited, for whom he was regularly writing novels under his ‘Charles Grey’ personal pseudonym. The book was accepted and a cover prepared for early paperback publication. The publishers were so taken with the book that they subsequently decided to publish it in a hardcover format, and asked Tubb to add another chapter to the book, to increase its length. However, in the cavalier fashion of the day, as they had already prepared a cover for The Extra Man, they put this on another book Tubb had sent them in the interim, discarding its correct title, and this quite different book was issued under the wrong title in February 1954. When the genuine The Extra Man was eventually published in its lengthened version in November 1954, the publisher unaccountably gave it the totally inappropriate title of Enterprise 2115! For this new SF Gateway edition, the original correct title has been restored!

This novel was the last of Tubb’s early ‘pulp’ novels to be published in his prolific ‘mushroom’ period, 1951–1954. In many ways, it can be seen as a transitional work. It is written in a tighter, more controlled manner, but its cool prose is still leavened with occasional flashes of near-poetry:

‘… dim lights gleamed for an instant, gleamed and died like the fading embers of forgotten hope.’

Tubb’s book was written before the actual advent of manned space flight, when, outside of the scientists and military technicians actually working (largely in secret) on rocket research, the conquest of space was still regarded as something of a dream, and an article of faith by science fiction fans. The first man into space was seen as rather a romantic figure, and in his characterisation of Curt Rosslyn, the pioneer space pilot, Tubb conveys something of his own feeling regarding the conquest of space.

The night before his flight into space, Rosslyn, looks at the vessel which is to carry him into history:

‘A space ship.

Curt stared at it as he had stared at it a million times in imagination and in reality.

For him it was the final realisation of ambition, the solid proof that he was not living in a dream. Before him rose the space ship, real, solid, fact. A dream made tangible, a thing of ten thousand hopes and eternal longing from countless men crystallised into something which would finally reach for the stars.

And he was its pilot.’

And after the take-off, Rosslyn:

 

‘… didn’t need to glance out of the ports at the ebon night of space. He didn’t need the sight of the scintillant stars, bright and burning with their cold white fire against the soft velvet of the void. He knew.

Of all men he was the first. The new Columbus. The hero of every boy and man who had ever stared at the sky and wished for wings to travel between the stars.

He was in space.’

Rosslyn’s great friend is the brilliant scientist and computer expert, Comain. He is the designer of his experimental spacecraft, and shares his friend’s longing to open up the space frontier. Physically unable to make the flight himself, he hopes to vicariously share Rosslyn’s glory.

But Tubb had considerable scientific knowledge, and he knew that the romanticised view of space travel disguised the very real technical and engineering difficulties. He knew the dangers, and with uncanny prescience, he postulates an accident in space that clearly anticipated the later real-life Apollo 13 mission. In adopting this realistic, logical approach to space travel, Tubb was almost alone amongst his pulp contemporaries, most of whom saw space flight as akin to a futuristic taxi-ride!

Unlike the crew of Apollo 13, Rosslyn is unable to get back to Earth, and he dies in space. At this point, events parallel the story of Tubb’s other novel of revival from death in space, The Resurrected Man (1954). Years later, Rosslyn’s body is found drifting in space, and is revived by the scientists of a renegade faction of Martian colonists. Over two centuries have passed, and Comain’s computer researches have been misapplied by successive ruthless governments. Earth is now a regimented Matriarchy, ruled by computer prediction!

Rosslyn becomes the willing pawn of the Martian dissidents and is smuggled back to Earth. Everyone is computer indexed—except Rosslyn! As an ‘Extra Man’ and an unknown quantity, he causes havoc. And then—? You simply must read this fast-moving and engrossing story for yourself. Whilst the action is always logical, Tubb also manages to produce a really surprising science fictional twist, which is as satisfying as it is unexpected. Significantly, the quality of the novel was also recognised by American editors, and the book was reprinted in America in 1958 under the more appropriate title of The Mechanical Monarch. It is now deservedly available again as an SF Gateway e-book.

Writing in a major science fiction reference book, The New Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction (1988) the noted critic and academic Stephen H. Goldman recorded that ‘Tubb is, moreover, a master at handling the conventional material of SF. His use of a generation starship in The Space-Born (also reprinted in this present SF Gateway Tubb Omnibus edition) and cybernetics in Enterprise 2115 (aka The Extra Man) … are as good as any to be found in the genre.’

I would certainly not quarrel with this assessment, and thanks to this present volume, modern readers can now judge for themselves. And the even better news for readers is that all of Tubb’s classic science fiction novels are currently being made available as e-books in the ongoing SF Gateway series. Watch out for them, and spread the word … E. C. TUBB, THE GURU OF SPACE ADVENTURE IS BACK!

 

Philip Harbottle,

Wallsend,

October, 2013.

From the gentle slope of the foothills Poker Flats stretched like a frozen sea beneath the cold light of a near-full Moon. Shadows blotched the surface, black pools against the grey-white, thrown from swelling dunes and wind-blown rock, collecting in ebon patches and inky channels, etching the unevenness of the desert. They made an odd pattern those shadows, an irregular polka-dot pattern of light and dark, strange, a little alien, almost disturbing in the deep silence of the night.

Watching them, Curt Rosslyn could almost imagine that he was no longer on Earth.

He leaned against a crumbling boulder, a slight man, not tall, not heavily built, but with a litheness and easiness of movement that betrayed hidden strength. Behind him the Organ Mountains reared their jagged crests against the star-shot sky, and far out across the wastes of Poker Flats, dim lights gleamed for an instant, gleamed and died like the fading embers of forgotten hope.

He sighed a little, his grey eyes clouded with dreams as he stared at the shadowed desert and the worn mountains. Mars must be something like this, he thought. Or perhaps the airless craters of the Moon, or even the sun-scorched surface of distant Mercury. He sighed again, tilting his head and staring up towards the burning glory of the heavens, idly tracing the well-remembered constellations.

The Big Dipper, Polaris the Dog Star, and the sprawling length of Draco. The regular shape of Cassiopeia and the angular shape of Andromeda with its misty nebula. Cross-shaped Bootes, and the scintillant cluster of the Pleiades. Glowing Fomalhaut, and the splendour of Vega. Low on the horizon Rigel and Betelgeuse blazed in the glory of Orion, warning of the winter to come, and above all, glowing like a tracery of shimmering gems, the heart-stopping splendour of the Milky Way.

He knew them all, had known them for as long as he could remember, and the familiar constellations felt like old friends. He had squinted at them through the lenses of his first crude telescope. Then, after many weary hours, he had stared at them with the aid of a hand-ground mirror and the extra power of his six-inch reflector had opened new worlds of glory. He had seen the satellites of Jupiter, the transit of Venus and Mercury, studied the ‘canals’ of Mars and walked in imagination on the dusty sea bottoms of the Moon. The Moon! He smiled up at it, winking at the splotched face of the satellite, then, obeying the warning of finely-turned reflexes, turned and stared over the desert.

Light and sound came towards him.

Twin streamers of brilliance stabbed across the desert, dispelling the shadows and ruining the alien atmosphere with the harsh reality of commonsense. The headlights swung and dipped, rose towards the stars and veered from rock and heaped dunes of arid sand. With the approach of the headlights the sound of the jeep sent flat echoes from the age-old heights of the Organ Mountains, and Curt sighed, relaxing against his boulder and fumbling in his pockets for cigarettes.

‘Rosslyn?’

‘Yes.’ Curt threw away his butt and stepped towards the vehicle. ‘Comain?’

‘That’s right.’ A tall, lean, almost emaciated figure unfolded itself from behind the wheel and in the starlight Curt could see the pale face and thick-lensed spectacles of his friend. ‘Time to go back, Curt. I volunteered to collect you, the driver was busy winning a hundred dollar pot.’

‘I could have waited.’ Curt stared at the stars again, almost forgetting that he was no longer alone. ‘Beautiful, aren’t they?’

‘Yes.’ Something in the tall man’s voice made Curt glance at him, then look away. ‘They’re clean and bright and wonderful, Curt – and they’re waiting. New worlds, new peoples, new ideals and cultures. New frontiers, Curt, and we’re on the threshold of opening the way.’

‘Perhaps, but it won’t be for a long time yet.’

‘No, Curt. The first step is always the hardest. First we have to break the gravitational drag, lift a ship from the surface and keep it off. Once we have done that the rest must follow. First a trip around the Moon and back again. Then an actual landing on the satellite. After that, Mars, Venus, even Mercury and Jupiter. It may take time, Curt, but it will be done.’

The tall man fell silent as he stared at the brilliant face of the near-full Moon. Taller than Curt, stoop shouldered, thin-faced and weak-eyed, yet his high forehead and large skull told of the intelligence residing in his ungainly body. His hands were thin and slender, the fingers long and supple, the hands of an artist, an idealist, a dreamer. Ambition burned within him, not the normal ambition of the majority of men, for wealth meant nothing to him, but the relentless ambition of the scholar. He was driven by the twin devils of curiosity and speculation. He wondered, and he built, then wondered again and built afresh. He would never stop until his eyes closed in the final sleep. He was that kind of man.

A thin wind blew across the desert, stirring the sand a little and chilling their blood. Curt shivered, then, as if ashamed of himself, tried to ignore the warnings of his body.

‘Better get back,’ said Comain quietly. ‘You don’t want to catch a cold now.’

‘I won’t.’

‘You shivered and it’s getting colder.’ Comain started towards the jeep. ‘Come on, Curt.’

‘I’m not cold,’ said the slight man irritably. ‘It’s just that they’ve starved me until I don’t own an ounce of fat.’ He stared at his slender arm. ‘Look at me! Just skin and bone with a bit of muscle! I couldn’t knock down a midget, the shape I’m in now.’

‘You know better than that.’ Comain smiled ruefully as he stared at his own arm. ‘You’ve got muscle, trained and developed to a high pitch of efficiency. Me?’ He bit his lip and continued towards the vehicle. ‘What do I need brawn for?’

‘You don’t.’ Curt fell into step with the tall man and their feet scuffed against the desert as they walked towards the silent jeep. ‘And neither do I. Not with all those gadgets you built. Why, man, all I have to do is to press buttons. Those things you fitted should be able to operate the ship on their own.’

‘The servo mechanisms?’ Comain smiled. ‘They will help but they can only do what you direct them to do. The final decision must be yours.’

He halted by the side of the jeep and folded his long body behind the wheel. Curt sat beside him, then, as they began jolting over the desert, clung to the metal frame of the windscreen.

‘You know,’ he said above the whine of the engine. ‘I should have thought it possible to build a robot pilot for the first ship. Could you do that?’

‘Yes.’ Comain stared before him, his weak eyes narrowed a little as he steered the vehicle over the undulating sand. He wasn’t deceived, and yet he felt grateful to Curt for easing his inner pain. They had grown up together, sharing their boyhood, discovering the stars and the mysteries of science at the same time. Both had dreamed the same dreams, weaving impossible worlds of romantic mystery with their youthful imaginations. They had argued, built, planned, even fought a little. They had helped each other, and, as the years passed, had grown closer even than brothers.

But now they had to part.

Little things had decided it. Weak eyes against perfect vision. Weight against weight, height against height, reflex against reflex. They had been tested, examined, checked – and Curt had won.

To him had fallen the honour of being the Columbus of space.

Comain had known it for more than five years now. He had watched his body, his frail, stooped, weak body, and he had known. Ambition had not died with the knowledge but had been channeled into a different path. Not for him the glories of space, but science covered a wide field and cybernetics was something in which he could take a keen interest. And so he had turned to the design of more and more efficient machines. Small and compact, with built-in relays and predictable response to external stimuli. He had designed the controls for the space ship, the things of metal that could operate faster, better, than the muscles of any man.

And yet his hurt had been deep and something of the old pain still lingered.

‘I could build a mechanical pilot,’ he said. ‘I could build one better than any man, but we’re up against weight limitations, Curt, and no machine now known can do what a man can do within that limitation.’

‘Good.’ Curt grinned with a flash of white teeth. ‘I don’t care what you do later, Comain, but I’m glad that you’ve had to admit defeat now. I’ve looked forward to this for a long time and I’d hate for you to replace me with a thing of steel and wire.’

‘No chance of that.’ Comain swung the wheel as he guided the jeep around a jagged mound of rock. ‘They’re interested in discovering just what will happen to a man out there. You’re a guinea pig, Curt, my day will come after they finally realise that the human body can’t stand high G without damage. Then we’ll have ships with the passengers in acceleration tanks and robots at the controls.’

‘Maybe.’ Curt grunted as the vehicle bounced and jarred his teeth. ‘How’s your research going on the Great Idea?’

‘The predictor?’ The thin man shrugged. ‘It’ll come, Curt, it will have to come. They’ve got EINAC already and better computers will be built. One day they’ll realise that a machine able to absorb information and then to predict probable events from that information will be essential if we are to advance this civilisation of ours.’ His thin lips twisted cynically as he stared at the desert before him. ‘Probably the next war will do it.’

‘You think that there’ll be one?’

‘I do. Every thinking man does. We’ve managed to negotiate an uneasy peace but the weapons are ready, the men are waiting, and the same tensions still exist. War will come, Curt, it can’t be avoided, and, in a way, it could be a good thin. . .