Galaxy V20n02
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
DECEMBER Galaxy 1961 « 50 * © MAGAZINE £ The Day After Doomsday great new novel by poul anderson — . AT LAST! You can paint an original picture like this, using real artists' oil paints . the Vte'A-kns m Trade Mark (overlay)m way JUST AS A TEACHER by your side, this entirely new and original method shows you in actual size and color how and what to do. You compare your progress, step-by-step, with the easy- to-follow VIS-A-LENS, and THERE are some things that cannot organization) an age-old brotherhood before you realize it, you be generally told — things you ought to of learning, have preserved this secret are actually painting. know. Great truths are dangerous to wisdom in their archives for centu- some — but factors for personal power ries. They now invite you to share the of i accomplishment in A choice subjects avail- and the hands of practical helpfulness , of their teachings. able—get yours now those who understand them. Behind Write today for a free copy of the the tales of the miracles and mysteries book, "The Mastery of Life.” Within Price includes Vis-A- only of the ancients, lie centuries of their its pages may lie a new life of oppor- Lens, 12x16 inch Art secret probing into nature's laws — tunity for you. Address: Scribe L.N . R. Board, 6 tubes Oil .95 their amazing discoveries of the hid- Paint, Oil, Turpentine, den processes of man’s mind, and the j SEND THIS COUPON 2 Brushes, 16 page In- mastery of life’s problems. Once shroud- ! Scribe L N.R. The struction Book. ed in mystery to avoid their destruc- i ROSICRUCIANS (AMORC) i San Jose, California tion by mass fear and ignorance, these VIS-A-LENS is sold Aldens, Please send me the free book, The Mastery 1 by a useful heritage J facts remain for the of Life, which explains I learn i how may to [ Montgomery Ward, Sears, Roe- thousands ofmenand woraenwho pri- i use my faculties and powers of mind. 1 vately use them in their homes today. - 1 buck & Co. and leading depart- 1 Name i I ment stores, coast to coast. If THIS FREE Address i BOOK , your local stores do not have it, The Rosicrucians (not a religious City_ ask them to order an assortment. Address inquiries to: WSe Rosicrucians (AMORC) SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A. Vis -a -lens, Inc., 530 E. Bainbridge St., Elizabethtown, Penna. ALL STORIES NEW • NO REPRINTS GalaxyMAGAZINE v DECEMBER, 1961 • VOL. 20 NO. 2 M-51 in Canes Venatici. This CONTENTS galaxy, as large as our own, is so distant that its light BOOK LENGTH NOVEL (First of Two Parts) takes millions of years to THE DAY AFTER DOOMSDAY 8 reach us. by Poul Anderson WAY NOVELETTES ROBERT M. GUINN WALL OF CRYSTAL, EYE OF NIGHT 110 Publisher by Algis Budrys FREDERIK POHL AN OLD FASHIONED BIRD CHRISTMAS 148 Editor OUT Managing by Margaret St. Clair WILLY LEY THE LITTLE MAN WHO WASN’T QUITE 178 Science Editor by William W. Stuart SHORT STORIES SAM RUVIDICH Art Director OH, RATS! 68 by Miriam Allen deFord GALAXY MAGAZINE Is published SATISFACTION GUARANTEED 90 bi-monthly by Galaxy Publishing Corporation. Main offices: 421 by Joy Leache Hudson Street, New York 14, N. Y. 500 per copy. Subscrip- RAINBIRD 132 tion: (6 copies) S2.50 per year in the United States, Canada, by R. A. Lafferty Mexico, South and Central LOT of things combined credible size of our galactic lens. America and U. S. Possessions. $3.50. Second-class our cover, our new ARTICLE Elsewhere — Start with a single statistic: postage paid at New York, N. Y. Poul Anderson serial and There are some THE WATERY WONDERS OF CAPTAIN NEMO 168 and Holyoke, Mass. Copyright, A 80,000,000,000 New York by Galaxy Pub- 1961, even the time of year—make us stars in our galaxy alone. by Theodore L. Thomas lishing Corporation, Robert M. Guinn, President. All rights, in- take a look at the sky. Anderson If Earths almost three billion SCIENCE FEATURE cluding translations reserved. All material submitted must be has the remarkable capacity to people owned the stars and FOR YOUR INFORMATION 79 accompanied by self-addressed stamped envelopes. The pub- think like a scientist and write divided them share-and-share- assumes no responsibility by Willy Ley lisher like for unsolicited material. All a poet. What interests him alike, each man, woman and child printed in this magazine stories he can manage to translate so as would possess nearly thirty. DEPARTMENTS are fiction, and any similarity We between characters and actual 5 to evoke interest in the reader; can see, under the best conditions, WAY OUT THERE persons is coincidental. and what interests him in GALAXY’S FIVE STAR SHELF 144 The some two or three thousand of Printed in the U. S. A. Day Alter Doomsday is the in- them with the naked eye; for FORECAST _ 194 By The Guinn Co., Inc. N. Y. Title Reg. U. S. Pat. Off. Cover by DEMBER, illustrating THE DAY AFTER DOOMSDAY w 5 every star we can see, more than traces might easily have been vicinity of Rigel, indeed, hardly these two bright objects in the * twenty million are there but in- buried under the debris of the Ice any of the stars in our sky are same part of the sky makes it easy visible—by reason of distance, by Age. The UFOlogists haven’t visible at all to the eye. Our own to locate them. There aren’t any reason of intervening opaque much doubt that we are being sun is at best a telescopic object, bright stars anywhere near them. clouds of gas or by reason of sheer visited even now, for that mat- and even Sirius is no longer with- If you look to the south and west, numbers, so that they are lost in ter. in the capabilities of the unaided not long after dark, not very high the general brightness we call the Yet we’re easy enough to over- eye. in the sky, you’ll have no trouble Milky Way. look. Earth is, after all, only one And yet Rigel is a near neigh- picking them out. The brighter of With all those nearby com- tiny planet circling one insignifi- bor! the two is Jupiter, hugest of plan- panions (we haven’t even touched cant sun far out on one of the There’s plenty of room in our ets, monarch of more than a on the billions of billions in the gassy, pinwheel arms of the gal- galaxy for many races, no doubt dozen moons. The less bright, but other galaxies, farther away), it axy. Sol is itself an outpost. Were about it. In all that space, the still brighter than any star nearby, seems a sure bet that we have we in the dense star clusters vainest human peacock can hard- is ringed Saturn, a few degrees to neighbors in the universe. Almost around the center we might have ly imagine himself to be unique. Jupiter’s west. certainly many of these stars had visitors every second Sun- So, as Anderson says, we’re Give them a few more months have planets; we have hope that day afternoon. in all likelihood not alone. We and Saturn will have moved over at least a few of these planets may The Day After Doomsday are merely out of touch . into the next constellation, Capri- harbor life . intelligent life, life gives us a view of what our galaxy cornus, Jupiter close behind. of something resembling our own may be like, from the point of /'''LOSER to home, by the way, Around February they will almost kind. And even a “few” might view of the races who live in it: this is a good season for seem to touch. Meanwhile the mean many thousands. countless worlds, more interested planet-watching. faster planets—Venus and Mars in their own immediate problems Of the five bright planets —will have skipped through Leo, A LL in all, the inhabited, civil- than in fruitless wanderings into Saturn is one of the more difficult Virgo, Libra and Scorpius to ized worlds in our own gal- remote skies. There isn’t any rea- to spot by accident. Hanging in catch up with the slow giants. In axy may well be numbered in the son why they should exert them- the same part of the sky for years February all four of them will be thousands or millions. selves to visit Earth, after all. on end, it doesn’t betray its in the same part of the sky. A bril- So why, one asks at once, And even if we assume them as presence—as the faster, closer-to- liant spectacle . but, unfortun- haven’t any of the neighbors curious as the Polynesians or as the-sun planets do—by popping ately, not for us Earthmen to see. dropped in for a call? trade-hungry as a Marco Polo, from constellation to constella- The trouble is that a still Well, perhaps they have. The exploration between stars is a tion. It moves, all right. But it brighter object will be in the same Earth is old, and organized slow, tedious task. The distances moves slowly. point on the ecliptic—namely the record-keeping goes back only a are not merely linear. It is only For the past three and a half sun itself. It will take a spaceship few moments of its long day. some six-hundred-odd light-years years Saturn has been in the con- to see this particular four-planet Quite a sizable settlement of from here to Rigel; but the vol- stellation Sagittarius.