The World Turned Upside Down Table of Contents Preface Rescue Party The Menace from Earth Code Three Hunting Problem Black Destroyer A Pail of Air Thy Rocks and Rills A Gun for Dinosaur Goblin Night The Only Thing We Learn Trigger Tide The Aliens All the Way Back The Last Command Who Goes There? Quietus Answer The Last Question The Cold Equations Shambleau Turning Point Heavy Planet Omnilingual The Gentle Earth Environment Liane the Wayfarer Spawn St. Dragon and the George Thunder and Roses The World Turned Upside Down Edited by David Drake Eric Flint Jim Baen This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. Copyright © 2004 by David Drake, Eric Flint & Jim Baen All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. A Baen Books Original Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403 Riverdale, NY 10471 www.baen.com ISBN: 0-7434-9874-7 Cover art by Thomas Kidd First printing, January 2005 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The world turned upside down / edited by David Drake, Eric Flint, and Jim Baen. p. cm. ISBN 0-7434-9874-7 1. Science fiction, American. 2. Science fiction, English. I. Drake, David. II. Flint, Eric. III. Baen, Jim. PS648.S3W647 2005 813'.0876208--dc22 2004021812 Distributed by Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH Printed in the United States of America BAEN BOOKS by DAVID DRAKE & ERIC FLINT The Tyrant The Belisarius Series An Oblique Approach In the Heart of Darkness Destiny's Shield Fortune's Stroke The Tide of Victory For a complete list of Baen Books by these authors, please go to http://www.baen.com Copyright information forThe World Turned Upside Down Stories are listed in order of -publication date: C.L. Moore, "Shambleau" was first published inWeird Tales in November, 1933. Reprinted by permission of Don Congdon Associates. Copyright © 1933 by Popular Fiction Company, renewed 1961 by C.L. Moore. John W. Campbell, Jr. (writing as Don A. Stuart), "Who Goes There?" was first published in Astounding Science Fiction in August, 1938. A.E. Van Vogt, "Black Destroyer" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in July, 1939. Lee Gregor, "Heavy Planet" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in August, 1939. P. Schuyler Miller, "Spawn" was first published inWeird Tales in August, 1939. Ross Rocklynne, "Quietus" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in September, 1940. Chester S. Geier, "Environment" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in May, 1944. Arthur C. Clarke, "Rescue Party" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in May, 1946. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agents, Scovil Chichak Galen Literary Agency, Inc. Theodore Sturgeon, "Thunder and Roses" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in November, 1947. C.M. Kornbluth, "The Only Thing We Learn" was first published inStartling Stories in July, 1949. Copyright © 1949 by C.M. Kornbluth. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd. Wyman Guin (writing as Norman Menasco), "Trigger Tide" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in October, 1950. Jack Vance, "Liane the Wayfarer" first appeared as part of Jack Vance,The Dying Earth , published by Hillman in 1950. Fritz Leiber, "A Pail of Air" was first published inGalaxy in December, 1951. Michael Shaara, "All the Way Back" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in July, 1952. Poul Anderson, "Turning Point" was first published inIf in May, 1953. Robert Ernest Gilbert, "Thy Rocks and Rills" was first published inIf in September, 1953. Tom Godwin, "The Cold Equations" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in August, 1954. Fredric Brown, "Answer" first appeared in Fredric Brown's anthologyAngels and Spaceships, published by E.P. Dutton in 1954. Robert Sheckley, "Hunting Problem" was first published inGalaxy in September, 1955. L. Sprague de Camp, "A Gun For Dinosaur" was first published inGalaxy in March, 1956. Isaac Asimov, "The Last Question," copyright © 1956 by Columbia Publications Inc., fromIsaac Asimov: The Complete Stories of Vol I by Isaac Asimov. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. H. Beam Piper, "Omnilingual" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in February, 1957. Robert A. Heinlein, "The Menace From Earth" was first published inThe Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in August, 1957. Gordon R. Dickson, "St. Dragon and the George" was first published inThe Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in September, 1957. Christopher Anvil, "The Gentle Earth" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in November, 1957. Murray Leinster, "The Aliens" was first published inAstounding Science Fiction in August, 1959. Rick Raphael, "Code Three" was first published inAnalog in February, 1963. James H. Schmitz, "Goblin Night" was first published inAnalog in April, 1965. Keith Laumer, "The Last Command" was first published inAnalog in January, 1967. Preface This anthology started in the course of a conversation I had with Jim Baen regarding possible future prospects for reissuing old science fiction authors. In the course of advancing this or that idea, Jim interrupted me and said what he'd like to see immediately would be for Dave Drake and myself to select those stories which had the most impact on us as teenagers and got us interested in science fiction in the first place. "Call itThe World Turned Upside Down," he said. I liked the idea, and so did Dave when Jim and I raised it with him. The one change Dave proposed, however, was that Jim serve as one of the editors of the volume, not simply as the publisher. That seemed eminently rational, given that by then Jim had already advanced half a dozen stories he wanted included in it because of the effect they'd had on him as a teenager. So. This does not purport to be an anthology that contains "the best stories of science fiction"—although all of us think this volume contains a superb collection of stories. But that was not the fundamental criterion by which we made our selection. The stories were selected because of the impact they had on us several decades ago, as we were growing up in the '50s and '60s. Some authors are missing, unfortunately. In some cases—Andre Norton being the major example, here—because the stories the author wrote which had such an effect on us were novels, and there just wasn't room in such an anthology for novel-length works. In other cases, because we were unable to obtain the rights for the stories we wanted from the agencies representing some of the estates. We got most of what we wanted, though. And . here it is. The World Turned Upside Down. —Eric Flint March 2004 Rescue Party by Arthur C. Clarke Preface by Eric Flint I'm certain this wasn't the first science fiction story I ever read, because I still remember those vividly. Three novels, all read when I was twelve years old and living in the small town of Shaver Lake (pop. 500) in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California: Robert Heinlein'sCitizen of the Galaxy, Tom Godwin'sThe Survivors and Andre Norton'sStar Rangers. I must have started reading Arthur C. Clarke soon thereafter, though. The two stories that introduced me to him—as I remember, anyway—were this one and "Jupiter V," and those two stories fixed Clarke permanently as one of the central triad in my own personal pantheon of SF's great writers. (The other two being Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton.) We chose this one, rather than "Jupiter V," at my request. I wanted this one because, of all the stories ever written in science fiction, this is the one which first demonstrated to me that science fiction could be inspirational as well as fascinating. So I thought at the age of twelve or possibly thirteen. More than four decades have now gone by, and I haven't changed my mind at all. Who was to blame? For three days Alveron's thoughts had come back to that question, and still he had found no answer. A creature of a less civilized or a less sensitive race would never have let it torture his mind, and would have satisfied himself with the assurance that no one could be responsible for the working of fate. But Alveron and his kind had been lords of the Universe since the dawn of history, since that far distant age when the Time Barrier had been folded round the cosmos by the unknown powers that lay beyond the Beginning. To them had been given all knowledge—and with infinite knowledge went infinite responsibility. If there were mistakes and errors in the administration of the galaxy, the fault lay on the heads of Alveron and his people. And this was no mere mistake: it was one of the greatest tragedies in history. The crew still knew nothing. Even Rugon, his closest friend and the ship's deputy captain, had been told only part of the truth. But now the doomed worlds lay less than a billion miles ahead. In a few hours, they would be landing on the third planet. Once again Alveron read the message from Base; then, with a flick of a tentacle that no human eye could have followed, he pressed the "General Attention" button. Throughout the mile-long cylinder that was the Galactic Survey Ship S9000, creatures of many races laid down their work to listen to the words of their captain. "I know you have all been wondering," began Alveron, "why we were ordered to abandon our survey and to proceed at such an acceleration to this region of space.