Merril - The Years Best Science Fiction and Fantasy

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The Years Best

Science Fiction 11

Ed by Judith Merril

Proofed By MadMaxAU

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CONTENTS

Robert J. Tilley

J. G. Ballard

R. A. Lafferty

Alex Kirs

A. K. Jorgensson

Josephine Saxton

Walter F. Moudy

Fritz Leiber

Alexander B. Malec

Bob Kurosaka

Alistair Bevan

Johnny Byrne

Thomas M. Disch

Donald Barthelme

E. C. Tubb

Ron Goulart

Tom Herzog

David R. Bunch

Peter Redgrove

David Rome

Isaac Asimov

Arthur C. Clarke

Alfred Jarry

Gordon R. Dickson

Art Buchwald

Brian W. Aldiss

Robert D. Tschirgi

John Ciardi

Jorge Luis Borges

Harvey Jacobs

J. G. Ballard

George MacBeth

Gerald Kersh

Roald Dahl

David I. Masson

Bob Ottum, Jr.

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INTRODUCTION

I generally skip introductions myselfat least until after I read the book. But I hope youre reading this one, because you may be disappointed otherwise.

This is not a collection of science-fiction stories.

It does have some science fiction in itI think. (It gets a little more difficult each year to decide which ones are really science fictionand frankly I dont much try any more.)

There are two selections full of good honest hard-science stuff. The biochemical one is a sort of bible story, and the astrophysical one is about an astral pataphysician. And there are a couple of planet-type stories by Leiber and Clarketwo solid science-fiction names if ever there wereabout life (or death) on (or in or around) the moon.

I can also offer a galore of space ships, a gaggle of monstrous or otherwise odd alien creatures, and a fair-sized battalion of robots and other kinds of thinking machines, as well as some telepathists and general Wielders of Powers, some disembodied entities, and a mess of mythological and magical beings (one giant, one sorceress, a devil-sticks dancer, and assorted semi- and demigods).

But if you think that makes the book a collection of fantasy and science fiction, Im afraid I still have to beg offunless you choose to Include under fantasy everything that is not rigidly realistic assuming you know what that means. I dont.

What this book is, is a collection of imaginative speculative writing reflecting, I believe, clearly and sharply the problems and conflicts of civilized man today, and his hopes and apprehensions for the future.

The stories and poems and essays here have been selected from as wide a range as I could cover of books and periodicals published here and in England last year. About half the entries are from the genre magazines. The rest are from books and from such diverse sources as Mademoiselle and Escapade, The Colorado Quarterly and the Washington Post, Playboy and the Saturday Review (and Ambit and King in England). The youngest author is an eighteen-year-old college freshman; the oldest a ninety-three-year-old (if still alive) Parisian legend.

You will, I think, find the attitudes, treatments, topics, as varied as the sources.

Some of it is even science fiction.

Judith Merril

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MOON DUEL

FRITZ LEIBER

First hint I had wed been spotted by a crusoe was a little tick coming to my moonsuit from the miniradar Pete and I were gaily heaving into position near the east end of Gioja crater to scan for wrecks, trash, and nodules of raw metal.

Then came a whish which cut off the instant Petes hand lost contact with the squat instrument. His gauntlet, silvery in the raw low polar sunlight, drew away very slowly, as if hed grown faintly disgusted with our activity. My gaze kept on turning to see the whole shimmering back of his helmet blown off in a gorgeous sickening brain-fog and blood-mist that was already falling in the vacuum as fine red snow.

A loud tock then and glove-sting as the Crusoes second slug hit the miniradar, but my gaze had gone back to the direction Pete had been facing when he bought itin time to see the green needle-flash of the Crusoes gun in a notch in Giojas low wall, where the black of the shadowed rock met the gem-like starfields along a jagged border. I unslung my Swift [ All-purpose vacuum rifle named for the .22 cartridge which as early as 1940 was being produced by Winchester, Remington, and Norma with factory loads giving it a muzzle velocity of 4,140 feet, almost a mile, a second. ] as I dodged a long step to the side and squeezed off three shots. The first two shells must have traveled a touch too high, but the third made a beautiful fleeting violet globe at the base of the notch. It didnt show me a figure, whole or shattered, silvery or otherwise, on the wall or atop it, but then some crusoes are camouflaged like chameleons and most of them move very fast.

Petes suit was still falling slowly and stiffly forward. Three dozen yards beyond was a wide black fissure, though exactly how wide I couldnt tell because much of the opposite lip merged into the shadow of the wall. I scooted toward it like a rat toward a hole. On my third step, I caught up Pete by his tool belt and oxy tube while his falling front was still inches away from the powdered pumice, and I heaved him along with me. Some slow or over-drilled part of my brain hadnt yet accepted he was dead.

Then I began to skim forward, inches above the ground myself, kicking back against rocky outcrops thrusting up through the dustit was like fin-swimming. The crusoe couldnt have been expecting this nut stunt, by which I at least avoided the dreamy sitting-duck slowness of safer, higher-bounding moon-running, for there was a green flash behind me and hurtled dust faintly pittered my soles and seat. He hadnt been leading his target enough. Also, I knew now he had shells as well as slugs.

I was diving over the lip three seconds after skoot-off when Petes boot caught solidly against a last hooky outcrop. The something in my brain was still stubborn, for I clutched him like clamps, which made me swing around with a jerk. But even that was lucky, for a bright globe two yards through winked on five yards ahead like a mammoth fireflys flash, but not quite as gentle, for the invisible rarified explosion-front hit me hard enough to boom my suit and make the air inside slap me. Now I knew he had metal-proximity fuses on some of his shells toothey must be very good at mini-stuff on his home planet.

The tail of the pale green flash showed me the fissures bottom a hundred yards straight below and all dust, as ninety percent of them arepray God the dust was deep. I had time to thumb Extreme Emergency to the ship for it to relay automatically to Circumluna. Then the lip had cut me off from the ship and I had lazily fallen out of the glare into the blessed blackness, the dial lights in my helmet already snapped offeven they might make enough glow for the crusoe to aim by. The slug had switched off Petes.

Ten, twelve seconds to fall and the opposite lip wasnt cutting off the notched crater wall. I could feel the Crusoes gun trailing me downhed know moon-G, sticky old five-foot. I could feel his tentacle or finger or claw or ameboid bump tightening on the trigger or button or what. I shoved Pete away from me, parallel to the fissure wall, as hard as I could. Three more seconds, four, and my suit boomed again and I was walloped as another green flash showed me the smooth-sifted floor moving up and beginning to hurry a little. This flash was a hemisphere, not a globeit had burst against the wallbut if there were any rock fragments they missed me. And it exactly bisected the straight line between me and Petes silvery coffin. The crusoe knew his gun and his LunaI really admired him, even if my shove had pushed Pete and me, action and reaction, just enough out of the target path. Then the fissure lip had cut the notch and I was readying to land like a three-legged crab, my Swift reslung, my free hand on my belted dust-shoes.