Stairway to the Stars by Larry T. Shaw (best fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

It was a stairway leading down, but it also led out into space—indirectly. And the situation had the aspects of a burlesque on Grand Hotel, but....

John Andrew Farmer scowled at the octopus that sprawled on his living-room couch, rubbed his stubbly jaw with a stubby fist, and said, “I love you.”

Farmer was uncomfortable. He was almost always uncomfortable, for various reasons; though it rarely if ever occurred to him, as he considered each individual irritant, that this was his normal state of existence. Right now he was acutely conscious of how ridiculous it must look for him to be making love to an octopus, but he was even more conscious of the very real pains of unrequited love.

It wasn’t even a respectable, ordinary-looking octopus. To be accurate, it would have to be called a nonapus; each of the nine tentacles had a lobsterish claw at its tip, and there were various other unusual appendages. It would be hard enough to explain an earthly octopus in his living-room if the necessity arose, Farmer reflected for the teenteenth time—but how in the name of Neptune could he ever explain this?

It had all started with Judge Ray. Ray had not been a real judge, obviously, but had used the title in lieu of any other first name. That was the first of the inexplicable things; Farmer would have expected the odd little old man to call himself a professor of something or other. But Ray insisted on Judge.

Ray had come to the office of the Stein, Fine, Bryans Publishing Co., where Farmer was working as an assistant editor, and announced that he was about to write the greatest book [71]of the age. And yes, he wanted an advance against royalties—it didn’t have to be large; Ray lived simply—to tide him over while doing the actual writing, which shouldn’t take more than a very few weeks.

Now, Farmer wasn’t much of an editor, even as editors go. The one useful quality he had was a homespun, ingratiating air which put nervous young geniuses at their ease, so that they could give a reasonably coherent verbal picture of what their books were about. This often saved Stein, Fine & Bryans a lot of reading of unpublishable manuscripts. At least, that had been the theory when they gave Farmer the job; as it worked out, John Andrew was a person who found it virtually impossible to say “no”; he generally took the manuscripts in hand and, when he couldn’t stick some other member of the firm with the task, read them himself until the wee hours.

Farmer was not able to say no to Ray, but even he looked dubious at the small gray fellow’s voluble outpouring of pseudo-scientific jargon. Ray, made sensitive by years of open skepticism on the part of many listeners, caught the look and insisted on a demonstration of his fabulous invention.

So the oddly assorted pair—quick, foxlike little Ray and big, awkward, uncomfortable Farmer—sputtered out into Long Island Sound in an indescribable old motor launch, and the adventure was on.

Finally Ray shut off the racketing engine and let out the rusty anchor. He opened a large wooden case, which showed evidence of some really good cabinet-work, and took out a peculiar machine, which showed evidence of unarguably excellent machining. These details were the first things that made Farmer think Ray might not be a complete crackpot, after all. If he hadn’t been feeling just the slightest touch of seasickness, John Andrew would have breathed a sigh of relief.

Ray polished off the somewhat rabbit-from-hatty routine by bringing out a portable television set, connecting it to the boat’s electrical generator, and stringing an assortment of wires between it and his invention. He would not allow Farmer very close to the latter, but to the editor’s untechnical eye it looked like a fairly ordinary radio set, with more than enough dials and switches added to it to furnish the dashboards of several Rolls Royces.

Ray held up a hand—purely for drama, since there was silence already. “This is a great moment in the course of human history,” he said. “You are about to witness the first demonstration of Ray’s Ray, the work of genius which will allow mankind his first really close contact with the last remaining frontier on his home planet—the bottom of the sea!”

Farmer looked impressed, then began to realize what some of this meant. He caught himself, straightened out his face, and licked his lips. “You mean you’ve never tried the thing before?” he protested. “How do you know it will work?”

Ray’s glance took on a touch of icy fury. The launch rocked gently in the swell for a long, silent minute, and Farmer began to feel slightly afraid. Was he alone, in a spot like this, with a madman? The salty breeze turned colder.

Then Ray smiled—a smile that was surprisingly soft and sweet. John Andrew reached two decisions: that he was safe, and that he liked the “Judge.” (One of Farmer’s weaknesses, in fact, was that—though thoroughly masculine himself—he completely distrusted women, and was too trusting with men.)

“I could go into theories and scientific details,” Ray said; “I could explain principles of operation and the construction of the machine for hours. [72]But you would be bored, and wouldn’t understand anyway. It is sufficient to say that the Ray will work because—I invented it!”

Farmer caught himself nodding, and blamed the boat’s motion. He shifted uneasily on the built-in seat, and got a splinter in a vital spot. He frowned.

Ray was bending over his machine, making motions designed to impress as well as to make it work. “In very simple terms,” he was saying, “this is a combination of color television and super-radar. It will bring in a perfect color picture of the ocean at whatever depth I set it for, or will set itself automatically to present a view of the ocean floor. It will....”

His voice trailed off. The machine hissed, snapped, and crackled. The television set flickered, hummed, gave out a flashing dance of surrealistic doodles, and abruptly presented a picture. It was a picture of Milton Berle.

Ray looked mad, started to aim a kick at the screen but thought better of it. A small wave almost made him sit down on the deck before he got both feet planted again. He swore and started to check the wiring.

“Maybe there’s something wrong inside the dingus itself,” John Andrew suggested tentatively.

Ray turned on him with a look that would have seared the Sphinx. “There’s nothing wrong with the machine!” he said, almost-but-not-quite shouting. “There’s nothing wrong with the television! There’s nothing wrong with the wiring! There must be something wrong at the other end—where the Ray is focussed! And I intend to find out!”

Farmer pondered the idea of a transmitter that worked under water like a ball-point pen, broadcasting weary vaudeville routines. He scratched his head and looked wistfully at the New England shoreline—or was that Long Island? He wasn’t sure any more....

A clank and clatter brought his attention to the launch. He gawked; Ray had thrown back a deck hatch and produced a diving suit which looked as un-shipshape as the rest of the boat’s equipment.

Ray looked it over hastily, then turned a speculative glance on Farmer. He shook his head. “Too small for you,” he murmured. “You wouldn’t know what to look for anyway; I’ll have to go down myself.”

Farmer changed his mind again about Ray’s being cracked. “Listen.” He said the first thing that came to mind. “Didn’t you say you rented this boat for the first time today? How do you know that thing doesn’t leak?”

Ray smiled again, as he climbed briskly into the suit. “I’ll be all right,” he said serenely. “You just keep an eye on things here—but don’t touch anything. I’ll be right back....” He settled the helmet on his head, motioned for Farmer to help him check the connections of the suit’s self-contained oxygen supply.

John Andrew was straightening up from doing this when he saw the nonapus for the first time. It was climbing over the rail at the stern, and already beginning to make a puddle on the deck. Farmer froze, and gulped wordlessly.

Behind the barred faceplate, Ray looked puzzled, then annoyed. From the corner of his eye, Farmer could see Milton Berle still cavorting silently on the television screen, and this seemed to add the final touch of insanity to the scene. Farmer finally succeeded in pointing, and Ray clumped slowly in a half-circle, just as the nonapus dropped to the deck with a plank-shivering thump.

The scene assumed some of the aspects of a bad movie comedy. The background was an out-of-focus blur, although Farmer was dimly conscious of motion in it somewhere—something else breaking the surface of the water as it emerged. In the foreground, the boat and its occupants were sharply etched, but seemed to have gone into slow motion.

[73]

The nonapus crept forward ponderously, and Farmer searched dazedly for a weapon. It was Ray who first started stumbling in the direction of the boathook, but John Andrew, in a sudden fit of bravery, shoved past him and grabbed the fragile-looking thing from its cleats.

He swung to face the monster with a sick feeling in his stomach, and got another surprise. The thing had stopped moving. Straddling the rail behind it, and similarly dripping, was a—migawd!

It—he—looked almost like a man, but that only made the difference worse. The details resolved as Farmer stared at him. The oddness about head and shoulders became finny crests; what had looked at first like a red skin-tight costume became a scaly hide. Farmer realized with a shock that the creature wasn’t wearing anything.

Farmer crouched. The point of the boathook wavered, aimed first at the nonapus, then at the fishman. To the editor, both were alien—but he couldn’t decide which one was more dangerous. For a long moment, neither of them advanced, and he wondered if they could really be frightened of his puny weapon.

He doubted it. He was beginning to notice, among other things, that the nonapus was more fearsome than it had seemed at first—in addition to nine tentacles, claws, fangs and antenna became apparent. So did the big glassy-red disks of the eyes—and Farmer aimed the point of the hook at one of them, started to thrust.

It was wrenched from his hands and forced downward to stick quivering in the deck. The development took Farmer completely unawares. Neither of the aliens had moved; it was Judge Ray who had disarmed him.

Judge Ray was now frantically trying to remove his diving helmet again. Excitement made his motions ineffective, and he signaled for Farmer to help him, then continued to fumble with the fastenings himself. John Andrew turned, feeling completely doomed, to aid the man, and they started getting in each other’s way and slowing down the operation even more.

They finally succeeded, though; the helmet swung back, and Ray promptly shoved Farmer aside. Some of Farmer’s fear gave way to amazement at the little inventor’s audacity and what seemed to Farmer at least to be foolishly optimistic scientific detachment.

Ray said: “My name is Ray. It is indeed fortunate that you have met me immediately upon your arrival here, since I am the world’s greatest genius, and thoroughly equipped to tell you anything you wish to know about my people and civilization. I take it you come from Atlantis?”

Amazingly, his tongue only got tangled once in the middle of this speech, and he regained control of it quickly then. John Andrew felt a touch of jealousy at the little man’s capability in assuming control of the situation. That, and a sudden idea of his own, forced him to speak for himself.

It was a sad attempt. “Venus.... Spaceship....” he managed to croak, before giving it up.

The launch rocked gently. The nonapus crouched motionless; the fishman stood firmly, as if untouched by anything around him, his arms folded and a faint smile upon his damp lips.

Finally he spoke too. What he said was: “Venus. Spaceship. My name is Ray. It is indeed fortunate that you have met me immediately upon your arrival here, since I am the world’s greatest genius....”

He broke off. Apparently he interpreted the looks of consternation on the faces of his audience correctly, for his smile became more friendly and he continued in a casual tone.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I didn’t speak your language before I arrived here, and