The plot basically centres around the war between the hideous Garnishee and the humanoid Lortonoi. The humans come into possession of an Ultimate Weapon - Krakar - and must decide which race to side with. The book gently attacks the most common clichés in science fiction, challenging their validity.
Harrison: "I enjoyed writing that book, but some fans thought it insulting: 'Hey, you're making fun of Doc Smith.' He was an old friend of mine, and if he was alive I'm sure he'd enjoy it. If I'm making fun of anybody, it's the hacks that are trying to redo space opera now."
Note: This book was adapted for radio by the BBC.
-- Octopus Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
Before the days of tv, radio was the main source of domestic entertainment in the USA, and long-running series about domestic crises were known as 'soap-operas' because they were sponsored by companies who made, among other, mainly house hold goods, soap powders. The name came to mean any sort of corny domestic drama series and was later adapted for the equally corny westerns in pulp magazines, which became 'horse operas'.
The term 'space opera' was originally coined by Wilson Tucker in 1941 for the "hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn spaceship yarn". These space stories differed little from the westerns - horses were replaced by spaceships, six-guns by rayguns and Red Indians by green bug-eyed-monsters. Originally the term 'space opera' was meant derisively, but is often used today to describe these stories with nostalgic affection - referring to any space adventure story - such as L. Ron Hubbard's BATTLEFIELD EARTH (which doubles effectively as a doorstop).
Several writers of the 1920's and '30's were principal developers of the space opera genre. Edmund Hamilton wrote large scale adventures about destroying worlds and suns (Star Smashing?). John W. Campbell Jr.'s stories were filled with 'super-scientific wizardry' and scientific jargon. He later gave up writing when it clashed with his work editing ASTOUNDING/ANALOG. Jack Williamson wrote more romantic space operas, basing his characters on the Three Musketeers and Falstaff; his most famous work being THE LEGION OF SPACE.
In the '40's and '50's space operas became less naive, but they still continue today - sophisticated space operas include Gordon R. Dickson's DORSAI series, Bertram Chandler's RIMWORLDS series and E.C.Tubb's DUMAREST SAGA are all space opera. Several STAR TREK episodes owe much to the naïveté of space opera, and STAR WARS made space opera popular again in the '70's and '80's.
An anthology of stories in this vein is Brian W. Aldiss' SPACE OPERA (1974) which contains stories by many authors.
Perhaps the most influential person in space opera was, and still is, E.E. 'Doc' Smith, who wrote the classic SKYLARK and LENSMEN series which are still in print.
Edward Elmer Smith (1890-1965) was a chemist and a writer and has been called the father of space opera. He greatly influenced American pulp writers in the '30's and '40's. THE SKYLARK OF SPACE was his first novel, it appeared in AMAZING SF in 1928 in the same issue that introduced Philip Nowlan's Buck Rogers character (in the story ARMAGEDDON-2419 AD).
SKYLARK did much to alter sf, popularising the idea of the inventor-scientist as hero. Previously the inventor was a middle-aged professorial type with a young companion to handle the action of the story. This format was used by H.G. Wells in his 'First Men In the Moon' and made popular by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Pellucidar stories. Many writers followed Smith's lead, combining the inventor and young hero, to provide a speedier story line, though perhaps a less plausible one.
Smith also wrote THE GALAXY PRIMES and SPACEHOUNDS OF THE IPC, titles which must have inspired Harrison's STARSMASHERS OF THE GALAXY RANGERS.
Space operas in the pulp magazines gave sf the hardware of rocket ships and ray guns; the square-jawed scientist hero and the dumb-blonde girl friend of the hero who faints at the sight of danger, and falls into the evil clutches of the villain/alien so that the hero has to rescue her. To most people this is science fiction - they read space operas or sf comics or watched FLASH GORDON movie serials and identified these elements with science fiction, which is why sf finds it difficult to gain acceptance as a legitimate adult literature, despite the campaigning of some writers.
THE SKYLARK OF SPACE begins with the hero, Richard Seaton, making an unexpected discovery:
"Petrified with astonishment, Richard Seaton stared after the copper steam-bath.. .a speck in the distance."
Seaton had been electrolysing "his solution of 'X', the unknown metal".
STAR SMASHERS also begins with a discovery; when Jerry Courteney puts a piece of cheddar, for a joke, on the target area of their home-made particle accelerator. 'X' becomes cheddar, and instead of displacing a steam bath, the machine displaces the land lady's cat.
HEROES:
-
RICHARD SEATON: "A strong, not unhandsome face, with keen, wide-set
gray eyes; the wide brow of a thinker, surmounted by thick, unruly, dark hair;
the firm, square jaw of the born fighter... Seaton's childhood had been spent
in the mountains of northern Idaho, a region not much out of the pioneer stage
and offering few inducements to intellectual effort... Each taste of knowledge
whetted him appetite for more. Books! Books! More and more he devoured
them; finding in them meat for the hunger that filled him, answers to
questions that haunted him..."
JERRY COURTENEY: "Tall, dark-haired, broad shouldered Jerry Courteney, handsome as a Greek god with a whimsical smile forever playing about his lips, would never be taken for the top notch engineer that he was, the man who walked off with every medal and every award in every field that he chose to study. He looked less like a scholar than the rugged frontiersman that he really was, for he had been born up on the northern border of our country, on a homestead ranch in Alaska, north of the Artic Circle. In that rough environment he had grown up with his four strapping brothers and strapping father, who strapped them all quite well when they got out of line, as high-spirited boys ever will. The others were still there... but Jerry had been bitten by the bug of knowledge..."
-
DOROTHY VANEMAN: has a "tall, trim figure". When she looks at a
photograph of the hero: "Her breath came faster and her cheeks showed a
lovelier colour as she sat there, the lights playing in her heavy auburn hair
and a tender smile upon her lips."
And: "A final kiss and the man drove away... After the last glimmer of red tail-light had disappeared in the darkness Dorothy made her way to her room, breathing a long and slightly tremulous, but supremely happy sigh."
Yeuch!
SALLY GOODFELLOW: "'Hi,' Sally Goodfellow said cheerfully, strolling in casually, a vision in a green cotton summer frock, almost the same green as her lovely eyes, her shoulder-length hair the colour of golden cornsilk."
"'Chuck, Over here.'
It was Sally, sitting by a window and beckoning him toward her, the last light of day touching her sweet profile with gold. He went over to her, she smiled.
'There's something I want to show you,' she said, and when he was close, she pulled forward the top of her scoop neck dress.
'No bra,' she husked.
Even in that dim light the blush that suffused Chuck's fair skin could be seen as a rising tide of scarlet. Yet, despite his shyness, his reflexes were still hard at work.
'Not until you tell me what the new invention is,' Sally laughed saucily, slapping aside the questing wrist as she pushed shut the neck of her dress.
'Sally, honey, you know I can't, gee, we have an oath...'
'I have something twice as good as an oath,' she murmured, pulling her dress forward again. 'See? The invention?'"
Oh, those womanly wiles... who could resist?
-
"M. REYNOLDS CRANE - known only to a few intimates as 'Martin' - the
multi-millionaire explorer-archaeologist-sportsman who was then District
singles champion... Crane had never known the lack of anything that
money could buy. He had inherited his fortune and had little or nothing
to do with its management, preferring to delegate that job to financial
specialists. However, he was in no sense an idle rich man with no
purpose in life."
"CHUCK VAN CHIDER, no less of a genius, had had a far easier time of it. A blond giant of a man with arms as thick as a strong man's legs, he was the heart and spirit of the State Stegosauri, the championship football team, the man who could open a hole in any line, who could carry the ball through any number of grappling foe... he was heir to the Van Chider millions... Born with a platinum spoon in his mouth, his father had prospected a plutonium mine on the very spot where the Pleasantville Mental Hospital now stood; he had never known want."
-
Seaton installs his invention in a small spacecraft called the SKYLARK.
Jerry Courteney installs his 'Cheddite Projector' into the football team's 747, the Pleasantville Eagle.
-
'As the Skylark approached the shore its occupants heard a rapid
succession of detonations, apparently coming from the direction in
which they were travelling...
'There they are,' said Seaton... 'Aerial battleships, eight of 'em. Four are about the shape of ours - no wings, act like 'copters - but I never saw anything like the other four."
Neither had Crane or DuQuesne.
'They must be animals,' Crane decided, finally. 'I do not believe that any engineer, anywhere, would design machines like that.'
Four of the contestants were animals. Here indeed was a new kind of animal - an animal able and eager to engage a first-class battleship.
Each had an enormous, torpedo-shaped body, with scores of long tentacles and a dozen or so immense wings. Each had a row of eyes along each side and a sharp, prow-like beak. Each was covered with scale-like plates of transparent armour; wings and tentacles were made of the same substance.
That it was real and highly effective armour there was no doubt, for each battleship bristled with guns and each gun was putting out an almost continuous stream of fire. Shells bursting against the creatures filled the region with flame and haze, and produced an uninterrupted roll of sound appalling in its intensity.
In spite of that desperate concentration of fire, however, the animals went straight in. Beaks tore yards-wide openings in hulls; flailing wings smashed superstructures flat; writhing, searching tentacles wrenched guns from their mounts and seized personnel...
The remaining battleship was half-wrecked; the animal was as good as new. Thus the final battle did not last long.
The monster darted away after something, which the observers in the Skylark saw for the first time - a fleet of small airships in full flight away from the scene of the battle. Fast as they were, the animal was covering three miles to their one.
'He can't stand for anything like that!' Seaton cried, as he threw on power and the Skylark leaped ahead. 'When I yank him away, Mart, sock him with a Mark Ten!'"
-
"'Quick, the glasses!' Chuck exclaimed, leaning forward and peering
intently into the distance. John slapped them into his hand, and in an
instant he had them trained on the ground. 'There's a fort of some kind,
I can see a flag waving over it, and explosions all around it, more fighting
I guess. Yes, there are vehicles of some kind circling it, firing, and guns
on the wall firing back. I can see the defenders now! Why, they're almost
human except maybe they have an extra couple of arms, but what does
that matter!'
'Who are they fighting?' Jerry asked, concentrating firmly on the controls.
'Hard to tell - wait - one of their cars just got blown over, the driver is crawling out and...ugggh!'
'Uggh?'
'That's the word for it. A thing with a sort of repulsive purplish yellow body like a tree trunk with sort of openings all over it, four legs like smaller tree trunks and black tentacles sprouting on top where a real person would have a head.'
'Well that's enough for me!' Jerry shouted for them all. 'We just have to come down on the side of the humanoids and show these uggghs what real humans can do.'
This adaptation - like the BBC's adaptation of Bill, the Galactic Hero - was written and produced by Paul Mayhew-Archer. Again he's done an excellent job of fitting the story into five fourteen minute episodes, he's missed out great chunks of the story, but managed to produce an excellent whole from the bits he's used, by combining characters and selecting the best sections of the original story, such that the narrative flows smoothly.
But, as with BILL, we've lost much of Harrison's humour - gone are most of the excellent descriptions, but the use of dialogue almost makes up for this loss. Paul Mayhew-Archer made use of the fact that the Garnishee had learned their English from radio broadcasts by having them speak like BBC Radio 3 announcers, this works well on the radio, if moving away from the American-ness of the pulp story.
This adaptation again made use of the vocal talents of Kerry Shale who provides another amazing collection of voices. We have another semi-John Wayne, BBC radio announcers, Jewish cockroaches, aliens which sound like something from the GOON SHOW and an alien bird, Troceps of the Fligigleh who seems to be a cross mix of Donald Sinden and Kenneth Williams. Shale even manages to give Sally a convincingly feminine voice, complete with a cute lisp. An excellent interpretation of the script.
Again we have sound effects from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, though these are sparingly used and not always convincingly - surely a 747 dropping to the deck of a huge hanger would sound heavier than that?! Music on the radio adaptation was from the excellent score for the movie DUNE (written by Toto), an odd choice, but it was used effectively.
Radio Times listings:
Star struck
Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers: Easter Day - Friday 8.43 am, Radio 4
Chuck and Jerry are the brightest young heroes in American science fiction
writer Harry Harrison's book Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers. Radio 4
follows their strange adventures as they travel across the galaxy in a series
of readings backed up by sound effects and music.
8.43 Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers
by Harry Harrison
Read in five episodes this week by Kerry Shale
Episode 1
'The Cheddite Projector will move this entire plane a couple of hundred miles
in a fraction of a second.'
'What a saving on fuel,' Sally gasped.
Abridged and produced by Paul Mayhew-Archer
Stereo
8.43 Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers
Episode 2
'The Garnishee may have tentacles on their heads, but they are the only
intelligent race on this planet. They have a democratic form of government,
a two-house parliament, a high court and graduated income tax.'
Stereo
8.43 Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers
Episode 3
'Hist,' said the green, dampish alien, 'the overseer comes. We must not
be seen talking or it means the lash.' He sighed deeply. 'Not that it matters.
Everything means the lash.'
Stereo
8.43 Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers
Episode 4
'These Chachkas look like foot-long black cockraoches with little pink
hands,' said Chuck.
'Yes, and you humans look like great soft gop-worms,' said the Chachka.
'Now let's drop the racial slander.'
Stereo
8.43 Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers
The final episode
'This was the battle to determine the fate of the universe: Giant brain
against Giant brain; fighting turtle against gallant cockroach.'
Stereo
Letters, Radio Times, 26 April - 2 May 1986:
Sally makes her last sandwich
Précis of final episode, Star Smashers of the Galaxy
Rangers (Easter Monday - 4 April, Radio 4):
Sally has lots of friends. Her friends are boys.
The boys play war games. They shoot each other and blow
up spaceships. The baddies are foreign. They have funny
accents like the Russians.
Sally makes sandwiches to feed the brave American
boys. Sally is scared by the fighting. Sally gasps and cries.
One of the boys lets her cry on his shoulder and strokes her
hair. He protects Sally. Sally is very grateful and says thank
you to the boys. They take Sally home and the universe is
safe again.
Précis of first episode, Myth Smashers of the
Planet Misogyne (Sally's new series):
Sally is sick of being passive and patronised by the
aggressive boys. When her mummy was a child she was told
to play with the tea set and baby dolls. When she grew up she
had to go back to school to learn self-assertion, confidence and
self-defence because this was the only way out of the kitchen,
the nursery and the bedroom.
Mummy wanted to escape because she discovered that
women could do more exciting things than washing dishes,
nappies and daddy's shirts.
Sally does not like programmes like Star Smashers of
the Galaxy Rangers because they tell her she should play with
the tea set and not get in the way of the brave boys. Sally wants
a share of the action, and not just when she grows up. Sally's
mummy agrees.
(Ms) Ellie Suttle
Swansea
Paul Mayhew-Archer, Producer, 'Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers', replies: Star Smashers was meant to be a parody of the sexist clichés that abound in adventures. I am sorry if it didn't come across that way.
Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers
by Harry Harrison
JEST 89,000 VOLTS
"Come on, Jerry," Chuck called out cheerfully from inside the rude shed that the two chums had fixed up as a simple laboratory. "The old particle accelerator is fired up and rarin' to go!"
"I'm fired up and rarin' to go too," Jerry whispered into the delicate rose ear of lovely Sally Goodfellow, his lips smacking their way along her jaw towards her lips, his insidious hands stealthily encircling her waist.
"Silly!" Sally giggled and wriggled free of his powerful, yet tender embrace with a solid blow of the heel of her hand against his chin. "You know that I like Chuck just as much as I like you." Then, with a saucy toss of her shoulder-length locks she was gone, and Jerry looked after her longingly, fingering his bruised jaw.
"Come on, Jerry, the accumulators are crackling with barely restrained power," Chuck shouted.
"Here I come."
Jerry entered the shed and closed and locked the door carefully behind him, for there were discoveries and yet-unpatented inventions here that would set the largest corporations in the land to licking their lips. It just so happened that these two young men, still students at a secluded State College in drowsy Pleasantville, had two of the keenest minds in the country, perhaps the entire world. Tall, dark-haired, broad-shouldered Jerry Courteney, handsome as a Greek god with a whimsical smile forever playing about his lips, would never be taken for the topnotch engineer that he was, the man who walked off with every medal and every award in every field that he chose to study. He looked less like a scholar than the rugged frontiersman he really was, for he had been born up on the far northern border of our country, on a homesteaded ranch in Alaska north of the Arctic Circle. In that rough environment he had grown up with his four strapping brothers and strapping father, who strapped them all quite well when they got out of line, as high-spirited boys ever will. The others were all still there, hewing a precarious living from the virgin wilderness, but much as he loved the icy silences and whispering trees, Jerry had been bitten by the bug of knowledge, just as his arms were bitten by the ravenous mosquitoes so his skin was tougher than shoe leather, and had made his way from school to school, scholarship to scholarship until he reached State College.
Chuck van Chider, no less of a genius, had had a far easier time of it. A blond giant of man with arms as thick as a strong man's legs, he was the heart and spirit of the State Stegasauri, the championship football team, the man who could open a hole in any line, who could carry the ball through any number of grappling foe. When he remembered to. Twice during the last season he had stopped stock still with the game surging around him as a solution to a complicated mathematical problem suddenly presented itself to him. He went on to win these games, so his team-mates never minded the blank moments, and he was also the heir to the van Chider millions which also did not make him any enemies. Born with a platinum spoon in his mouth, his father had prospected a platinum mine on the very spot where the Pleasantville Mental Hospital now stood; he had never known want. Before the mine had played out, the shrewd Chester van Chider had sold out and used the money to buy the tiny cheese works outside of town. By the addition of inert ingredients and deliquescing agents to the sturdy cheese he had built a world wide market for Van Chider Cheddar - and a fortune for himself. Though discontented radicals from the lunatic fringe often said his cheese tasted like rancid sealing wax, the public at large loved it, mostly for its deliquescing agents which absorbed water from the atmosphere so that after a few days, if you didn't eat fast enough, you had more cheese than you started with. Chester van Chider was a shrewd businessman, unlike the greedy operators who bought his platinum mine only to have it play out a few weeks later, this blow being so great that most of them ended up in the aforementioned looney bin built on the minesite. The keen business mind of the father was reflected in the mathematical genius of the son.
In some ways as different as night and day, blond and dark-haired, wiry and stocky, the two friends were very much alike inside. They had strong hearts and rugged digestions - and minds that were as keen as any that could be found. All around them, in the cluttered laboratory that had once been a simple shed, lay the fruits of their mutual genius. A tossed-aside bit of breadboard circuitry that would one day revolutionize long-line transmission of electricity, a bit of scribbled paper that elaborated a simple equation for squaring the circle. These were the playthings of their ever-curious minds - and their latest plaything now filled the room and hummed with life. A massive, hulking, 89,000-volt particle accelerator that they had put together from surplus electromagnets and a rusty water boiler. High-density batteries of their own invention brimmed full of electricity, and all that was required now was to throw the great gang switch to send the charged particles smashing into the target.
"Put the rubidium on the target area, will you?" Chuck called out, busily at work adjusting a meter, his thick, strong fingers as delicate as those of a master watchmaker at the precise job.
"Right on," Jerry answered and reached for the sample of the rare metal they were bombarding - but seized instead a piece of Van Chider Cheddar from the large wheel they always kept nearby. It was a moment of youthful madness, a harmless jest brought on perhaps by the still-warm memory of those precious lips against which his had so recently rested. Filled with the joy of life, he prized the damp piece of cheese free and slapped it onto the chamber and sealed and evacuated it.
"Stand clear," Chuck shouted. "There she blows!"
With a mighty crackling the batteries discharged completely, and the sharp smell of ozone filled the air. Visible only as a sudden fine beam of purple light, the particles struck the target and vanished.
"Experiment eighty-three," Chuck said, licking a pencil and making a note on the chart. The clamps pulled free and the cover came away and he looked in at the target and his eyes bulged and the pencil fell from his limp fingers. "I'll be double gosh-darned!" he whispered.
Jerry could contain himself no longer but burst out laughing at his friend's astonishment. "Just a joke," he gasped through the laughter. "I put some cheese in place of the rubidium."
"This is cheese?" Chuck asked, and withdrew a spherical black lump from the target area.
This time it was Jerry's turn to gape and gasp, and Chuck enjoyed a good chuckle at his friend's discomfiture. But the fun once over, they turned their attention to the sudden mystery.
"It was cheese before it was bombarded," Jerry said, suddenly serious, looking at the shiny black pellet through a strong lens.
"There are a number of unusual chemicals in my father's cheese. Somehow they united under the bombardment to form this new compound, once the large quantities of hydrogen and oxygen had been freed from the water. What can it be?"
"We can find out easily enough - but I have just had an idea. Take a vacuum tube..."
"Of course, I had the same obvious idea. Put this new substance in place of the cathode and hook it up and see what kind of signal it produces."
"Exactly my idea." Jerry smiled. "But we need a name for this substance."
"I think cheddite fills the bill."
"Bang on!"
They cracked the glass casing of a hulking PF167 power tube and put the mysterious fragment of cheddite in place of the cathode, Jerry deftly wiring it into the circuit while Chuck took a glass rod and quickly blew a new envelope for the tube. A few moments more sufficed to wire the tube into a breadboarded amplifier circuit and switch the power on.
"Give it some more Juice," Jerry said, frowning at the meters hooked up to the output of the circuit.
"She's taking all we have now," Chuck answered, spinning the great theostat to its final stop.
"Well, then there's something mighty fishy here. Look. The current is pouring into the circuit - but it is not coming out! Not a needle has flickered from the stops. Where is all that energy going?"
Chuck scratched his wide jaw in puzzlement. "It's no coming out as volts or ohms or watts, that is for sure. So it must be radiant energy of a different kind. Let's hook up a hunk of aerial to that output and see what kind of signal it is putting out."
A handy metal coat hanger served that function well and was wired into the circuit while test instruments were set up around it.
"I'll give it just a millivolt first," Jerry said as he threw the switch.
What happened next was as soundless as it was shocking. The moment the current went into the circuit something was broadcast from the coat hanger-aerial. because a coat-hanger-shaped chunk of wall instantly vanished. It happened soundlessly and in a fraction of a second of time. Jerry hurled off the current, and they rushed to the wall. Through the new opening they could see the board fence that circled the backyard - and the same strange force had also taken a coat-hanger-shaped section from the fence as well.
"And spreading," Chuck mused. "That hole in the fence is two or three times as big as the first opening."
"Not only that," Jerry said, squinting along the edge of the hole. "If you look, you'll see a stub of a mast next door where the Grays' new colour TV aerial used to be. And, let me think for a second, yes, I'm right. That missing section of fence is where the landlady's cat sleeps in the afternoon. And he was sleeping there when I came in."
"This will take some thinking out," Chuck said as they hammered boards over the opening in the wall. "We had better keep it to ourselves for a while. I'll send an anonymous check to the Grays for their aerial."
"We better think about an anonymous cat for my landlady as well."
A sudden knocking on the door startled them both, and they exchanged glances, for it was the landlady calling to them. Mrs. Hosenpefer was a good woman, though advanced in years. a widow who had run her home as a boardinghouse ever since her husband, a switchman on the railroad, had met a tragic end under a boxcar that his advancing deafness had prevented hearing approach. Somewhat guiltily the two young men opened the door to face the white-haired widow wringing her hands with despair.
"I don't know what to do," she wailed, "and I know I shouldn't bother you out here, but something terrible has happened. My cat" - both listeners recoiled at the word - "has been stolen. Poor Max, who would do that to a sweet harmless animal like that?"
"Just what do you mean stolen?" Jerry asked, fighting desperately to keep the tension out of his voice.
"I can't imagine why, some people will do awful things these days, it must be the drugs. Here I thought my Max was asleep on the fence out there" - the two listening men stirred ever so slightly at the words - "but he wasn't. Kidnapped. I just had a phone call from the sheriff in Clarktown that somebody had thrown Max through a window or something right into the middle of the Unreformed Baptist choir practice. Max was very angry and scratched the soloist. They caught him and called me because of the tag on his collar."
"This call came through now?" Jerry asked, innocently.
"Not a minute ago. I rushed right out here to ask for help."
"And Clarktown is eighty miles away," Chuck said, and the chums exchanged pregnant, significant glances.
"I know, an awful distance. How can I get my darling Max back?"
"Now don't you worry an instant," Jerry said, gently ushering the bereaved woman out. "We'll drive right over and get Max. It's in the bag." The closing door shut off her cries of gratitude, and the experimenters faced each other.
"Eighty miles!" Chuck shouted.
"Instantaneous transmission!"
"We've done it!"
"Done what?"
"I don't know - but whatever it is, I feel it is a great step forward for mankind!"
2
A SHOCKING DISCOVERY
"We'll just have to go back to the old drawing board." Chuck sighed gloomily, looking at the large hole in the ground where the boulder had been and at the larger hole in the nearby hillside. "We just can't control the cheddite projector no matter how hard we try."
"Let me have one more go," Jerry muttered as he probed the depths of the device with a long-shanked screwdriver. For security's sake they had built their invention into a small portable Japanese television set, and so cunningly contrived the inner wiring that it still functioned as a TV as well. Jerry finished his adjustment and switched the set on. There was a quick glimpse of a vampire sinking his fangs into a girl's fair neck before a secret button activated the cheddite projector. The TV screen now displayed a complex wave form which changed shape as further adjustments were made.
"I think this is it." Jerry grinned as he sighted along the aerial. "I'm going to focus on that stick and move it over by the ridge there. Here goes."
There was no sound or visible radiation from the device, but the cheddite force sprang out, unseen yet irresistible. The stick did not move. However, a great rock a hundred yards away disappeared in a fraction of a second and reappeared over the lake behind them. The sudden tumultuous splashing was followed instantly by a wave of water that washed around their ankles.
"Our problem is control." Chuck grimaced unhappily, wiping off the TV set.
"There has to be a way," Jerry said, his words as firm as the set of his jaw. "We know that the cheddite produces a wave of kappa radiation that drops anything in its field through into the lambda dimension where space time laws as we know them do not exist. It appears from the mathematical model you constructed that this lambda dimension, while congruent with ours in every way, is really very much smaller. What was your estimate?"
"Roughly, our spiral galaxy which is about eighty thousand light-years across is, in the lambda dimension, about a mile and a half wide."
"Right. So anything moving a short distance in the lambda dimension will have moved an incredible distance in our own dimension when it emerges. That's the theory all right, and it checks out to fifteen decimal places - but why can't we make it work?"
It was then that Jerry realized that he was talking to himself. Chuck had that glazed look in his eyes that meant his brain was churning away busily at some complex mathematical theorem. Jerry recognized the signs and smiled understandingly as be packed the cheddite projector and test equipment into the back of their battered jeep. He had just finished doing this when Chuck snapped back to reality as suddenly as he had left.
"I have it. Molecular interference."
"Of course!" Jerry said gleefully, snapping his fingers. "It's obvious. The kappa radiation is deflected ever so minutely by the atmosphere. No wonder we couldn't control the results. We'll have to carry on the rest of the experiments in a vacuum. But it will be some job to build a big vacuum chamber."
"There's one we can use not far away," Chuck said with a chuckle. "Just one hundred miles...".
They burst out laughing together as Jerry pointed straight up. "You're so right - there's all the vacuum we need up there. Just a matter of getting to it."
"The Pleasantville Eagle will take care of that. We'll say that we're testing, what? Navigations equipment. They'll let us borrow her."
The Pleasantville Eagle was the plane that flew the football team to all its games. Since it was a 747, it flew most of the spectators as well. Both Jerry and Chuck were trained pilots, as well as superb rifle shots and champion polo players, so had relieved the pilot at the controls many times. They had modified and improved most of the electronic equipment on the big plane so it seemed only natural that they would have improvements for the navigational rig as well. They would have no trouble getting permission to test fly the plane, none at all. Particularly since Chuck's dad had donated the plane to the school in the first place.
They hurried back to the lab and had just finished building the cheddite projector into a navigation frequency receiver when there came a familiar light tapping at the door. Both young men sprang to open it, scuffling good-naturedly before throwing it wide.
"Hi," Sally Goodfellow said cheerfully, strolling in casually, a vision in a green cotton summer frock, almost the same green as her lovely eyes, her shoulder-length hair the color of golden cornsilk. "What are you two guys up to now?"
"Same old stuff," Jerry said offhandedly as Chuck winked broadly behind the girl's back. No one, they had agreed, no one was to know about the cheddite projector until they had tested it thoroughly. They had taken their oath on that, and as much as they loved Sally with every fiber of their beings, they would not break that oath.
"What old stuff?" Sally asked, not deceived for an instant.
"Improved navigation aid. You're just in time to drive us to the field so we can install it on the Eagle. We have the jeep engine apart, rebuilding it."
Sally arched one delicate eyebrow. "You really think I'll buy this story about navigational aids? I know that is one thing your new invention is not. Remember how you told me the flying wing design was a kid's kite? And the paralysis vibrator was a soldering gun? So what do we really have here?"
Both of them had the good manners to blush, but in response to her questioning they only returned mumbled evasions and rushed to load the equipment into the back seat of her yellow convertible. Seeing that frontal attack had failed, she decided on subtlety which worked well for her for she had a fine mind, almost as good as that of her father, Professor Goodfellow, the school president.
"Sit up here with me, Chuck," she said, patting the front seat invitingly. "Jerry can ride in back and look after your old equipment."
Chuck was only too eager to oblige, and they chatted happily all the way to the airport, driving into the glory of the summer sunset. Sally parked under the great wing of the Pleasantville Eagle so they could unload. Jerry saw Old John shuffling between the buildings with his trusty mop and pail and called him over to help them. Old John was an institution at this institution, a black gentleman of advanced years.
"Dat's some mighty heavy stuff you have dere. Too much for an old man like me." But there was a glint of unspoken humor in his eye as he bent to lift the hundred-pound transceiver in one hand. A lifetime of hard labor had made no weakling of him.
They made their way through the cavernous plane to the flight deck above the nose, where they set to work at once with their soldering irons while Sally watched with growing curiosity.
"Do you have the axis-traction forceps?" Jerry asked, half buried in the equipment. "I really need them to get at this baby."
"They're not here," Chuck answered after rooting through the tool box. "Maybe we left them in the car. I'll go look."
He made his way back through the now-darkened plane to the car and found the forceps where they had slid under the front seat. Whistling quietly through his teeth, he was making his way back through the gloom of the great cabin when a voice called to him.
"Chuck. Over here."
It was Sally, sitting by a window and beckoning him toward her, the last light of day touching her sweet profile with gold. He went over to her, and she smiled.
"There's something I want to show you," she said, and when he was close, she pulled forward the top of her scoopneck dress. "No bra," she husked.
Even in that dim light the blush that suffused Chuck's fair skin could be seen as a rising tide of scarlet. Yet, despite his shyness, his reflexes were still hard at work.
"Not until you tell me what the new invention is." Sally laughed saucily, slapping aside his questing wrist as she pushed shut the neck of her dress.
"Sally, honey, you know I can't, gee, we have an oath..."
"I have something twice as good as an oath," she murmured, pulling her dress forward again. "See? The invention?"
"It's, well, hard to say." His voice was thick and turgid.
"You'll find a way." She guided his hand. "Here, this will help."
In an almost hypnotized voice Chuck began to talk. But, even as the first words left his mouth, he heard a tiny clinking sound and, his attention drawn now, was aware of a darker form in the darkness of the cabin. With great reluctance he drew away from Sally and turned on the light above the seat.
"Who's there?" he called out, clenching one great fist. "Come out."
There was a rustle a few rows down, and a familiar figure emerged.
"Just cleaning out the ashtrays, suh," Old John said. "Gotta be spick-'n-span for the next game."
They both laughed, and Chuck patted the old man on the shoulder. "Better go clean the trays in the aft section," he said kindly.
Old John ambled off, and Sally sat down again, Chuck dropping heavily beside her, and they were just getting back on the job where they had left off when the rasping of the loudspeakers caused them to jump up hurriedly.
"Chuck," Jerry's voice said. "Just about done up here. Bring that forceps on the double, and we'll see if this old thing really works."
There was repressed excitement in the tiny cabin as Jerry made the last connections.
"There," he said, leaning back and wiping his grease-stained hand on a piece of cloth. "Ready to go. All that has to be done is to take her up and try her out."
"Oh. please," Sally begged. "Please let me come with you. I know it is something exciting."
"Exciting isn't the word for it!" Jerry chortled. "This is the greatest ball of wax to ever come down the pike, you wait and see. Once we prove the theory tonight."
"The whole world will know by tomorrow when we break the news," Chuck said. "So why don't we tell Sally now? She's a good sport and won't spill the beans."
They nodded in silent agreement with each other.
"Why not?" Jerry grinned. "It is only something that will revolutionize transportation, that's all. I won't go into exactly how it works, it's a little complicated, and besides, it's a secret. But to put it simply the cheddite projector here will move this entire plane a couple of hundred miles in a fraction of a second, bang, just like that."
"What a saving on fuel!" Sally gasped.
"You're not just whistling 'Dixie'," Chuck agreed. "But more than just the saving in fuel will be the saving in tune. With this gadget aboard, all a plane has to do is take off and hover over the airport, press the button, and zing they are over the other airport, maybe all the way across the country."
"It could be important for defense too," Jerry said, suddenly serious. 'The Air Force will have to be the first to know."
"If it works," Chuck said, inserting a note of caution into the conversation. "But by tomorrow we will know for certain."
"For you," a guttural, husky voice, rich with menace, said, "there will be no tomorrow. I'm taking over."
As one they spun about and looked at the open doorway, their jaws dropping in unison. Old John stood there, but suddenly, as though a mask had been ripped away, they saw that Old John was not as old as they had thought. Was that powder that tuned his hair gray at the temples? He stood straighter, alert, a sneer slashed across his features.
A Russian 7.62mm Shpagin M1941 PKS submachine gun was cradled in his arms, the gaping, deadly mouth pointing unswervingly in their direction.
© Harry Harrison 1973
"Harrison had a ball with this one, a Tom Swiftian, gee-whiz parody of the very worst that our severest and most ignorant critics lay on us, salted with puns, plays-on-words and double-meanings for the delectation of a fairly wide spectrum of 'in' people. Personally I love this kind of thing at short-short length. If you like it in large doses, here's 180 tightly packed pages of it, so have fun."
"Strip cartoon-in-prose treatment of the adventures of Chuck and Jerry on their superman way through various universes with all-round sport and a black Commie who turns out to be the whitest of them all. After alien encounters our two heroes discover they're having a gay time and were really meant for each other. Mr Harrison's humour is becoming bruisingly heavy-handed."
"Harry Harrison's latest is a parody of the sort of grand space adventure which could be found in American SF magazines in the early 1950s, where crew-cut space navy chums called Butch and Clint roared around the universe saving décolleté space girls from bug-eyed monsters. It is all pure jeu d'esprit, and must have been as amusing to write as it is to read. But Mr Harrison sometimes tries too hard, and the book may be too late: if anyone ever did take the bug-eyed-monster-meets-space-cadet school of SF seriously, that time is long past."
"I suspect that I may have read and enjoyed more of Harrison's novels than of any other single sf writer; consequently, it pains me somewhat to say that Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers is drivel. For self-indulgence, it exceeds even Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions ... Because I have liked Harry Harrison's previous output, I am still wasting time occasionally wondering whether there is some obscure merit in deliberately trying to write a bad novel - as this seems to be what he has done, a suspicion strengthened by a tongue-in-cheek jacket blurb which calls this 'the greatest and most pretentious epic saga of space conquest ever conceived among the synapses of a science fiction author.'"