Isaac Asimov Presents Great Science Fiction 12 by Isaac Asimov

Author:Isaac Asimov [Asimov, Isaac]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780879979539
Publisher: DAW
Published: 1984-09-04T00:00:00+00:00

The Sack

by William Morrison (Joseph Samachson, 1906-1982)

Astounding Science Fiction, September

The late Joseph Samachson was a chemist in the Chicago area who wrote children’s books on the side. As “William Morrison” he produced some fifty stories for the science fiction magazines in the 1950s, most notably “Country Doctor” (1953), “The Model of a Judge” (1953), and the present selection. He was a very capable writer, but unfortunately he never had a collection, and he is largely unknown today. His absence from such standard reference works as The Science Fiction Encyclopedia and Twentieth Century Science Fiction Writers is a glaring omission.

—M.H.G.

We are into the McCarthy era now. In February, 1950, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin made a ridiculous and never-substantiated charge of Communists in the State Department and began a four-year reign of terror that turned government officials into cravens and disgraced us all.

This story, “The Sack,” appeared in a magazine that was on the newsstands in August of that year, and it must have been written some months before. Was the stupid and hateful Senator Horrigan a take-off on McCarthy and, perhaps, the first bitter satire on that horrible man? (My own satire didn’t come till two years later.) Or was Morrison merely prescient, having written the story prior to McCarthy’s emergence from the slime?

We may never know.

—LA.

* * * *

At first they hadn't even known that the Sack existed. If they had noticed it at all when they landed on the asteroid, they thought of it merely as one more outpost of rock on the barren expanse of roughly ellipsoidal silicate surface, which Captain Ganko noticed had major and minor axes roughly three and two miles in diameter, respectively. It would never have entered anyone's mind that the unimpressive object they had unconsciously acquired would soon be regarded as the most valuable prize in the system.

The landing had been accidental. The government patrol ship had been limping along, and now it had settled down for repairs, which would take a good seventy hours. Fortunately, they had plenty of air, and their recirculation system worked to perfection. Food was in somewhat short supply, but it didn't worry them, for they knew that they could always tighten their belts and do without full rations for a few days. The loss of water that had resulted from a leak in the storage tanks, however, was a more serious matter. It occupied a good part of their conversation during the next fifty hours.

Captain Ganko said finally, "There’s no use talking, it won't be enough. And there are no supply stations close enough at hand to be of any use. We'll have to radio ahead and hope that they can get a rescue ship to us with a reserve supply.”

The helmet mike of his next in command seemed to droop. "It'll be too bad if we miss each other in space, Captain.”

Captain Ganko laughed unhappily. "It certainly will. In that case we'll have a chance to see how we can stand a little dehydration.”

For a time nobody said anything.

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