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Editor, John W. Campbell Jr.; Assistant Editor, Catherine Tarrant

Fiction:
Gather, Darkness! (Part 1 of 3) • novel by Fritz Leiber ∗∗∗∗
Ghost • short story by Henry Kuttner ∗∗+
Pacer • short story by Raymond F. Jones ∗∗
Fifth Freedom • short story by Lester del Rey [as by John Alvarez] –
Let’s Disappear • novelette by Cleve Cartmill ∗

Non-fiction:
Cover • by William Timmins
Interior artwork • by Frank Kramer (x7), Paul Orban (x6)
“—Wrap It Up—” • editorial by John W. Campbell, Jr.
In Times to Come
The Old Ones • science essay by Willy Ley
Brass Tacks • letters

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With this issue Astounding reverts to a smaller size due to wartime rationing and other restrictions. The size of the magazine now appears to be, judging from the images of the scan I read, about 6 inches by 9 inches.

The Cover is William Timmins’ best effort for the magazine so far, and illustrates Fritz Leiber’s second novel Gather, Darkness! (this appeared a month after his first, Conjure Wife, in Unknown Worlds, April 1943). The scene depicts the Hierarchy’s archpriests watching Brother Jarles preaching revolution to a crowd in the square while holding up his priests’ robe with the repulsor field activated.
You can probably gather from the aforementioned that this is one of those ‘Science as Religion’ stories, where scientists are fake priests, and their “miracles” are achieved by using advanced science and technology. We soon learn that this “religion” is a result of scientists of a previous Golden Age acting to avoid humanity’s descent into barbarism. Unfortunately, the ruling Hierarchy has turned into a tyranny (the priests not only have robes which have repulsor fields but also have “wrath-rays,” etc.) and they preside over a population reduced to medieval serfdom. A resistance movement called the Witchcraft is growing and the novel is about the struggle between these two sides.
This all gets off to a cracking start (just like Conjure Wife), and begins in the Great Square of Megatheopolis where Brother Chulian and Brother Jarles are handing out work assignments to the masses. We quickly learn a lot about the future world when Mother Jujy passes by to calls of “Witch” from a small boy in the crowd, and Jarles raises his eyes to the buildings of Sanctuary in the middle of the city:

Megatheopolis was magically different. For there rose the gleaming buildings of the Sanctuary, topped by the incredible structure of the Cathedral, which fronted the Great Square.
Jarles looked up at the Great God, and for a moment felt fingering through his anger a touch of the same awe and reverence and pious fear that vast idol had used to awaken in him when he was only a Commoner’s child— long before he had passed the tests and begun to learn the Secrets of the Priests.
Could the Great God see his blasphemous rage, with those huge, searching, slightly frowning eyes? But such a superstitious fancy was unworthy even of a novice in the Hierarchy.
Without the Great God, the Cathedral was still a mighty structure of soaring columns and peaked windows tall as pine trees. But where one might expect a steeple or a pair of towers, began the figure of the Great God—the upper half of a gigantic human form, terrible in its dignity and serenity. It did not clash with the structure below, but was an integral and indisseverable part of it. The heavy folds of its drapery became the columns of the Cathedral, and it was built of the same smooth plastic.
From where it stood, it dominated all Megatheopolis, like some vast sphinx or unbelievable centaur. There was hardly an alley from which one could not glimpse the stern yet benignant face with the glowing nimbus of blue light. And as for the Great Square immediately below, one felt that the Great God was minutely studying every pygmy creature that crossed it, as if he could at any moment reach down and pick one up for a closer scrutiny.
As if? Every Commoner knew there was no “as if” about it!
But that massive figure did not rouse in Jarles one atom of pride at the glory and grandeur of the Hierarchy and his great good fortune in having been chosen to become part of it. Instead, his anger thickened and tightened, becoming an intolerable shell about his emotions—as red and oppressive as the scarlet robe he wore.  p. 12

Jarles’ colleague, Brother Chulian, is in the process of telling a woman called Sharlson Naurya that she will serve in the Sanctuary, but Naurya refuses and, after some back and forth, Chulian loses his temper:

Chulian bounced up from the bench he shared with Jarles. “No Commoner may question the judgments of the Hierarchy, for they are right! I sense more here than simple stubbornness, more even than sinful obstinacy. There is only one sort of Commoner who would fear to enter the Sanctuary when bidden. I sense—Witchcraft,” he announced dramatically, and struck his chest with the flat of his hand. Instantly his scarlet robe ballooned out tautly, until it stood a hand’s breath away from his body at every point. The effect was frighteningly grotesque, like some incredible scarlet pouter pigeon. And above his shaven head a violet halo glowed.
There was a sibilant hiss of terror, and the faces of the Commoners grew more pale. But Naurya only smiled very faintly, and her green eyes seemed to bore into Chulian.
“And that, once sensed, is easily discovered!” the swollen little priest continued triumphantly. He stepped quickly forward. His puffy scarlet glove clutched at her shoulder without seeming quite to touch it, yet Jarles saw her bite her lips against sudden hurt. Then the scarlet glove flirted downward, ripping the heavy smock, so that the shoulder was uncovered.
There were three circular marks on the white skin. Two burned angry red. The other was rapidly becoming so. Jarles thought that Chulian hesitated a moment and stared puzzlingly at them, before gathering himself and shrilling out, “Witchmarks! Witchmarks! Proof!”  p. 12

At this point Jarles activates his own robe and attacks Chulian, knocking him unconscious. After depowering his robe he climbs on a table and proceeds to harangue the crowd, and reveals the Golden Age origin of their world, and that their religion is fake. He tells them there is no God, and that he does not have divine powers as a priest, taking off his robe and holding it up with the repulsor field and halo activated. When he throws it towards the crowd it comes to rest two feet off the ground.

Eventually, his long tirade is interrupted when the huge plastic statue of the Great God leans forward and extends a huge finger towards him. Jarles is saved from the discharge of the crackling blue energy by what appears to be two black hands that materialise out of nowhere and whisk him away. Gales of satanic laughter accompany the rescue.
This huge (albeit cleverly done) data dump is followed by just as much information in the next chapter, where we see inside the Sanctuary, and witness a meeting of the Apex Council’s archpriests. Their leader is Brother Goniface, and we learn about the politics and factions of the Council, and that Goniface himself has fomented the crisis in the town square to flush out a growing unrest in the population, and to seize power for himself.
During this meeting several country priests appear before the council with reports of huge wolves prowling outside their towns and villages (these prove to be solidographs—holograms essentially—projected by the Witchcraft to destabilise the regime). After dealing with this issue the archbishops then view a holographic recording of Brother Jarles in the town square. Goniface recognises the woman accused of witchcraft—Naurya is really Knowes Geryl, a woman from his past. Goniface orders his cousin and chief scientist Deacon Deth to take her prisoner but keep it a secret.

The rest of the novel keeps up this pace of information and invention, and falls into two main threads. The first is from the viewpoint of Goniface and the Apex Council, and their attempts to stamp out Witchcraft; the other involves Brother Jarles (it turns out that the Witchcraft have rescued him, but he refuses to join them, and is hunted by the Heriarchy on his release until Mother Jujy gives him shelter). This latter thread also deals with the activities of the Black Man (so-called because of his radiation absorbent clothing) who, when he is not being a prankster in church upsetting collection trays, runs the Witchcraft’s resistance activities for an unseen leader called Asmodeus; the last main character is Sharlson Naurya.
There are many parts of this I would like to talk about at length but I’ll restrict myself to the section that describes the arrest of Naurya by Brother Chulian. When he and another priest go to her house to apprehend her she seems she seems unconcerned but, before they leave, there is an extraordinary event:

“Run, Puss!” she cried with an almost mischievous urgency. “Tell the Black Man!”
A glittering talon ripped at the waist the gray homespun of her dress—from within. There was a rapid disturbance of the cloth. Then through the slit something wriggled and sprang.
Something furry, big as a cat, but more like a monkey, and incredibly lean.
Like a swift-scuttling spider it was up the wall and across the ceiling, clinging effortlessly.
Chulian’s muscles froze. With a throaty gasp his companion lunged out an arm. From the pointing finger crackled a needle of violet light, scorching a shaky, zigzag track in the crude plaster of wall and ceiling.
The thing paused for a moment in the air hole, looking back. Then it was gone, and the violet beam spat futilely through the air hole toward the black heavens, where one star glittered.
But Chulian continued to stare upward, his slack jaw trembling. He had gotten one look at the tiny face. Not when the thing moved, for then it had been only a rippling blur, but when it paused to glance back.
Not all the features of a face had been there. Some were missing and others seemed somehow telescoped into each other. And the fine fur encroached on them.
Nevertheless, where the features showed through the fur, they were white, and, in spite of all distortions, they were a peering, chinless, hellish, but terribly convincing caricature of the features of Sharlson Naurya.  p. 32

This is the first explicit appearance of a “familiar” in the novel—these are Witchcraft creatures bioengineered from their owners flesh, which feed on the their progenitor’s blood, and stay in telepathic contact with them. They are an inventive and entertaining part of the novel, as indeed are all the other witchy bits and pieces that Leiber introduces as part of the Witchcraft, such as old Mother Jujy, the Covens, etc.
After taking Naurya into custody, Chulian and his brother priest wend their way back through the city streets with their prisoner. They then find their way blocked by an inky blackness (another solidograph projection) that not even their halos can illuminate, and are forced to change their route,  having to pass a “haunted house,” an unsettling building left over from the Golden Age. When the group arrive in front of the house the blackness surrounds them completely and prevents further progress. Naurya escapes through the door but the priests are locked out. The blackness dissipates and Cousin Deth (Brother Goniface’s henchman) arrives—he is not impressed.

The siege of the house that follows is a set-piece that nods towards a similar one in A. E. van Vogt’s story The Weapon Shop. We have, of course, the usual problems with doors:

Then one of the young priests strode with great dignity toward the house, bearing his rod of wrath above his head like a gleaming sword. Heads turned as, breathlessly, every Commoner watched his approach.
“This place is evil!” he cried suddenly in a great voice, “it is offensive to the nostrils of the Great God. Tremble, Sathanas! Cower, ye fiends! For, lo, I inscribe above the door the brand of the Hierarchy.”
He stopped directly in front of the oddly wrinkled doorway or entry-sphincter. A violet brilliance gushed from the extended rod, of the same hue as his halo, which was almost invisible in the sunlight. Slowly he traced a burning circle.
What happened next was not part of the program. He leaned forward suddenly to peer through the irregular orifice in the doorway, leaving the fiery circle unclosed. He must have seen something of exceptional interest, for he thrust in his head. Instantly the doorway puckered and snapped tight around his neck, leaving him frantically kicking and plunging, while his rod, still gushing violet light, set the green weeds smoking.
There were gasps and scattered screams and a few shrieks of hysterical laughter from the crowd. The three other young priests dashed forward to help their companion, one of them snatching up the fallen rod, which instantly ceased to flame. They tugged and pushed at him violently, and pried at the doorway. The wall gave a little, as if semielastic. That was all.
Then the door opened wide of its own accord and they all sprawled backward in the smoking weeds. The young priest who had been trapped sprang up and darted into the house before the others could stop him, even if they had tried to. The door clenched shut behind him. The house began to shake.
Its slack walls tightened, bulged, were crossed by ripples and waves of movement. Its windows all squeezed shut. One wall stretched perceptibly, another contracted. There were other distortions.
An upper window dilated and through it the young priest was ejected, as if the house had tasted him and then spat him out. Halfway down he exerted his Inviolability. so that his fall was slowed and cushioned. He bounced gently.
This time the laughter of the crowd did not sound entirely hysterical.
The house became quiescent.  p. 41-42

Cousin Deth brings forward more advanced weapons (“Unlimber the zero-entropy spray, Brother Sawl!”) to “exorcise” the house, but is initially matched by its Golden Age technology.
All of this gets Leiber’s novel gets off to a hugely entertaining start, and it is probably the most fun I’ve had since reading Jack Williamson’s The Legion of Time.
Ghost by Henry Kuttner is another story that has supernatural references but, unlike the Leiber, all these do is serve to confuse matters. After a talking-heads start about a modern-day ghost in a computing facility in the Antarctic we find that the machine isn’t haunted but has absorbed a case of manic depression from a previous operator who committed suicide. It is now inducing the same madness in its current operator Crockett.

To “cure” the machine a psychologist called Dr Ford goes to the station with a patient who has a similar manic-depressive condition. The plan is to cure the patient, and induce a similar cure in the machine.
While this therapy takes place we get a feel for the oppressive and claustrophobic nature of the station:

There were shadows in the station. After a few days Dr. Ford noticed those intangible, weary shadows that, vampiric, drew the life and the energy from everything. The sphere of influence extended beyond the station itself. Occasionally Crockett went topside and, muffled in his heat-unit parka, went off on dangerous hikes. He drove himself to the limits of exhaustion as though hoping to outpace the monstrous depression that crouched under the ice.
But the shadows darkened invisibly. The gray, leaden sky of the Antarctic had never depressed Crockett before; the distant mountains, gigantic ranges towering like Ymir’s mythical brood, had not seemed sentient till now. They were half alive, too old, too tired to move, dully satisfied to remain stagnantly crouching on the everlasting horizon of the ice fields. As the glaciers ground down, leaden, powerful, infinitely weary, the tide of the downbeat thrust against Crockett. His healthy animal mind shrank back, failed, and was engulfed.  p. 65

At the end of the story the psychologist effects a cure in both patient and machine but, unknown to the former, another problem remains. . . .

The talky start, computer jargon, and outdated psychology theory do not help the story get going but it improves later, there is some effective description, and it also has a neat twist ending.
I think there is a better story in here where the ghost stuff is dumped—this is really about sanity or insanity, and the latter would have been a better title.
Pacer by Raymond F. Jones is an okay piece of space opera that starts with Commodore Ed Ingraham tearing strips off the men in his fleet. Further vexing him are the orders he has to intercept a slow-moving freighter and escort it to Earth.

Before that rendezvous there is some back story about Ingraham’s past with his father on a commercial ship, and how the latter has supposedly retired to Earth. Surprise!—when they meet the freighter it is Ingraham’s old ship, and his father is piloting it. Cue much embarrassment for Ingraham when, in front of his men, his father calls his martinet son “Kid”, etc. Relations further deteriorate when Commodore Ingraham tries to force his father to transfer his valuable cargo of crystallium so the convoy won’t be slowed down by his ship, which would become the “pacer,” or slowest vessel. Needless to say his father refuses and threatens to blow up his ship (as you do when dealing with rebellious children: stop fighting in the back seat or I’ll blow up the car).

The last act is a space battle with the alien Correne, who are currently wiping out humanity as they progress through the solar system. Ingraham’s Dad has a plan to defeat them that involves his mysterious crystallium cargo, and (spoiler) the speed that it can safely be transported.
Fifth Freedom by Lester del Rey starts off with Tommy Dorn in a future American labour camp during a war with “Centralia,” whose forces have pushed forward to the English Channel. He is a conscientious objector, and therefore despised by his bunk mates and estranged from his family.
Part of the beginning is interestingly meta-fictional:

He tried again to cut the blaring radio out, with its news and propaganda that neither interested nor impressed him, hut dinned remorselessly into his ears, and turned back to the latest Astounding; it had arrived for him only today, and as yet he’d only glanced at the cover and readers’ corner. Hopefully, he began on the cover story:
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Major Elliot glanced up from the papers as the captain entered, nodded, and went on reading through the reports. “Centralia’s moving up; big offensive at midnight tomorrow, Captain Blake. I want you to take six volunteers—”
Damn! The boy’s lips tightened and he threw the magazine under his bunk, his raw nerves whipped by the fresh insult; even there, war! All day, he’d been counting the hours and minutes until his shift went off and he could find release from the horrible reality, only to find science-fiction as filled with it as all else. He jerked the lumpy pillow up, threw his head against it, and tried to drown out the mutter of voices behind him and rest.  p. 109-110

After a promising beginning Dorn’s story turns into a manipulative, by-the-numbers soap opera that involves a bunk mate called Jimmy, who is crippled by polio, and Alice, a girlfriend from the woman’s camp (sensitive Tommy meets her when he is playing his violin up on the hill). When New York is later radiation bombed by Centralia, Jimmy saves Tommy from a beating at the hands of a group of the camp thugs.

Later, an Air Force recruiter tries to get Tommy (a qualified pilot) to fly the new rocket ships, but he refuses. Shortly afterwards the camp is attacked by enemy bombers and Alice is seriously injured. The Air Force man returns with a rescue team and once again tries to convince Tommy to join the military. When he fails he gives Tommy a respectful homily about how the country is a democracy and that people aren’t forced to do things against their conscience. The Air Force man adds that he’ll have him shipped out to a better place in the Mid-West.
The bombers return later, and Tommy watches as three of the new American rocket ships intercept them: two intentionally blow up their ships, destroying the enemy fleet.

The last scene has Tommy at Alice’s deathbed. After she passes away he decides to volunteer. I hope he turned out a better combat pilot than he was a conscientious objector.
I realise that this was written in the middle of a World War but it is a manipulative piece, and irritatingly sanctimonious—as well as an obvious early example of “pushing Campbell’s buttons” (i.e. pandering to that Editor’s beliefs or hobby horses). Avoid like the plague.
Let’s Disappear by Cleve Cartmill has an overly padded beginning that has an investigator called Thorne Raglan (who owns and runs a company called Hunt Inc.) pick up a contract to find a man called Colin Fane. Fane is one of the beneficiaries of a dead man’s estate, but there are parties who do not want him found.

Apart from Raglan having to deal with being followed by persons unknown, he also has to deal with Hubert Davenport (a relative of Fane’s, and not very helpful), his niece Emily, and a rabble-rousing politician called Coffman, who espouses anarchist ideals and, unknown to Raglan, wants to get hold of a force field weapon that he believes Fane possesses.

None of this really matters as it is a typical Cleve Cartmill piece—an excuse for a lot of running around punctuated with the odd fist fight or, on this occasion, a wildly acrobatic flight/chase in an air taxi.

In the last fight of the story (spoiler) a sword belonging to Hitler is used to slash Coffman’s throat, presumably to give the story some contemporary colour. It ends with one of those “this knowledge is too dangerous to survive” endings where they decide to destroy the weapon and burn the plans.
I’m beginning to dread seeing Cartmill’s byline in the magazine.

The Interior artwork continues to be rather lacklustre: I thought that Paul Orban’s work was much better than Frank Kramer’s—some of the latter’s work has a very perfunctory feel to it (look at the first illustration for the Lester del Rey story, “Man sits beside filing cabinet in office”).
“—Wrap It Up—” by John W. Campbell, Jr. is an editorial about the results of war science, focussing particularly on rubber substitutes, elastomers, etc., and their uses.
In Times to Come refers to production problems and the lack of an Analytical Laboratory feature:

This being the first issue in which the new type face and new format are used, our calculations slipped a bit; this space was supposed to be some three times as great. The lack of Analytical Laboratory is not due to lack of space, however—it’s due to lack of letters.
The March issue had been on the stands only a few days when this issue went to press. Trying to offset the inevitable delays of transportation, we are pushing our press dates ahead; this lack of Lab, or a held-over Lab, is apt to be more frequent in the future.  p. 59

I don’t know why Campbell just doesn’t just do the obvious and slip the results by a month.
The last sentence mentions a new ‘Gallagher’ story from Henry Kuttner, “a nice, if slightly cockeyed, yarn—”

The Old Ones by Willy Ley is an article about zoological geography, the distribution of animals around the globe due to historical land mass change. This has some interesting parts but is overlong, and too often descends into endless lists of animals by continent or area—I started skimming before the end. There should also have been an illustration rather than a page of text describing the original three continents (p. 93, etc.)

Brass Tacks has a long and considered letter (see above) from J. V. Lewis which is rather (shallowly) dismissed by Campbell. The letter before this, from Edmond M. Clinton Jr., San Francisco, CA, is about how SF is extrapolation not prophecy. A later letter from Chandler (Chan) Davis,¹ Cambridge, MA, has a top ten for 1942 that omits Nerves and The Twonky. I note that there has been little enthusiasm in either the Analytical Laboratory or Brass Tacks for that latter story. One wonders how it became a “classic.”

It is definitely worth getting this issue for the Leiber serial, and Kuttner’s story is worth a look, too.  ●

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1. Chan Davis would start publishing in Astounding in 1946. He would go on to publish thirteen stories, half a dozen of which Campbell published. He seems to have drifted away from that editor when he returned to writing after a five-year gap (1953 to 1958). See Davis’s page at ISFDB.  ●