by Jerry eBooks
“You’re right, Howell!” he snapped. “Now what?”
“The sound bombs, I think,” said Howell quietly. “He can’t help boasting to us before he leaves. I doubt he intends to kill any of us, though. He’d prefer to leave us alive to hate him: that would be a tribute to his power!”
THE DRONING Stopped. Danton moved about. Then there was a small report, and something hurtled skyward and burst with a terrific detonation in midair. Two others followed. Sound bombs—the recall.
The Skipper led the way down hill. But the crewmen could not keep discipline. An oiler ran ahead, babbling. Then there was a stampede. Only the Skipper, Howell and Jimmy descended with dignity.
When they reached the ship, Danton stood in the port of the needle-boat, snarling triumphantly at his former comrades. He had a blaster bearing upon them. They pleaded abjectly to be allowed on board.
His face contorted when he saw Howell and Jimmy.
“I wanted to tell you, Howell,” he cried hoarsely. “I’m going back to Earth! I took the fuel and sent off a lifeboat, to get my chance. And I’ve got it! That thing you found—it showed me what Jane’s been doing—”
He seemed suddenly to go berserk, snarling unspeakable things. Howell watched him. “I’ll land without notice,” raved Danton.
“I’ll get to Jane when she doesn’t expect it, and I’ll blast anybody she’s got with her, and then I’ll take her away! I’ll take her off to space in this ship, and I’ll kill her! But not too fast. I’ll keep her strong with stimulants, and I’ll kill her slowly and she’ll take a month to die! And you can picture that while you’re rotting here!”
But Howell shook his head, smiling without mirth. He spoke evenly:
“Oh, no! The thing I found doesn’t show what’s happening back on Earth. It shows only what’s happening in your own mind, Danton. And I got pictures of that last night, when you went back and looked at your own imaginings for the second time. I got pictures of the needle-boat, too, when you thought you were inspecting it with that same gadget—and of where you’d hidden the bessendium when you thought you made sure it hadn’t been disturbed! You’re not going to do anything you plan, Danton! You can’t take off. I’ve fixed the controls so you can test-run the engines, but you can’t put on the power. I’ve even—”
Danton was taken aback for an instant. Then he shrieked with fury. The blaster in his hand came up, aimed at Howell. At that distance it would wipe out the Skipper and Jimmy, too. The Skipper fired first, and Danton seemed to be all flame. And then Howell said mildly:
“You didn’t need to do that, Skipper. I’d switched blasters on him. His wouldn’t have fired. But it may be just as well. . . .”
THE NEEDLE-BOAT took off two days later, duly freighted with adequate photographs of the Lost Race artifact, of the Carilya, of her engine room, and sworn visi-records of the situation and its origin.
The Skipper stayed with his ship, because of course there would be another ship coming out now with new engines. Four crew members stayed with him too. They had no objection to a vacation with pay, now that rescue was certain. Only Howell and Jimmy went back in the needle-boat.
In overdrive, headed back, Howell was very quiet. But Jimmy babbled happily. On landing, he’d be able to get married and have six months ashore before he needed to ship out again. He was on top of the world, even light-years away from it.
Howell listened patiently enough. But the day before they cut overdrive and saw the stars again, he said:
“I, too, have plans, Jimmy. But you should know what I learned about the Lost Race. Clearing brush away to take those last pictures, I found a skeleton of one of them. Here’s a picture of it.”
Jimmy looked. Mere traces of bones, in a sense, yet fully recognizable. There were rust streaks, too, of metal objects the member of the Lost Race had had about him when he died.
“Definitely anthropoid,” said Howell, drily. “But he had a tail. And he was plenty civilized! You can’t tell much about the skull, because apparently he blew his head off after the city was smashed and found he was the only member of his race left.” Jimmy continued to inspect the picture. It was magnificent, of course, to have found not only an artifact but a skeleton of one of the Lost Race. But he was much more concerned about his own romance. Howell, smiling, looked at him and said:
“They made a wonderful civilization over an area two thousand light-years across. Then they made a gadget that would show, unmistakably, the things one’s brain contains. If they put somebody with well-developed precognition in the seat we saw, they could see the future. They did. What they saw made them smash their civilization and commit suicide. Remember?”
“Sure!” Jimmy said. “I remember that was your new theory.”
“Now I’ve got evidence for it,” Howell said. “I guessed that they found out their atomic power had changed their race, in such a manner that their descendents would be monsters. They killed themselves rather than face it, and smashed their civilization so no later race would suffer the same fate. Look at this skeleton. What do you see?” Jimmy blinked. So Howell said patiently: “Remember that mutations, even from radioactivity, are of individual points from mutated individual genes. Now mutate a few familiar features of that skeleton. Make the tail into a coccyx. Shorten the arm bones and shift the hip sockets so the creature would walk upright. Those are relatively mild changes. There must have been others we can’t tell from a skeleton alone. But those would be enough to make a chap like this see descendents so changed as monsters.
“And he’d rather die, and his whole race preferred to die, rather than live to see their descendents become such ghastly creatures as—” Howell smiled faintly “—as men!”
Kaleidoscope
Murray Leinster
It’s a Long, Long Way Down Through Space!
THE first concussion cut the rocket up the side with a giant can opener. The men were thrown into space like a dozen wriggling silverfish. They were scattered into a dark sea; and the ship, in a million pieces, went on, a meteor swarm seeking a lost sun.
“Barkley, Barkley, where are you?”
The sound of voices calling like lost children on a cold night.
“Woode, Woode!”
“Captain!”
“Hollis, Hollis, this is Stone.”
“Stone, this is Hollis. Where are you?”
“I don’t know. How can I? Which way is up? I’m falling. Good God, I’m falling.”
They fell. They fell as pebbles fall down wells. They were scattered as jackstones are scattered from a gigantic throw. And now instead of men there were only voices—all kinds of voices, disembodied and impassioned, in varying degrees of terror and resignation.
“We’re going away from each other.”
This was true. Hollis, swinging head over heels, knew this was true. He knew it with a vague acceptance. They were parting to go their separate ways, and nothing could bring them back. They were wearing their sealed-tight space suits with the glass tubes over their pale faces, but they hadn’t had time to lock on their force units. With them they could be small lifeboats in space, saving themselves, saving others, collecting together, finding each other until they were an island of men with some plan. But without the force units snapped to their shoulders they were meteors, senseless, each going to a separate and irrevocable fate.
A period of perhaps ten minutes elapsed while the first terror died and a metallic calm took its place. Space began to weave its strange voices in and out, on a great dark loom, crossing, recrossing, making a final pattern.
“Stone to Hollis. How long can we talk by phone?”
“It depends on how fast you’re going your way and I’m going mine.”
“An hour, I make it.”
“That should do it,” said Hollis, abstracted and quiet.
“What happened?” said Hollis a minute later.
“The rocket blew up, that’s all. Rockets do blow up.”
“Which way are you going?”<
br />
“It looks like I’ll hit the moon.”
“It’s Earth for me. Back to old Mother Earth at ten thousand miles per hour. I’ll burn like a match.” Hollis thought of it with a queer abstraction of mind. He seemed to be removed from his body, watching it fall down and down through space, as objective as he had been in regard to the first falling snowflakes of a winter season long gone.
THE others were silent, thinking of the destiny that had brought them to this, falling, falling, and nothing they could do to change it. Even the captain was quiet, for there was no command or plan he knew that could put things back together again.
“Oh, it’s a long way down. Oh, it’s a long way down, a long, long, long way down,” said a voice. “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, it’s a long way down.”
“Who’s that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stimson, I think. Stimson, is that you?”
“It’s a long, long way and I don’t like it. Oh, God, I don’t like it.”
“Stimson, this is Hollis. Stimson, you hear me?”
A pause while they fell separate from one another.
“Stimson?”
“Yes.” He replied at last.
“Stimson, take it easy; we’re all in the same fix.”
“I don’t want to be here. I want to be somewhere else.”
“There’s a chance we’ll be found.”
“I must be, I must be,” said Stimson. “I don’t believe this; I don’t believe any of this is happening.”
“It’s a bad dream,” said someone.
“Shut up!” said Hollis.
“Come and make me,” said the voice. It was Applegate. He laughed easily, with a similar objectivity. “Come and shut me up.”
Hollis for the first time felt the impossibility of his position. A great anger filled him, for he wanted more than anything at this moment to be able to do something to Applegate. He had wanted for many years to do something and now it was too late. Applegate was only a telephonic voice.
Falling, falling, falling!
NOW, as if they had discovered the horror, two of the men began to scream. In a nightmare Hollis saw one of them float by, very near, screaming and screaming.
“Stop it!” The man was almost at his fingertips, screaming insanely. He would never stop. He would go on screaming for a million miles, as long as he was in radio range, disturbing all of them, making it impossible for them to talk to one another.
Hollis reached out. It was best this way. He made the extra effort and touched the man. He grasped the man’s ankle and pulled himself up along the body until he reached the head. The man screamed and clawed frantically, like a drowning swimmer. The screaming filled the universe.
One way or the other, thought Hollis. The moon or Earth or meteors will kill him, so why not now?
He smashed the man’s glass mask with his iron fist. The screaming stopped. He pushed off from the body and let it spin away on its own course, falling.
Falling, falling down space Hollis and the rest of them went in the long, endless dropping and whirling of silence.
“Hollis, you still there?”
Hollis did not speak, but felt the rush of heat in his face.
“This is Applegate again.”
“All right, Applegate.”
“Let’s talk. We haven’t anything else to do.”
The captain cut in. “That’s enough of that. We’ve got to figure a way out of this.”
“Captain, why don’t you shut up?” said Applegate.
“What!”
“You heard me, Captain. Don’t pull your rank on me, you’re ten thousand miles away by now, and let’s not kid ourselves. As Stimson puts it, it’s a long way down.”
“See here, Applegate!”
“Can it. This is a mutiny of one. I haven’t a damn thing to lose. Your ship was a bad ship and you were a bad captain and I hope you break when you hit the Moon.”
“I’m ordering you to stop!”
“Go on, order me again.” Applegate smiled across ten thousand miles. The captain was silent. Applegate continued. “Where were we, Hollis? Oh yes, I remember. I hate you too. But you know that. You’ve know it for a long time.”
Hollis clenched his fists, helplessly.
“I want to tell you something,” said Applegate. “Make you happy. I was the one who blackballed you with the Rocket Company five years ago.”
A meteor flashed by. Hollis looked down and his left hand was gone. Blood spurted. Suddenly there was no air in his suit. He had enough air in his lungs to move his right hand over and twist a knob at his left elbow, tightening the joint and sealing the leak. It had happened so quickly that he was not surprised. Nothing surprised him anymore. The air in the suit came back to normal in an instant now that the leak was sealed. And the blood that had flowed so swiftly was pressured as he fastened the knob yet tighter, until it made a tourniquet.
All of this took place in a terrible silence on his part. And the other men chatted. That one man, Lespere, went on and on with his talk about his wife on Mars, his wife on Venus, his wife on Jupiter, his money, his wondrous times, his drunkenness, his gambling, his happiness. On and on, while they all fell. Lespere reminisced on the past, happy, while he fell to his death.
IT was so very odd. Space, thousands of miles of space, and these voices vibrating in the center of it. No one visible at all, and only the radio waves quivering and trying to quicken other men into emotion.
“Are you angry, Hollis?”
“No.” And he was not. The abstraction has returned and he was a thing of dull concrete, forever falling nowhere.
“You wanted to get to the top all your life, Hollis. You always wondered what happened. I put the black mark on you just before I was tossed out myself.”
“That isn’t important,” said Hollis. And it was not. It was gone. When life is over it is like a flicker of bright film, an instant on the screen, all of its prejudices and passions condensed and illumined for an instant on space, and before you could cry out, “There was a happy day, there a bad one, there an evil face, there a good one,” the film burned to a cinder, the screen went dark.
From this outer edge of his life, looking back, there was only one remorse, and that was only that he wished to go on living. Did all dying people feel this way, as if they had never lived? Did life seem that short, indeed, over and done before you took a breath? Did it seem this abrupt and impossible to everyone, or only to himself, here, now, with a few hours left to him for thought and deliberation?
One of the other men, Lespere, was talking. “Well, I had me a good time: I had a wife on Mars, Venus, and Jupiter. Each of them had money and treated me swell. I got drunk and once I gambled away twenty thousand dollars.”
But you’re here now, thought Hollis. I didn’t have any of those things. When I was living I was jealous of you, Lespere; when I had another day ahead of me I envied you your women and your good times. Women frightened me and I went into space, always wanting them and jealous of you for having them, and money, and as much happiness as you could have in your own wild way. But now, falling here, with everything over, I’m not jealous of you anymore, because it’s over for you as it is for me, and right now it’s like it never was. Hollis craned his face forward and shouted into the telephone.
“It’s all over, Lespere!”
Silence.
“It’s just as if it never was, Lespere!”
“Who’s that?” Lespere’s faltering voice.
“This is Hollis.”
He was being mean. He felt the meanness, the senseless meanness of dying. Applegate had hurt him; now he wanted to hurt another. Applegate and space had both wounded him.
“You’re out here, Lespere. It’s all over. It’s just as if it had never happened, isn’t it?”
“No.”
“When anything’s over, it’s just like it never happened. Where’s your life any better than mine, now? Now is what counts. I
s it any better? Is it?”
“Yes, it’s better!”
“How!”
“Because I got my thoughts, I remember!” cried Lespere, far away, indignant, holding his memories to his chest with both hands.
AND he was right. With a feeling of cold water rushing through his head and body, Hollis knew he was right. There were differences between memories and dreams. He had only dreams of things he had wanted to do, while Lespere had memories of things done and accomplished. And this knowledge began to pull Hollis apart, with a slow, quivering precision.
“What good does it do you?” he cried to Lespere. “Now?” When a thing’s over it’s not good anymore. You’re no better off than me.”
“I’m resting easy,” said Lespere. “I’ve had my turn. I’m not getting mean at the end, like you.”
“Mean?” Hollis turned the word on his tongue. He had never been mean, as long as he could remember, in his life. He had never dared to be mean. He must have saved it all of these years for such a time as this. “Mean.” He rolled the word into the back of his mind. He felt tears start into his eyes and roll down his face. Someone must have heard his gasping voice.
“Take it easy, Hollis.”
It was, of course, ridiculous. Only a minute before he had been giving advice to others, to Stimson; he had felt a braveness which he had thought to be the genuine thing, and now he knew that it had been nothing but shock and the objectivity possible in shock. Now he was trying to pack a lifetime of suppressed emotion into an interval of minutes.
“I know how you feel, Hollis,” said Lespere, now twenty thousand miles away, his voice fading. “I don’t take it personally.”
But aren’t we equal? he wondered. Lespere and I? Here, now? If a thing’s over, it’s done, and what good is it? You die anyway. But he knew he was rationalizing, for it was like trying to tell the difference between a live man and a corpse. There was a spark in one, and not in the other—an aura, a mysterious element.
