by Jerry
Cautiously, soundlessly, Lawson wormed his way across the field. He entered the cruiser by the fuel chamber, partly buried in the hard earth, and pulled himself through the narrow emergency corridor into the spacious living quarters of the disk. He fumbled in the darkness for the door of the control room.
Suddenly he heard the sound of breathing close behind him. A hand shot out and closed upon his. Lawson responded by instinct, swinging his fist blindly through the seething darkness. He hit something soft. A man grunted. There was a scuffling of feet on the metal floor. Fingers clawed at Lawson’s chest. He broke the grip and jerked open the door of the control room.
A pale blue light came on in the corridor. Lawson saw three men in the gray military uniforms. So they had been waiting for him here. He should have expected that. Naturally Madge would have told them about the ship.
As they drew their weapons—old-fashioned pistols, not the devastating neuro guns—Lawson darted toward the control panel. All he had to do was jerk down the power lever. The ship would catch the cosmic transmissions and rise into the heavens. Nothing mattered after that. The men could kill him then, for the ship would be aloft, riding the floodtide of radiated light.
“No, Lawson. No!” one of the men screamed. “Madge sent us! You must understand—”
A second man fired his pistol, not at Lawson but at the curving glass of the control panel. The bullet ploughed through the delicately interlocked wires of the power receiver. Sparks flashed. Tubes shattered. Flames leaped up from the fuel chamber at the center of the disk.
The cabin rocked and the three men were thrown off balance. Lawson sprang at the nearest man, grappling for his gun. It should have been easy. A dozen of the flabby nonentities would not have been a match for him. But, surprisingly, the muscles beneath the gray uniform were hard and lithe. A fist smashed Lawson back against the shattered panel.
Through the arching view window of the cabin Lawson saw guards streaming across the field from the terminal building. They were carrying white lights that bobbed in their hands as they ran. Lawson’s three assailants saw them, too. Inexplicably they turned and fled from the cabin, in such haste that one of them left his pistol forgotten on the floor.
They darted across the field, firing at the terminal guard. Lawson heard the sound of pistol shots, and he saw the silent probe of the energy beam as the guard replied with neuro guns. In a moment the fighting had moved beyond his range of vision.
Lawson glanced at the ruined panel. The cruiser receiver was smashed; the ship would never rise again from the abandoned port. Once more Lawson was defeated. “Madge sent us,” the gray-uniformed man had said—as if that were a magic formula that made anything all right!
Lawson stooped and picked up the pistol. Except in museums, he had never seen one before. All shell-firing weapons had been replaced long ago by the more efficient neuro guns, which fired a paralyzing beam of energy created by a combination of radioactive elements sealed. In the leaded handle. The neuro-gun monopoly had always been rigidly controlled by the government. Except for half a dozen closely guarded technicians, no one knew precisely what gave the gun its power; and it was instant death to remove the leaded handle to experiment.
The ancient pistol lay cold and hard in Lawson’s hand: a new kind of power. It gave him a strange sense of confidence. He no longer felt naked before a guard armed with the neuro guns. With a pistol that spoke the ultimate finality of death, he could invade the government headquarters and the chart vaults. The soft, gray men would run before him in fear.
Smiling grimly, he slid out of the cruiser, went past the burned-out wreckage of the fuel chamber. Far away across the field Lawson heard the continuing sounds of the conflict between the guards. And that puzzled him. Why should they fight among themselves?
As he squeezed through the gully under the fence, he heard the whine of a motor on the express highway. A police van screamed past him. The three men in the cab were the same who had tried to trap him in the cruiser. Behind them a chaos of alarm sirens sounded over the space port.
Lawson took the high-speed slide-walk back toward the heart of the city. As he moved through the suburbs, he heard sirens again, from scattered points in the city. He had no doubt that the guard had reported his escape, and now all the police of the gray dictatorship would be after him. But the last place they would look would be the government center. Lawson’s heart soared with the anticipation of victory. He could release his fellow conspirators and still escape to his dream.
He left the slide-walk at the government center and stood for a moment looking up at the facade of the buildings. There was a light in the jail and the hospital, and lights blazed from the lecture rooms of the city university. But the rest of the center was dark.
Stuffing the pistol into his belt, he moved slowly toward the yawning, open doors of the jail. The tiny, landscaped square in front of the center was deserted. In another hour it would be thronged as students left the night classes in the university. Lawson’s confidence increased; even time had played into his hands.
Then, suddenly, a black police van screamed to a stop on the plasticsurfaced road beside the jail. The cab door banged open. Lawson saw Madge Brown running toward him, a pale shadow in the moonlight.
“Jimmy!” she cried. “Don’t be a fool! Come with us!”
He saw that she was armed with a neuro gun. He drew his pistol and fired at her, but missed. The sound of the shot echoed like thunder over the silent square. He turned and ran toward the steps of the jail. Guards tumbled through the doors, blocking his way. The beam from Madge’s neuro gun caressed them and they dropped where they stood.
Why had Madge saved him? Lawson had no time to consider a logical answer. He sprang up the steps, into the ornate hearing room. He heard Madge call out behind him,
“Jimmy, come back!”
Guards came at Lawson from all sides, confused and uncertain of themselves, not quite sure what to do. Lawson waved his pistol. It meant nothing to them, for they had not seen it destroy a sky ship. Lawson pulled the trigger. The bullet smashed into the wall, fragmenting the plastic ornamentation. Frightened, the gray-uniformed men backed away, reaching for their neuro guns.
Lawson swung toward the door. Madge was on the steps. Once again she sprayed the mob with her gun. Lawson clawed at a door in the side wall. It swung open. He caught a glimpse of the cell block.
It was empty—empty, except for a handful of dissolute drunks serving out sentences for disorderly conduct. The conspirators were not in the city jail.
Lawson’s mind reeled. None of it made sense. He turned toward Madge, an agony of doubt in his eyes. She faced him with a neuro gun leveled at his chest.
“Now will you come with us, Jimmy?”
Dumbly he followed her out of the station to the black police van parked on the road.
“You’re the toughest recruit I ever corralled,” Madge said, as she climbed into the cab beside him. The gray-uniformed driver put the van on the express highway leading south out of the city.
“Recruit?” Lawson repeated.
“For our revolution,” she answered coolly. “I told you before, Jimmy, we can’t run away; we have to solve our problem right here.”
“That’s impossible, Madge. Rennig runs the planet. We don’t stand a chance.”
“No?” She smiled. “You remember, I mentioned that I came here from another city. That’s where I’m taking you now; that’s where I sent your men this afternoon. That city already belongs to us. We’re ready to take over another one, when we find enough recruits. Revolutions aren’t necessarily violent, Jimmy. We simply adopt the forms of this world—as you see, our people use the police vans and the gray uniforms—and make them our own.”
“It isn’t worth it, Madge, for these nonentities, these fools—”
“They are children of men who dreamed of escape long ago. Escape is impossible. Colonization skims off the best of a world and leaves mediocrity behind. And in a generation or
two—if the colony survives—it faces the same problem.”
“That isn’t true! If you build a world on genius and on ambition—”
“It is still a human world. We carry our faults as well as our virtues with us. What we have to learn is how to build a workable civilization for all of us together. Running away only postpones the problem; it doesn’t solve it.” She paused and her voice became very gentle. “You see, Jimmy, I know I’m right, because this world is a colony, too.”
He felt as if she had struck him with a club. “No, Madge,” he whispered. “This is the Earth—the home world. We’ve always believed that.”
“I said I worked as a government secretary, Jimmy. I do, when I’m out recruiting for the revolution—which is what I was doing when I found you. I’ve seen the old documents in the archives. Rennig and his bunch of fools may not know what the records mean; perhaps they’ve never bothered to read them. But I did. This is a colony founded by men from the Earth centuries ago. They ran away to create a better world. They did their best. And this is the result. That’s why I know the running has to stop. We can’t escape a thing that’s a part of ourselves; it’s time we solved the problem.”
He sat silent beside her. There was no reason to doubt what she said; his dream had been foolish and childish—he realized that without bitterness—and, as he discarded it, he found another to take its place: the more stable dream of maturity.
As a city came into view on the horizon, he took her hand and said, “We’ll make this our kind of world, Madge; we’ll rebuild here. And tomorrow—”
“Tomorrow our children must build for themselves, their sort of civilization and not ours. It must always be that way, Jimmy. We can never find perfection, but to grow constantly toward it—that’s the only dream worth having.”
After a silence, he asked, “Madge, how did you know you’d find me at the government center?”
She was surprised. “Why, you called me on the teleview—”
“Called you? No, Madge.”
“The connection was poor and I couldn’t bring in your face, but I was sure—” Suddenly she laughed. “You’re joking, aren’t you, Jimmy?” He had no time to reply, for the van came to a stop in the square of a new city, and they were surrounded by a noisy, jovial crowd. The sight of a city that was so alive with the energy of hope and creativeness was so new to Lawson that he forgot the tiny detail of the question neither he nor Madge could have answered. It hardly seemed important. It belonged to the mediocrity of yesterday—to a dead world. Lawson bad suddenly regained the living.
In a campus room, high above the government center of the city Jimmy and Madge had left, three elderly professors met anxiously with Kim Rennig. They were concerned, too, about the garbled teleview call; it was the only small detail where their interference might have been detected.
“It doesn’t matter,” Rennig assured them, in his weak, emotionless voice. “She found him and got him out of the city; they won’t try to escape again.”
“We’ve kept them here; we’ve kept their revolution,” one of the professors added with satisfaction. “That’s what counts. No colony will get our best brains and our non-conformists this time. We’ve given the Earth a chance to grow again.”
“It was touch and go for a while,” Rennig admitted. “The thing that did the trick was the misinformation we planted in the archives. The forged papers convinced Madge Brown and her friends that this was a colony, not the Earth itself; and on that basis she concluded that escape was futile.”
“The Earth has spawned the universe,” one of the professors said. “It’s time we looked out for ourselves. In two or three generations, perhaps, we’ll be able to lift up our heads again and be the equals of our brilliant offspring.”
“If this revolution doesn’t sink back into the comforts of conformity,” another added.
“It won’t,” Rennig assured them. “We’ve made the dictatorship their challenge, rather than the stars!’ He said very softly, “No more the stars, but man himself: that’s the problem we’ve given them. As long as we exist, the challenge does too. And by the time they destroy us, they will have transformed the world.”
UP FOR RENEWAL
Lucius Daniel
“I’d give a year off my life to . . .” Idle talk now, but it was ghastly reality to Kent!
HOWARD Kent looked at his young and beautiful wife and felt the weight of the years rest on his shoulders. In her eyes he saw his heavily lined face and sagging, stooped shoulders.
They stood just inside the long, narrow reception room of the Human Rejuvenation Plant. Potted palms and formal chairs reminded one of a Human Disposal unit.
“I have a confession to make, darling,” he said.
“Oh, no, Howard. Not now. I take for granted you’ve done the usual things in your youth.”
“But . . .”
“And we needn’t have hurried so, as you can see. Now we’ll probably have to wait hours in this perfectly dismal place.”
She looked as young and fresh as he looked old and dusty, he thought, so out of place in this kind of establishment.
He had always loved small women. Leah was small and vivacious and dressed a year ahead of styles. No matter what happened, he’d never regret having married her.
“But this is something I should have told you before,” he said.
She put her hand on his arm. “I’ve been perfectly happy these past six months. Whatever it was, I forgive you.”
“It’s not that. I’m talking about my age. I didn’t think you’d marry me if you knew how old I really was. I put off telling you and figured you’d see my birth certificate at the wedding ceremony.”
“I never even looked at the silly old thing.”
“Well, darling, I looked at yours and felt a little guilty in marrying a young girl of twenty-three. But the fact is I’m sixty-five. I’ve been rejuvenated before.”
“I rather suspected it when you started aging so suddenly last week,” she said. “Before that you didn’t look a day over thirty. But it doesn’t matter.”
“It’s worse than that, Leah.” His face worked convulsively. “I’ve been here twice before. This is my third trip.”
“I’m too modern to act shocked, Howard. If you didn’t want to tell me before, dear, it’s perfectly all right.”
“Look, darling!” Perspiration stood on his forehead. “You don’t seem to understand. But then you never could add or subtract. Now listen carefully. Each trip clips five years off your life span.”
“Everyone knows that, of course. But it’s better to be young . . .”
“It’s better to be alive than dead,” he said harshly.
“But your doctors have given you a longevity span to the age of ninety.”
“Suppose it was eighty, instead of ninety?”
“Oh, dear, you worry too much,” she said. “Doctors don’t make such mistakes.”
“They can’t give me a guarantee. You see, three of my ancestors died from accidents. The prediction of ninety years is based on the assumption that they would have lived a normal lifetime.”
“They make few guarantees. You know, all of you men are such babies at a time like this.”
“Yes, but if it is eighty—then, I’ll come out not a rejuvenated man, but just a handful of dust.”
“Oh, that can’t happen.”
“LOOK at it this way.” He paused a moment while taking in her youthful appearance. “From now on I wouldn’t look much older. Just a little grayer and perhaps more stooped. Then, I’ll have what’s left of my longevity plus the five years this rejuvenation would clip off.”
“Why, Howard, dear.” Leah sounded shocked. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. An aunt of mine elected that choice and it was perfectly horrible. She drooled the last few years of her life and was helpless as a baby.”
“Why didn’t they use Euthanasia?” he asked.
“The courts decided she wasn’t capable of making a rat
ional decision.”
He wiped his forehead. “That would be a long time off, darling. We’d have so much time together in the next fifteen years.”
“But what would it be like if you were crippled with arthritis or some other disease?”
“You could divorce me if that happens.”
“I can also divorce you if you don’t go through with rejuvenation. You know it’s the law.”
“You wouldn’t do that.” His face was more lined than ever.
“Don’t be silly, dear. Nobody gets old these days. Who would remain our friends? Why, everywhere we’d go, people would point us out. Oh, no, life wouldn’t be livable.”
“That sounds like a cruel and calculating decision to me,” Howard said. “Either I take a chance on dying or you’ll divorce me.”
“You have no right to make such an accusation. I married a young man who said he was thirty years old. Six months later I discover he’s sixty-five. Now who’s cruel and calculating?”
“Please, darling, I didn’t mean it. Look,” he pleaded, “I’ll even sign permission for you to have a lover. There’s that young fellow that’s always around. Maybe it’s happened already.”
She stood back from him. “Howard, you’re being perfectly nasty. Just like an aged person you read about.”
“Five million dollars, and all of it yours when I die a natural death.” He put his hands in his pockets.
THE street door opened just then and a young man came toward them with a light springy step.
He offered his hand to Howard who took it slowly. “How are you, skipper? And you, Leah? I came as soon as I got your message.”
“He’s worried, Mike.” Leah’s face had brightened. “And now he’s insisting on growing old.”
“I’ve been through the wringer twice before, you see,” Howard said in a low voice.
“I don’t think you have much to worry about,” Mike said. “Those medics know their business.”
“Aging is a nasty process.” Leah wrinkled her nose as if she smelled something offensive. “Maybe you can convince him, Mike.”
