by Don Wilcox
I scowled. The reporter before me was none other than Bill Broscoe, one of my former pupils at college and a star athlete. At heart I knew that Bill was a right guy, but I’d be the last to tell him so.
“Broscoe!” I snarled. “Tardy as usual. You finally flunked my history course, didn’t you?”
“Now, Crackdown,” he whined, “don’t go hopping on me. I won that Thanksgiving game for you, remember?”
He gazed at my red, white and blue uniform.
“So you’re off for Robinello,” he grinned.
“Son, this is my last minute on Earth, and you have to haunt me, of all people—”
“So you’re the one that’s taking the refrigerated sleeper, to wake up every hundred years—”
“And stir the fires of civilization among the crew—yes. Six hundred years from now when your bones have rotted, I’ll still be carrying on.”
“Still teaching ’em history? God forbid!” Broscoe grinned.
“I hope I have better luck than I did with you.”
“Let ’em off easy on dates, Crackdown. Give them 1066 for William the Conqueror and 2066 for the Flashaway take-off. That’s enough. Taking your wife, I suppose?”
At this impertinent question I gave Broscoe the cold eye.
“Pardon me,” he said, suppressing a sly grin—proof enough that he had heard the devastating story about how I missed my wedding and got the air. “Faulty alarm clock, wasn’t it? Too bad, Crackdown. And you always ragged me about being tardy!”
With this jibe Broscoe exploded into laughter. Some people have the damnedest notions about what constitutes humor. I backed into the entrance of the space ship uncomfortably. Broscoe followed.
The automatic door cut past me. I jerked Broscoe through barely in time to keep him from being bisected.
Zzzzippp!
“Tardy as usual, my friend,” I hooted. “You’ve missed your gangplank! That makes you the first castaway in space.”
We took off like a shooting star, and the last I saw of Bill Broscoe, he stood at a rear window cursing as he watched the earth and the moon fall away into the velvety black heavens. And the more I laughed at him, the madder he got. No sense of humor.
Was that the last time I ever saw him? Well, no, to be strictly honest I had one mOre unhappy glimpse of him.
It happened just before I packed myself away for my first one hundred years’ sleep.
I had checked over the “Who’s Who Aboard the Flashaway”—the official register—to make sure that I was thoroughly acquainted with everyone on board; for these sixteen couples were to be the great-grandparents of the next generation I would meet. Then I had promptly taken my leave of Captain Sperry and his wife, and gone directly to my refrigeration plant, where I was to suspend my life by instantaneous freezing.
I clicked the switches, and one of the two huge horizontal wheels—one in reserve, in the event of a breakdown—opened up for me like a door opening in the side of a gigantic doughnut, or better, a tubular merry-go-round. There was my nook waiting for me to crawl in.
Before I did so I took a backward glance toward the ballroom. The one-way glass partition, through which I could see but not be seen, gave me a clear view of the scene of merriment. The couples were dancing. The journey was off to a good start.
“A grand gang,” I said to myself. No one doubted that the ship was equal to the six-hundred-year journey. The success would depend upon the people. Living and dying in this closely circumscribed world would put them to a severe test. All credit, I reflected, was due the planning committee for choosing such a congenial group.
“They’re equal to it,” I said optimistically. If their children would only prove as sturdy and adaptable as their parents, my job as Keeper of the Traditions would be simple.
But how, I asked myself, as I stepped into my life-suspension merry-go-round, would Bill Broscoe fit into this picture? Not a half bad guy. Still—
My final glance through the one-way glass partition slew me. Out of the throng I saw Bill Broscoe dancing past with a beautiful girl in his arms. The girl was Louise—my Louise—the girl I had been engaged to marry!
In a flash it came to me—but not about Bill. I forgot him on the spot. About Louise.
Bless her heart, she’d come to find me. She must have heard that I had signed up for the Flashaway, and she had come aboard, a stowaway, to forgive me for missing the wedding—to marry me! Now—
A warning click sounded, a lid closed, my refrigerator merry-go-round whirled—blackness!
CHAPTER II
Babies, Just Babies
In a moment—or so it seemed—I was again gazing into the light of the refrigerating room. The lid stood open.
A stimulating warmth circulated through my limbs. Perhaps the machine, I half consciously concluded, had made no more than a preliminary revolution.
I bounded out with a single thought. I must find Louise. We could still be married. For the present I would postpone my entrance into the ice. And since the machine had been equipped with two merry-go-round freezers as an emergency safeguard—ah! Happy thought—perhaps Louise would be willing to undergo life suspension with me!
I stopped at the one-way glass partition, astonished to see no signs of dancing in the ballroom. I could scarcely see the ballroom, for it had been darkened.
Upon unlocking the door (the refrigerator room was my own private retreat) I was bewildered. An unaccountable change had come over everything. What it was, I couldn’t determine at the moment. But the very air of the ballroom was different.
A few dim green light bulbs burned along the walls—enough to show me that the dancers had vanished. Had time enough elapsed for night to come on? My thoughts spun dizzily. Night, I reflected, would consist simply of turning off the lights and going to bed. It had been agreed in our plan that our twenty-four hour Earth day would be maintained for the sake of regularity.
But there was something more intangible that struck me. The furniture had been changed about, and the very walls seemed older. Something more than minutes had passed since I left this room.
Strangest of all, the windows were darkened.
In a groggy state of mind I approached one of the windows in hopes of catching a glimpse of the solar system. I was still puzzling over how much time might have elapsed. Here, at least, was a sign of very recent activity.
“Wet Paint” read the sign pinned to the window. The paint was still sticky. What the devil—
The ship, of course, was fully equipped for blind flying. But aside from the problems of navigation, the crew had anticipated enjoying a wonderland of stellar beauty through the portholes. Now, for some strange reason, every window had been painted opaque.
I listened. Slow measured steps were pacing in an adjacent hallway. Nearing the entrance, I stopped, halted by a shrill sound from somewhere overhead. It came from one of the residential quarters that gave on the ballroom balcony.
It was the unmistakable wail of a baby.
Then another baby’s cry struck up; and a third, from somewhere across the balcony, joined the chorus. Time, indeed, must have passed since I left this roomful of dancers.
Now some irate voices of disturbed sleepers added rumbling basses to the symphony of wailings. Grumbles of “Shut that little devil up!” and poundings of fists on walls thundered through the empty ballroom. In a burst of inspiration I ran to the records room, where the ship’s “Who’s Who” was kept.
The door to the records room was locked, but the footsteps of some sleepless person I had heard now pounded down the dimly lighted hallway. I looked upon the aged man. I had never seen him before. He stopped at the sight of me; then snapping on a brighter light, came on confidently-
“Mr. Grimstone?” he said, extending his hand. “We’ve been expecting you. My name is William Broscoe—”
“William Broscoe, the second. You knew my father, I believe.”
I groaned and choked.
“And my mother,” the old man c
ontinued, “always spoke very highly of you. I’m proud to be the first to greet you.”
He politely overlooked the flush of purple that leaped into my face. For a moment nothing that I could say was intelligible.
He turned a key and we entered the records room. There I faced the inescapable fact. My full century had passed. The original crew of the Flashaway were long gone. A completely new generation was on the register.
Or, more accurately, three new generations: the children, the grandchildren, and the greatgrandchildren of the generation I had known.
One hundred years had passed—and I had lain so completely suspended, owing to the freezing, that only a moment of my own life had been absorbed.
Eventually I was to get used to this; but on this first occasion I found it utterly shocking—even embarrassing. Only a few minutes ago, as my experience went, I was madly in love with Louise and had hopes of yet marrying her.
But now—well, the leather-bound “Who’s Who” told all. Louise had been dead twenty years. Nearly thirty children now alive aboard the S.S. Flashaway could claim her as their greatgrandmother. These carefully recorded pedigrees proved it.
And the patriarch of that fruitful tribe had been none other than Bill Broscoe, the fresh young athlete who had always been tardy for my history class. I gulped as if I were swallowing a baseball.
Broscoe—tardy! And I had missed my second chance to marry Louise—by a full century!
My fingers turned the pages of the register numbly. William Broscoe II misinterpreted my silence.
“I see you are quick to detect our trouble,” he said, and the same deep conscientious concern showed in his expression that I had remembered in the face of his mother, upon our grim meeting after my alarm clock had failed and I had missed my own wedding.
Trouble? Trouble aboard the S.S. Flashaway, after all the careful advance planning we had done, and after all our array of budgeting and scheduling and vowing to stamp our systematic ways upon the oncoming generations? This, we had agreed, would be the world’s most unique colonizing expedition; for every last trouble that might crop up on the six-hundred-year voyage had already been met and conquered by advance planning.
“They’ve tried to put off doing anything about it until your arrival,” Broscoe said, observing respectfully that the charter invested in me the authority of passing upon all important policies. “But this very week three new babies arrived, which brings the trouble to a crisis. So the captain ordered a blackout of the heavens as an emergency measure.”
“Heavens?” I grunted. “What have the heavens got to do with babies?”
“There’s a difference of opinion on that. Maybe it depends upon how susceptible you are.”
“Susceptible—to what?”
“The romantic malady.”
I looked at the old man, much puzzled. He took me by the arm and led me toward the pilots’ control room. Here were unpainted windows that revealed celestial glories beyond anything I had ever dreamed. Brilliant planets of varied hues gleamed through the blackness, while close at hand—almost close enough to touch—were numerous large moons, floating slowly past as we shot along our course.
“Some little show,” the pilot grinned, “and it keeps getting better.”
He proceeded to tell me just where we were and how few adjustments in the original time schedules he had had to make, and why this non-stop flight to Robinello would stand unequalled for centuries to come.
And I heard virtually nothing of what he said. I simply stood there, gazing at the unbelievable beauty of the skies. I was hypnotized, enthralled, shaken to the very roots. One emotion, one thought dominated me. I longed for my dear beloved Louise.
“The romantic malady, as I was saying,” William Broscoe resumed, “may or may not be a factor in producing our large population. Personally, I think it’s pure buncombe.”
“Pure buncombe,” I echoed, still thinking of Louise. If she and I had had moons like these—
“But nobody can tell Captain Dickinson anything . . .”
There was considerable clamor and wrangling that morning as the inhabitants awakened to find their heavens blacked out. Captain Dickinson was none too popular anyway. Fortunately for him, many of the people took their grouches out on the babies who had caused the disturbance in the night.
Families with babies were supposed to occupy the rear staterooms—but there weren’t enough rear staterooms. Or rather, there were too many babies.
Soon the word went the rounds that the Keeper of the Traditions had returned to life. I was duly banqueted and toasted and treated to lengthy accounts of the events of the past hundred years. And during the next few days many of the older men and women would take me aside for private conferences and spill their worries into my ears.
CHAPTER III
Boredom
What’s the world coming to?” these granddaddies and grandmothers would ask. And before I could scratch my head for an answer, they would assure me that this expedition was headed straight for the rocks.
“It’s all up with us. We’ve lost our grip on our original purposes. The Six-Hundred-Year Plan is nothing but a dead scrap of paper.”
I’ll admit things looked plenty black. And the more parlor conversations I was invited in on, the blacker things looked. I couldn’t sleep nights.
“If our population keeps on increasing, we’ll run out of food before we’re halfway there,” William Broscoe II repeatedly declared. “We’ve got to have a compulsory program of birth control. That’s the only thing that will save us.”
A delicate subject for parlor conversations, you think? This older generation didn’t think so. I was astonished, and I’ll admit I was a bit proud as well, to discover how deeply imbued these old gray beards were with Flashaway determination and patriotism. They had missed life in America by only one generation, and they were unquestionably the staunchest of flag wavers on board.
The younger generations were less outspoken, and for the first week I began to deplore their comparative lack of vision. They, the possessors of families, seemed to avoid these discussions about the oversupply of children.
“So you’ve come to check up on our American traditions, Professor Grimstone,” they would say casually. “We’ve heard all about this great purpose of our forefathers, and I guess it’s up to us to put it across. But gee whiz, Grimstone, we wish we could have seen the earth! What’s it like, anyhow?”
“Tell us some more about the earth . . .”
“All we know is what we get second hand . . .”
I told them about the earth. Yes, they had books galore, and movies and phonograph records, pictures and maps; but these things only excited their curiosity. They asked me questions by the thousands. Only after I had poured out several encyclopedia-loads of Earth memories did I begin to break through their masks.
Back of this constant questioning, I discovered, they were watching me. Perhaps they were wondering whether they were not being subjected to more rigid discipline here on shipboard than their cousins back on Earth. I tried to impress upon them that they were a chosen group, but this had little effect. It stuck in their minds that they had had no choice in the matter.
Moreover, they were watching to see what I was going to do about the population problem, for they were no less aware of it than their elders.
Two weeks after my “return” we got down to business.
Captain Dickinson preferred to engineer the matter himself. He called an assembly in the movie auditorium. Almost everyone was present.
The program began with the picture of the Six-Hundred-Year Plan. Everyone knew the reels by heart. They had seen and heard them dozens of times, and were ready to snicker at the proper moments—such as when the stern old committee chairman, charging the unborn generations with their solemn obligations, was interrupted by a friendly fly on his nose.
When the films were run through, Captain Dickinson took the rostrum, and with considerable bluster he called upon the Cler
k of the Council to review the situation. The clerk read a report which went about as follows:
To maintain a stable population, it was agreed in the original Plan that families should average two children each. Hence, the original 16 families would bring forth approximately 32 children; and assuming that they were fairly evenly divided as to sex, they would eventually form 16 new families. These 16 families would, in turn, have an average of two children each—another generation of approximately 32.
By maintaining these averages, we were to have a total population, at any given time, of 32 children, 32 parents and 32 grandparents. The great-grandparents may be left out of account, for owing to the natural span of life they ordinarily die off before they accumulate in any great numbers.
The three living generations, then, of 32 each would give the Flashaway a constant active population of 96, or roughly, 100 persons.
The Six-Hundred-Year Plan has allowed for some flexibility in these figures. It has established the safe maximum at 150 and the safe minimum at 75.
If our population shrinks below 75, it is dangerously small. If it shrinks to 50, a crisis is at hand.
But if it grows above 150, it is dangerously large; and if it reaches the 200 mark, as we all know, a crisis may be said to exist.
The clerk stopped for an impressive pause, marred only by a baby from some distant room.
“Now, coming down to the present-day facts, we are well aware that the population has been dangerously large for the past seven years—”
“Since we entered this section of the heavens,” Captain Dickinson interspersed with a scowl.
“From the first year in space, the population plan has encountered some irregularities,” the clerk continued. “To begin with, there were not sixteen couples, but seventeen. The seventeenth couple—” here the clerk shot a glance at William Broscoe—“did not belong to the original compact, and after their marriage they were not bound by the sacred traditions—”
“I object!” I shouted, challenging the eyes of the clerk and the captain squarely. Dickinson had written that report with a touch of malice. The clerk skipped over a sentence or two.
