Explorers of Space

by Anthology

  But he was there; for there was no fear any more. Rational, and valuing reason more highly after an intolerable experience of the immortal mindless, Tomiko tried to understand rationally what Osden had done. But the words escaped her control. He had taken the fear into himself, and, accepting had transcended it He had given up his self to the alien, an unreserved surrender, that left no place for evil. He had learned the love of the Other, and thereby had been given his whole self.—But this is not the vocabulary of reason.

  The people of the Survey team walked under the trees, through the vast colonies of life, surrounded by a dreaming silence, a brooding calm that was half aware of them and wholly indifferent to them. There were no hours. Distance was no matter. Had we but world enough and time. . . The planet turned between the sunlight and the great dark; winds of winter and summer blew fine, pale pollen across the quiet seas.

  Gum returned after many surveys, years, and light-years, to what had several centuries ago been Smeming Port There were still men there, to receive (incredulously) the team’s reports, and to record its losses: Biologist Harfex, dead of fear, and Sensor Osden, left as a colonist.

  WHAT’S IT LIKE OUT THERE?

  Edmond Hamilton

  Like Murray Leinster, like Clifford D. Simak, Edmond Hamilton is one of the tribal patriarchs of science fiction—a venerable figure who has plied his typewriter for generation upon generation, giving delight to the grandchildren of his original readers. Hamilton’s first published story appeared in 1926; within a few years he was one of the most popular science-fiction writers, cherished in particular for his exciting Interstellar Patrol series, collected many years later under the appropriate title of Crashing Suns. Later, Hamilton was responsible for the Captain Future novels and many other tales of adventure in space; the climax of this phase of his career was the splendid epic The Star Kings (1947). More recently he has abandoned the swashbuckling style of his youth for a less flamboyant approach—as in this famous short story, written some time before the first astronauts were rocketed into space, which quietly and soberly conveys the nature of the drive that will carry mankind to other worlds.

  1

  I hadn’t wanted to wear my uniform when I left the hospital, but I didn’t have any other clothes there and I was too glad to get out to argue about it. But as soon as I got on the local plane I was taking to Los Angeles, I was sorry I had it on.

  People gawked at me and began to whisper. The stewardess gave me a special big smile. She must have spoken to the pilot, for he came back and shook hands, and said, “Well, I guess a trip like this is sort of a comedown for you.”

  A little man came in, looked around for a seat, and took the one beside me. He was a fussy, spectacled guy of fifty or sixty, and he took a few minutes to get settled. Then he looked at me, and stared at my uniform and at the little brass button on it that said TWO.

  “Why,” he said, “you’re one of those Expedition Two men!” And then, as though he’d only just figured it out, “Why, you’ve been to Mars!”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I was there.”

  He beamed at me in a kind of wonder. I didn’t like it, but his curiosity was so friendly that I couldn’t quite resent it.

  “Tell me,” he said, “what’s it like out there?”

  The plane was lifting, and I looked out at the Arizona desert sliding by close underneath.

  “Different,” I said. “It’s different.”

  The answer seemed to satisfy him completely. “I’ll just bet it is,” he said. “Are you going home, Mr.—”

  “Haddon. Sergeant Frank Haddon.”

  “You going home, Sergeant?”

  “My home’s back in Ohio,” I told him. “I’m going in to L.A. to look up some people before I go home.”

  “Well, that’s fine. I hope you have a good time, Sergeant. You deserve it. You boys did a great job out there. Why, I read in the newspapers that after the U.N. sends out a couple more expeditions, we’ll have cities out there, and regular passenger lines, and all that.”

  “Look,” I said, “that stuff is for the birds. You might as well build cities down there in Mojave, and have them a lot closer. There’s only one reason for going to Mars now, and that’s uranium.”

  I could see he didn’t quite believe me. “Oh, sure,” he said, “I know that’s important too, the uranium we’re all using now for our power-stations—but that isn’t all, is it?”

  “It’ll be all, for a long, long time,” I said.

  “But look, Sergeant, this newspaper article said—”

  I didn’t say anything more. By the time he’d finished telling about the newspaper article, we were coming down into L.A. He pumped my hand when we got out of the plane.

  “Have yourself a time, Sergeant! You sure rate it. . .I hear a lot of chaps on Two didn’t come back.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I heard that.”

  I was feeling shaky again by the time I got to downtown L.A. I went in a bar and had a double bourbon and it made me feel a little better.

  I went out and found a cabby and asked him to drive me out to San Gabriel. He was a fat man with a broad red face.

  “Hop right in, buddy,” he said. “Say, you’re one of those Mars guys, aren’t you?”

  I said, “That’s right.”

  “Well, well,” he said. “Tell me, how was it out there?”

  “It was a pretty dull grind, in a way,” I told him.

  “I’ll bet it was!” he said, as we started through traffic. “Me, I was in the army in World War Two, twenty years ago. That’s just what it was, a dull grind nine-tenths of the time. I guess it hasn’t changed any.”

  “This wasn’t any army expedition,” I explained. “It was a United Nations one, not an army one—but we had officers and rules of discipline like the army.”

  “Sure, it’s the same thing,” said the cabby. “You don’t need to tell me what it’s like, buddy. Why, back there in ’42—or was it ’43?—anyway, back there I remember that—”

  I leaned back and watched Huntington Boulevard slide past. The sun poured in on me and seemed very hot, and the air seemed very thick and soupy. It hadn’t been so bad up on the Arizona plateau, but it was a little hard to breathe down here.

  The cabby wanted to know what address in San Gabriel? I got the little packet of letters out of my pocket and found the one that had ‘Martin Valinez’ and a street address on the back. I told the cabby, and put the letters back into my pocket.

  I wished now that I’d never answered them.

  But how could I keep from answering when Joe Valinez’ parents wrote to me at the hospital? And it was the same with Jim’s girl, and Walter’s family. I’d had to write back, and the first thing I knew I’d promised to come and see them, and now if I went back to Ohio without doing it I’d feel like a heel. Right now, I wished I’d decided to be a heel.

  The address was on the south side of San Gabriel, in a section that still had a faintly Mexican tinge to it. There was a little frame grocery store with a small house beside it, and a picket fence around the yard of the house; very neat, but a queerly homely place after all the slick California stucco.

  I went into the little grocery, and a tall, dark man with quiet eyes took a look at me and called a woman’s name in a low voice, and then came around the counter and took my hand.

  “You’re Sergeant Haddon,” he said. “Yes. Of course. We’ve been hoping you’d come.”

  His wife came in a hurry from the back. She looked a little too old to be Joe’s mother, for Joe had been just a kid; but then she didn’t look so old either, but just sort of worn.

  She said to Valinez, “Please, a chair. Can’t you see he’s tired. And just from the hospital—”

  I sat down and looked between them at a case of canned peppers, and they asked me how I felt, and wouldn’t I be glad to get home, and they hoped all my family were well.

  They were gentlefolk. They hadn’t said a word about Joe, just waited for me to say somethi
ng. And I felt in a spot, for I hadn’t known Joe well, not really. He’d been moved into our squad only a couple of weeks before take-off, and since he’d been our first casualty, I’d never got to know him much.

  I finally had to get it over with, and all I could think to say was, “They wrote you in detail about Joe, didn’t they?”

  Valinez nodded gravely. “Yes—that he died from shock within twenty-four hours after take-off. The letter was very nice.”

  His wife nodded too. “Very nice,” she murmured. She looked at me, and I guess she saw that I didn’t know quite what to say, for she said, “You can tell us more about it. Yet you must not, if it pains you.”

  I could tell them more. Oh, yes, I could tell them a lot more, if I wanted to. It was all clear in my mind, like a movie-film you run over and over till you know it by heart.

  I could tell them all about the take-off that had killed their son. The long lines of us, uniformed backs going up into Rocket Four and all the other nineteen rockets—the lights flaring up there on the plateau, the grind of machinery and blast of whistles and the inside of the big rocket as we climbed up the ladders of its center-well.

  The movie was running again in my mind, clear as crystal, and I was back in Cell Fourteen of Rocket Four, with the minutes ticking away and the walls quivering every time one of the other rockets blasted off, and us ten men in our hammocks, prisoned inside that odd-shaped windowless metal room, waiting. Waiting, till that big, giant hand came and smacked us down deep into our recoil-springs, crushing the breath out of us, so that you fought to breathe, and the blood roared into your head, and your stomach heaved in spite of all the pills they’d given you, and you heard the giant laughing, b-r-room! b-r-r-room! b-r-r-oom!

  Smash, smash, again and again, hitting us in the guts and cutting our breath, and someone being sick, and someone else sobbing, and the b-r-r-oom! b-r-r-oom! laughing as it killed us; and then the giant quit laughing, and quit slapping us down, and you could feel your sore and shaky body and wonder if it was still all there.

  Walter Millis cursing a blue streak in the hammock underneath me, and Breck Jergen, our sergeant then, clambering painfully out of his straps to look us over, and then through the voices a thin, ragged voice saying uncertainly, “Breck, I think I’m hurt—”

  Sure, that was their boy Joe, and there was blood on his lips, and he’d had it—we knew when we first looked at him that he’d had it. A handsome kid, turned waxy now as he held his hand on his middle and looked up at us. Expedition One had proved that take-off would hit a certain percentage with internal injuries every time, and in our squad, in our little windowless cell, it was Joe that had been hit.

  If only he’d died right off. But he couldn’t die right off, he had to lie in the hammock all those hours and hours. The medics came and put a strait-jacket around his body and doped him up, and that was that, and the hours went by. And we were so shaken and deathly sick ourselves that we didn’t have the sympathy for him we should have had—not till he started moaning and begging us to take the jacket off.

  Finally Walter Millis wanted to do it, and Breck wouldn’t allow it, and they were arguing and we were listening when the moaning stopped, and there was no need to do anything about Joe Valinez any more. Nothing but to call the medics, who came into our little iron prison and took him away.

  Sure, I could tell the Valinezes all about how their Joe died, couldn’t I?

  “Please,” whispered Mrs. Valinez, and her husband looked at me and nodded silently.

  So I told them.

  I said, “You know Joe died in space. He’d been knocked out by the shock of take-off, and he was unconscious, not feeling a thing. And then he woke up, before he died. He didn’t seem to be feeling any pain, not a bit. He lay there, looking out the window at the stars. They’re beautiful, the stars out there in space, like angels. He looked, and then he whispered something and lay back and was gone.”

  Mrs. Valinez began to cry softly. “To die out there, looking at stars like angels—”

  I got up to go, and she didn’t look up. I went out the door of the little grocery store, and Valinez came with me.

  He shook my hand. “Thank you, Sergeant Haddon. Thank you very much.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I got into the cab. I took out my letters and tore that one into bits. I wished to God I’d never got it. I wished I didn’t have any of the other letters I still had.

  2

  I took the early plane for Omaha. Before we got there I fell asleep in my seat, and then I began to dream, and that wasn’t good.

  A voice said, “We’re coming down.”

  And we were coming down, Rocket Four was coming down, and there we were in our squad-cell, all of us strapped into our hammocks, waiting and scared, wishing there was a window so we could see out, hoping our rocket wouldn’t be the one to crack up, hoping none of the rockets cracked up, but if one does, don’t let it be ours . . .

  “We’re coming down . . .”

  Coming down, with the blasts starting to boom again underneath us, hitting us hard, not steady like at take-off, but blast-blast-blast, and then again, blast-blast.

  Breck’s voice, calling to us from across the cell, but I couldn’t hear for the roaring that was in my ears between blasts. No, it was not in my ears, that roaring came from the wall beside me: we had hit atmosphere, we were coming in.

  The blasts in lightning succession without stopping, crash-crash-crash-crash-crash! Mountains fell on me, and this was it, and don’t let it be ours, please, God, don’t let it be ours . . .

  Then the bump and the blackness, and finally somebody yelling hoarsely in my ears, and Breck Jergen, his face deathly white, leaning over me.

  “Unstrap and get out, Frank! All men out of hammocks—all men out!”

  We’d landed, and we hadn’t cracked up, but we were half dead and they wanted us to turn out, right this minute, and we couldn’t.

  Breck yelling to us, “Breathing-masks on! Masks on! We’ve got to go out!”

  “My God, we’ve just landed, we’re torn to bits, we can’t!”

  “We’ve got to! Some of the other rockets cracked up in landing and we’ve got to save whoever’s still living in them! Masks on! Hurry!”

  We couldn’t, but we did. They hadn’t given us all those months of discipline for nothing. Jim Clymer was already on his feet, Walter was trying to unstrap underneath me, whistles were blowing like mad somewhere and voices shouted hoarsely.

  My knees wobbled under me as I hit the floor. Young Lassen, beside me, tried to say something and then crumpled up. Jim bent over him, but Breck was at the door yelling, “Let him go! Come on!”

  The whistles screeching at us all the way down the ladders of the well, and the mask-clip hurting my nose, and down at the bottom a dishevelled officer yelling at us to get out and join Squad Five, and the gangway reeling under us.

  Cold. Freezing cold, and a wan sunshine from the shrunken little sun up there in the brassy sky, and a rolling plain of ocherous red sand stretching around us, sand that slid away under our feet as our squads followed Captain Wall toward the distant metal bulk that lay oddly canted and broken in a little shallow valley.

  “Come on, men—hurry! Hurry!”

  Sure, all of it a dream, the dreamlike way we walked with our lead-soled shoes dragging our feet back after each step, and the voices coming through the mask-resonators muffled and distant.

  Only not a dream, but a nightmare, when we got up to the canted metal bulk and saw what had happened to Rocket Seven—the metal hull ripped like paper, and a few men crawling out of the wreck with blood on them, and a gurgling sound where shattered tanks were emptying, and voices whimpering, “First aid! First aid!”

  Only it hadn’t happened, it hadn’t happened yet at all, for we were still back in Rocket Four coming in, we hadn’t landed yet at all but we were going to any minute—

  “We’re coming down. . ..”

  I couldn’t go through it al
l again. I yelled and fought my hammock-straps and woke up, and I was in my plane-seat and a scared hostess was a foot away from me, saying, “This is Omaha, Sergeant! We’re coming down.”

  They were all looking at me, all the other passengers, and I guessed I’d been talking in the dream—I still had the sweat down my back like all those nights in the hospital when I’d keep waking up.

  I sat up, and they all looked away from me quick and pretended they hadn’t been staring.

  We came down to the airport. It was mid-day, and the hot Nebraska sun felt good on my back when I got out. I was lucky, for when I asked at the bus depot about going to Cuffington, there was a bus all ready to roll.

  A farmer sat down beside me, a big, young fellow who offered me cigarettes and told me it was only a few hours’ ride to Cuffington.

  “Your home there?” he asked.

  “No, my home’s back in Ohio,” I said. “A friend of mine came from there. Name of Clymer.”

  He didn’t know him, but he remembered that one of the town boys had gone on that Second Expedition, to Mars.

  “Yeah,” I said. “That was Jim.”

  He couldn’t keep it in any longer. “What’s it like out there, anyway?”

  I said, “Dry. Terrible dry.”

  “I’ll bet it is,” he said. “To tell the truth, it’s too dry here, this year, for good wheat weather. Last year, it was fine. Last year—”

  Cuffington, Nebraska, was a wide street of stores, and other streets with trees and old houses, and yellow wheat-fields all around as far as you could see. It was pretty hot, and I was glad to sit down in the bus-depot while I went through the thin little phone-book.

  There were three Graham families in the book, but the first one I called was the right one—Miss Ila Graham. She talked fast and excited, and said she’d come right over, and I said I’d wait in front of the bus-depot.

  I stood underneath the awning, looking down the quiet street and thinking that it sort of explained why Jim Clymer had always been such a quiet, slow-moving sort of guy. The place was sort of relaxed, like he’d been.