A Star Above It and Other Stories

by Chad Oliver

  They were on their second drink. An electric hush surrounded them, that breathless calm that welcomes the rain. Moravia looked at the floor and began to talk.

  “You’re wondering why I did it.”

  Schaefer waited, neither confirming nor denying the statement.

  “I took a chance,” Moravia said. “I took a long chance, maybe. A man has to do that sometimes. But I didn’t know, I couldn’t know …”

  His voice trailed off.

  They waited for him.

  “More than a hundred natives. Four men from the crew. That’s a lot of lives to have on your conscience.” Moravia looked up at them, as though asking for their accusation.

  Lee said, “Do you mean you knew what was going to happen? Is that what you’re trying to say? Could you have—”

  Her husband’s hand silenced her with a touch.

  The taut hush was unbearable, waiting.

  “Go on, Ben,” Schaefer said.

  Moravia talked rapidly, wanting to get it out, wanting to get rid of it. “I knew when I first went to Dr. Schaefer that there would be trouble. I hoped it would be minor; I should have known better. But even the machines can’t tell you everything. There had to be an incident, Lee. Can’t you see that?”

  He looked at her, his eyes pleading.

  She looked away.

  “A man in my position has to make decisions. That’s what he’s there for. They are seldom pleasant ones.” He lit a cigarette, inhaled it deeply. “Here were a people facing ruin if I did not act. You saw the land, you know what would have happened to them. I could have closed my eyes, stuck to the letter of the law. I could have let them die, and no one would have questioned that course.”

  “I know that, Ben,” Schaefer said.

  The wind came up again, rustling through the room, heavy with the wet smell of rain. Thunder rolled gently in the west.

  “The law said that the fourth planet of Aldebaran was forbidden to us.” The old man bit the words out, hating them. “It’s a good law, we all know that. That world is defenseless, and they have a right to be let alone. And yet I had to break that law, or hundreds of thousands of people would starve. You all saw that, but you only saw half the problem. I had to break that law—and I had to break it in such a way that it would never be broken again. I had to make absolutely certain that the only precedent I set was a bad one. There had to be trouble. Otherwise—”

  “The story would have leaked out,” Schaefer finished for him. “Men would point to what you had done the next time they wanted to go back to some helpless people. They could have used our trip as a justification for damned near anything. They could say that it had been tried once, and no one had suffered, so why can’t we just get those minerals, trade with those natives, start just a tiny colony? It would have been the beginning of the end, for millions of human brings. I know why you did what you did, Ben.”

  Moravia went on as though he had not heard, speaking tonelessly as though reading an indictment. “I put Hurley in command of that ship because I knew he would make the mistakes he made. I picked the men of the crew, because I knew they would act as they acted. I sent you out there, knowing you might not come back. I wanted an incident, and I got one. We’re safe on that score, for what it’s worth. No government will ever speak out about this voyage, because they all share the responsibility. The UN will never talk. Hurley will keep his mouth shut or face a court martial. The law is safe, Evan. We spent a hundred lives and saved hundreds of thousands. I’ve tried to tell myself that’s a good record. I’ve tried….”

  “If you had known how many would be killed—if you had known for certain that even one life would be lost—would you have gone ahead?”

  The old man stood up. He was very thin and his head was bowed. “It’s too much for any man to decide, Evan. I’m probably ruined—my career, everything—and I don’t even know whether I did right or wrong. I don’t know what the words mean any longer. I tried to kill myself when I heard what I had done, and I couldn’t even do that.”

  Lee went to his side, touched his arm, not speaking, making no judgments.

  Moravia turned and looked into Schaefer’s eyes. “You were there, Evan. You saw it all. What should I have done, Evan? Tell me. What should I have done?”

  Schaefer saw again the green grass of the plains, the trees of a new forest, a living land where there had been only death. And he saw old Loquav, and four crewmen ripped apart, and a dark pile of bodies under a hot red sun.

  “No man can answer that, Ben,” he said softly.

  Almost blindly, Moravia stumbled out onto the porch, where the cool wind was fresh in his face. Schaefer joined him there, feeling the coming storm. They stood side by side, separated by a gulf no words could bridge.

  A tongue of pure white lightning licked down from black clouds. The world held its breath and then the thunder crashed and boomed away with the wind. Lights came on like yellow fireflies in the darkness, and far below them the tree-tops danced in the shadows.

  A gray wall of water swept over them, drenching them, but they hardly noticed.

  They stood there on a house in the sky, each alone, looking down into the wildness of the wind, watching the driving sheets of rain that cleansed their Earth.

  THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

  When Beaver Lodge burned to the ground, Charlie Buckner didn’t pay particular attention. He was sorry that Al and Rita had lost their investment, of course, but to tell the truth he didn’t figure he’d miss all that neon anyway.

  When Bob Sanderford’s brand new Mountain Super Service Station blew up and took Bob with it, that was a shade more serious.

  When the Lazy T Dude Ranch caught fire and blistered a batch of dudes, Charlie began to worry a little. Elkhorn Valley couldn’t spare any dudes, and neither could Charlie.

  He was reading a letter when the news came, and the letter had him riled up anyhow. It was from Old Kermit Thompson over in Carson Creek, and it got Charlie so hot under the collar that his rimless spectacles fogged up.

  The pertinent part of the letter read as follows:

  Let me tell you something, Charlie boy, and you can pass it on to your hotshot Chamber of Commerce. The tourists over here in Carson Creek are catching so many trout that the game warden hasn’t been to bed for a week. The streams are so full of fish that the water has to work up a sweat to get over them. They ain’t no stock-pond babies, either. I thought you might enjoy the enclosed photos, which just represent an average catch over here.

  The pictures were of trout, naturally. Lovely trout, in full color. Big, husky trout. Piles of trout.

  When the phone rang, Charlie stuffed the letter and the pictures into the back pocket of his jeans and picked up the receiver.

  “Gunnison Ranch,” he growled. “Buckner speaking.”

  “Charlie? Earl here. We got another one. The Lazy T is on fire, and a couple of people got hurt before they got out. I swear I don’t know what’s going on around here.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  “Nope, they got it under control now. But I’m beginning to think we’ve got a firebug on our hands. I thought you might want to check your cabins.”

  “Right. Thanks for calling, Earl. Let me know if anything else happens.”

  Charlie hung up, jammed on his battered straw hat, climbed into his new red jeep, and made the circuit of his tourist cabins.

  Things seemed normal enough.

  The people from Dallas in Cabin 5 couldn’t get the coal stove going, so Charlie opened the draft for them, hauled out the ashes, and showed them how to strike a match. The salesman from Oklahoma in Cabin 3 wasn’t catching any fish, and Charlie explained to him that it wasn’t customary to use a sinker with dry flies. The nervous lady in Cabin 7 had heard a mouse running over the bed springs, and Charlie assured her that it was merely a bird on the roof, meanwhile making a mental note that he was feeding the cats too much. His two regulars in the end cabin insisted that he have a cup of coffee with them,
which killed an hour.

  Charlie had sharp eyes, but he saw no signs of any firebug.

  Still, he could be next.

  There had been six big fires in Elkhorn Valley in the past two years. In fact, come to think of it, just about every modern building in the town had burned down. Maybe he ought to be thankful he’d stuck to his rustic cabins with outhouses, because it sure looked as though something funny was going on.

  Charlie decided that he had better think out the problem in earnest. There was only one way to do that, of course.

  He told Mary where he was going, which didn’t please her unduly because she was ironing sheets, and got his thinking equipment ready.

  He put his rod, trout basket, net, and waders into the jeep and drove off to go fishing.

  He drove up Beaver Creek Canyon past the old mine and parked the jeep on a dirt cutoff that was hardly more than a pair of tire tracks that veered off toward the stream. He got his gear ready, filled his antediluvian pipe with tobacco from a red can, and lit up with a wooden kitchen match.

  Charlie puffed in satisfaction. The spring thaws on the slopes of the Rockies had filled Beaver Creek with clean cold water, and the willows that lined the stream were green and fresh. The sky was cloudy and the air was cool and crisp.

  He was aware that the tourists hadn’t been doing too well on Beaver Creek in the last few months, but that didn’t bother him any. The way he figured it, it was a miracle they caught any fish at all. Anyhow, he knew the trout were in there; he had dumped them in himself when he served his annual time on the Fish and Game Commission.

  He waded into the stream and got down to business, casting with an accurate and flexible wrist. He may have been putting on the pounds around the middle, he thought, but he could still work Beaver Creek with the best of them.

  In two hours he caught two fish, both of which he threw back.

  He thought of Kermit Thompson and his photographs and muttered a few phrases that should have boiled the water in the stream.

  He tried every fly he had with him. The trout sneered at all of them.

  Along about noon, when the dudes began swarming over the stream with their fancy tackle, Charlie did the sensible thing. He waded out of the stream, arranged himself comfortably behind the shelter of a pile of rocks, pulled his straw hat down over his eyes, and went to sleep.

  When he woke up two hours later, the first thing he noticed was that it was raining. It was more of a drizzle, really; a fine gray mist that slanted down from the mountains and glistened on the willows and flowers.

  Charlie yawned, stood up, and stretched. He looked out at the stream idly, stared, and suddenly sat down again. He crawled forward and peered between the rocks, hardly believing his eyes. Charlie was a lot smarter than he looked, and he had been around some in his time. Just the same, he had never seen anything like this before.

  There were three fishermen that he recognized by the stream. They were all tourists from Elkhorn Valley, and he could see their cars parked up on the road. They were all dressed up in the latest fishing duds and they all had rods in their hands—but they weren’t fishing.

  They weren’t even in the water, They were standing by the side of the stream, absolutely motionless. They didn’t move a muscle, and their faces were as blank as so many slabs of salami.

  They looked frozen—literally.

  There was one other man on the stream, and he was fishing. Fishing? He was murdering the fish. He was working his way upstream, whistling a little tune, and at every cast a fat trout leaped at his fly as though it were the grandfather of all the juicy worms that had ever lived. He landed trout until his basket sagged on his shoulder, and they were beauties.

  The three men on the bank stood like statues, never even looking at the fisherman.

  Charlie stared until his eyes hurt, feeling rather like Rip Van Winkle. What was going on? The man in the stream looked ordinary enough, although his costume was rather like Churchill’s zipper suit, but seemingly made out of plastic of some sort. Whoever he was, he was some fisherman.

  Along about five in the evening, when the sun was thin behind the clouds and the air was growing cold, the man climbed out of the stream. He knelt down on the bank, took something metallic out of the pocket of his clothing, and punched what appeared to be a button.

  At once, the other three gentlemen came to life. They blinked their eyes and began to walk as though unaware that anything had happened. They headed straight for their cars, shaking their heads.

  Charlie overheard a snatch of conversation between two of them as they went by:

  “Do any good today, Joe?”

  “No luck at all. I never even saw a fish.”

  “Me neither. I’m going to try the lake tomorrow. I’m pooped.”

  The cars drove off.

  The man in the curious suit hauled out a long knife and began to clean his fish, happily sawing off heads and tossing them into the stream.

  That was when the thing appeared.

  It looked like a gray metallic box about ten feet square. It came drifting lazily out of the sky without making a sound and landed by the bank of the stream. A door whispered open and yellow light spilled out. As far as Charlie could tell, the box was empty.

  The man finished cleaning his fish, put his knife away, and stood up. He rubbed his cramped leg muscles, picked up his rod and trout basket, and started for the box.

  Charlie had seen enough.

  He got to his feet, spat accurately at a blue flower, and stepped out from behind the rocks.

  “Hey, you!” he hollered. “Just a dad-blamed minute.”

  The oddly-dressed man stopped with one foot in the door of the metal box. He turned, his eyes wide with surprise. They were funny eyes, too.

  Kind of violet, Charlie decided,

  “Me friend,” the man said rapidly. He looked just a trifle flustered.

  “Like hell you are,” Charlie retorted. “And what the devil kind of talk is that?”

  The mail made an effort and collected himself. It took him a moment to digest the words, and he frowned. “I beg your pardon. Are you a minister?”

  “No,” Charlie said, “I ain’t.”

  “I assumed from your use of sacred words—you must forgive me. You startled me, and I seem to be a bit confused.”

  Charlie, put his hands on his hips. “You got a license for those fish you caught?”

  “Why, no. Of course not.”

  “You pay taxes?”

  ‘No. I mean, I don’t pay them here.” The man groped for words. “Me friend.”

  “Don’t start that again. I ain’t no Indian. And you ain’t no friend of mine. Who in blazes do you think you are, anyway?”

  “My name is—ah—Onthal. I can explain—”

  “You’ve got a powerful lot of explaining to do, Mr. Onthal. What did you do to those other fishermen?”

  “The natives? Why, I merely immobilized them. Surely, Mr.—ah—er—”

  “Buckner. Charlie Buckner.”

  “Surely, Mr. Buckner, you don’t expect me to come all the way and fish with others on the stream. Get away from it all, that’s the whole idea—”

  “You own Beaver Creek?”

  “Well no, not exactly—”

  Charlie stuck his grizzled chin forward. “Mr. Onthal, we’ve been having a mess of fires over in Elkhorn Valley. You know anything about them fires?”

  The man tried to back away and was stopped by the metal box. “Me friend,” he said.

  Charlie spat. “Sure, you’re a real pal. Say, what kind of fly is that you were, using? It’s dynamite.”

  Still off-balance. the man fumbled for it and held it up as though he had never seen it before. “This? Why, it’s just a common green-tailed Buster.”

  Charlie peered at it, but the light was getting bad and it was hard to see. He considered asking Onthal to step away from the lighted door, but decided not to push his luck too far.

  “A green-tailed Buster, eh?
Common, you say?”

  “Oh, extremely.” The man swallowed, then pulled himself together. He seemed suddenly taller. “See here, Mr. Charlie. You’re playing with fire.”

  “The shoe,” Charlie informed him, “is on the other foot”

  “Shoe? Foot?” The man hesitated, and for a moment Charlie was afraid that he was going to come out with the Indian-Paleface routine again. He got back on the track, however. “I mean, I could simply obliterate you.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  The man was taken aback. “It seems—well, crude.”

  ‘“There were people killed in those fires.”

  The man waved his hand. “Regrettable. But it was a mere side effect, we didn’t intend—”

  Charlie spat again. “Don’t bother explaining. Instead, let me suggest a good reason for not harming me. I’ve got something you want.”

  “You? Have something we want?”

  “Yeah, me. The colorful native.”

  “I find that hard to believe …”

  “It’s on the level, just the same.” Charlie remembered that Onthal wasn’t too hot on idioms. “It’s the truth,” he added.

  “What is this—ah—item?”

  Charlie settled his hat more firmly on his head. “Nothing doing, pal.” He pointed vaguely up at the dark clouds. “You’ve got a ship up there, right?”

  The man’s mouth opened and closed but no sound came forth.

  “I think you’d better haul me up there,” Charlie said firmly, “and we’ll talk a little turkey.”

  “Me—”

  “I mean, I think we can make a deal. How about it?”

  The man looked around for his voice and finally found it. “This is unprecedented.”

  “What have you got to lose? You can obliterate me up there if you’ve a mind to, can’t you?”

  “I suppose it could be done. Yes.”

  “Then let’s get going. It’s cold out here.”

  The man muttered something in an alien tongue and waved Charlie into the metal box.