To Each His Star

by Bryce Walton

you. They're Jezebels of stars. All painted up in the darknessand pretty and waiting and calling and lying! They make you think ofnice green worlds all running waters and dews and forests thick asfleas on a wet dog. But it ain't there, boys. I know this place. Ibeen here, long time back."

  Russell said tightly. "It'll take us a long time won't it? If it's gotair we can breath, and water we can drink and shade we can restin--that'll be paradise enough for us. But it'll take a long timewon't it? And what if it isn't there--what if after all the time wespend hoping and getting there--there won't be nothing but ashes andcracked clay?"

  "I know we're going right," Dunbar said cheerfully. "I can tell. LikeI said--you can tell it because of the red rim around it."

  "But the sun on our left, you can see--it's got a red rim too now,"Russell said.

  "Yeah, that's right," said Alvar. "Sometimes I see a red rim aroundthe one we're going for, sometimes a red rim around that one on theleft. Now, sometimes I'm not sure either of them's got a red rim. Yousaid that one had a red rim, Dunbar, and I wanted to believe it. Sonow maybe we're all seeing a red rim that was never there."

  Old Dunbar laughed. The sound brought blood hotly to Russell's face."We're heading to the right one, boys. Don't doubt me ... I been here.We explored all these sun systems. And I remember it all. The secondplanet from that red-rimmed sun. You come down through a softatmosphere, floating like in a dream. You see the green lakes comingup through the clouds and the women dancing and the music playing. Iremember seeing a ship there that brought those women there, a longlong time before ever I got there. A land like heaven and women likeangels singing and dancing and laughing with red lips and arms whiteas milk, and soft silky hair floating in the winds."

  Russell was very sick of the old man's voice. He was at least glad hedidn't have to look at the old man now. His bald head, his skinnybobbing neck, his simpering watery blue eyes. But he still had tosuffer that immutable babbling, that idiotic cheerfulness ... andknowing all the time the old man was crazy, that he was leading themwrong.

  I'd break away, go it alone to the right sun, Russell thought--but I'dnever make it alone. A little while out here alone and I'd be nuttierthan old Dunbar will ever be, even if he keeps on getting nuttier allthe time.

  Somewhere, sometime then ... Russell got the idea that the only waywas to get rid of Dunbar.

  * * * * *

  "You mean to tell us there are people living by that red-rimmed sun,"Russell said.

  "Lost people ... lost ... who knows how long," Dunbar said, as thefour of them hurtled along. "You never know where you'll find peopleon a world somewhere nobody's ever named or knows about. Places wherea lost ship's landed and never got up again, or wrecked itself so faroff the lanes they'll never be found except by accident for millionsof years. That's what this world is, boys. Must have been a ship loadof beautiful people, maybe actresses and people like that being hauledto some outpost to entertain. They're like angels now, living in aland all free from care. Every place you see green forests and fieldsand blue lakes, and at nights there's three moons that come around thesky in a thousand different colors. And it never gets cold ... it'salways spring, always spring, boys, and the music plays all night,every night of a long long year...."

  Russell suddenly shouted. "Keep quiet, Dunbar. Shut up will you?"

  Johnson said. "Dunbar--how long'll it take us?"

  "Six months to a year, I'd say," Dunbar yelled happily. "That is--ofour hereditary time."

  "What?" croaked Alvar.

  Johnson didn't say anything at all.

  Russell screamed at Dunbar, then quieted down. He whispered. "Sixmonths to a year--out here--cooped up in these damn suits. You'recrazy as hell, Dunbar. Crazy ... crazy! Nobody could stand it. We'llall be crazier than you are--"

  "We'll make it, boys. Trust ole' Dunbar. What's a year when we knowwe're getting to Paradise at the end of it? What's a year out here ...it's paradise ain't it, compared with that prison hole we were rottingin? We can make it. We have the food concentrates, and all the rest.All we need's the will, boys, and we got that. The whole damn Universeisn't big enough to kill the will of a human being, boys. I been overa whole lot of it, and I know. In the old days--"

  "The hell with the old days," screamed Russell.

  "Now quiet down, Russ," Dunbar said in a kind of dreadful crooningwhisper. "You calm down now. You younger fellows--you don't look atthings the way we used to. Thing is, we got to go straight. Peopletrapped like this liable to start meandering. Liable to start losingthe old will-power."

  He chuckled.

  "Yeah," said Alvar. "Someone says maybe we ought to go left, andsomeone says to go right, and someone else says to go in anotherdirection. And then someone says maybe they'd better go back the oldway. An' pretty soon something breaks, or the food runs out, andyou're a million million miles from someplace you don't care about anymore because you're dead. All frozen up in space ... preserved like apiece of meat in a cold storage locker. And then maybe in a millionyears or so some lousy insect man from Jupiter comes along and findsyou and takes you away to a museum...."

  "Shut up!" Johnson yelled.

  Dunbar laughed. "Boys, boys, don't get panicky. Keep your heads. Juststick to old Dunbar and he'll see you through. I'm always lucky. Onlyone way to go ... an' that's straight ahead to the sun with thered-rim around it ... and then we tune in the gravity repellers, andcoast down, floating and singing down through the clouds toparadise."

  After that they traveled on for what seemed months to Russell, but itcouldn't have been over a day or two of the kind of time-sense he hadinherited from Earth.

  Then he saw how the other two stars also were beginning to develop redrims. He yelled this fact out to the others. And Alvar said. "Russ'sright. That sun to the right, and the one behind us ... now they ALLhave red rims around them. Dunbar--" A pause and no awareness ofmotion.

  Dunbar laughed. "Sure, they all maybe have a touch of red, but itisn't the same, boys. I can tell the difference. Trust me--"

  Russell half choked on his words. "You old goat! With those old eyesof yours, you couldn't see your way into a fire!"

  "Don't get panicky now. Keep your heads. In another year, we'll bethere--"

  "God, you gotta' be sure," Alvar said. "I don't mind dyin' out here.But after a year of this, and then to get to a world that was onlyashes, and not able to go any further--"

  "I always come through, boys. I'm lucky. Angel women will take us totheir houses on the edges of cool lakes, little houses that sit therein the sun like fancy jewels. And we'll walk under colored fountains,pretty colored fountains just splashing and splashing like pretty rainon our hungry hides. That's worth waiting for."

  Russell did it before he hardly realized he was killing the old man.It was something he had had to do for a long time and that made iteasy. There was a flash of burning oxygen from inside the suit ofDunbar. If he'd aimed right, Russell knew the fire-bullet should havepierced Dunbar's back. Now the fire was gone, extinguishedautomatically by units inside the suit. The suit was still inflated,self-sealing. Nothing appeared to have changed. The four of themhurtling on together, but inside that first suit up there on the frontof the gravity rope, Dunbar was dead.

  He was dead and his mouth was shut for good.

  Dunbar's last faint cry from inside his suit still rang in Russell'sears, and he knew Alvar and Johnson had heard it too. Alvar andJohnson both called Dunbar's name a few times. There was no answer.

  "Russ--you shouldn't have done that," Johnson whispered. "Youshouldn't have done that to the old man!"

  "No," Alvar said, so low he could barely be heard. "You shouldn't havedone it."

  "I did it for the three of us," Russell said. "It was either him or us.Lies ... lies that was all he had left in his crazy head. Paradise ...don't tell me you guys don't see the red rims around all four suns, allfour suns all around us. Don't tell me you guys didn't know he was batty,that you really believed all that stuff he was spoutin
g all the time!"

  "Maybe he was lying, maybe not," Johnson said. "Now he's dead anyway."

  "Maybe he was wrong, crazy, full of lies," Alvar said. "But now he'sdead."

  "How could he see any difference in those four stars?" Russell said,louder.

  "He thought he was right," Alvar said. "He wanted to take