Read Like A Writer

There are two ways to learn how to write fiction: by reading it and by writing it. Yes, you can learn lots about writing stories in workshops, in writing classes and writing groups, at writers' conferences. You can learn technique and process by reading the dozens of books like this one on fiction writing and by reading articles in writers' magazines. But the best teachers of fiction are the great works of fiction themselves. You can learn more about the structure of a short story by reading Anton Chekhov's 'Heartache' than you can in a semester of Creative Writing 101. If you read like a writer, that is, which means you have to read everything twice, at least. When you read a story or novel the first time, just let it happen. Enjoy the journey. When you've finished, you know where the story took you, and now you can go back and reread, and this time notice how the writer reached that destination. Notice the choices he made at each chapter, each sentence, each word. (Every word is a choice.) You see now how the transitions work, how a character gets across a room. All this time you're learning. You loved the central character in the story, and now you can see how the writer presented the character and rendered her worthy of your love and attention. The first reading is creative—you collaborate with the writer in making the story. The second reading is critical.


John Dufresne, from his book, The Lie That Tells A Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction

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Showing posts with label Edward W. Ludwig. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Edward W. Ludwig. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 1, 2019

The Drivers by Edward W. Ludwig


THE DRIVERS

BY EDWARD W. LUDWIG

Jetways were excellent substitutes for war,
perfect outlets for all forms of neuroses.
And the unfit were weeded out by death....

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, February 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Up the concrete steps. Slowly, one, two, three, four. Down the naked, ice-white corridor. The echo of his footfalls like drumbeats, ominous, threatening.

Around him, bodies, faces, moving dimly behind the veil of his fear.

At last, above an oaken door, the black-lettered sign:

DEPARTMENT OF LAND-JET VEHICLES
DIVISION OF LICENSES

He took a deep breath. He withdrew his handkerchief and wiped perspiration from his forehead, his upper lip, the palms of his hands.

His mind caressed the hope: Maybe I've failed the tests. Maybe they won't give me a license.

He opened the door and stepped inside.

The metallic voice of a robot-receptionist hummed at him:

"Name?"

"T—Tom Rogers."

Click. "Have you an appointment?"

His gaze ran over the multitude of silver-boxed analyzers, computers, tabulators, over the white-clad technicians and attendants, over the endless streams of taped data fed from mouths in the dome-shaped ceiling.

"Have you an appointment?" repeated the robot.

"Oh. At 4:45 p. m."

Click. "Follow the red arrow in Aisle Three, please."

Tom Rogers moved down the aisle, eyes wide on the flashing, arrow-shaped lights just beneath the surface of the quartzite floor.

Abruptly, he found himself before a desk. Someone pushed him into a foam-rubber contour chair.

"Surprised, eh, boy?" boomed a deep voice. "No robots at this stage of the game. No sir. This requires the human touch. Get me?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, let's see now." The man settled back in his chair behind the desk and began thumbing through a file of papers. He was paunchy and bald save for a forepeak of red-brown fuzz. His gray eyes, with the dreamy look imposed by thick contact lenses, were kindly. Sweeping across his flat chest were two rows of rainbow-bright Driver's Ribbons. Two of the bronze accident stars were flanked by smaller stars which indicated limb replacements.

Belatedly, Tom noticed the desk's aluminum placard which read Harry Hayden, Final Examiner—Human.

Tom thought, Please, Harry Hayden, tell me I failed. Don't lead up to it. Please come out and say I failed the tests.

"Haven't had much time to look over your file," mused Harry Hayden. "Thomas Darwell Rogers. Occupation: journalism student. Unmarried. No siblings. Height, five-eleven. Weight, one-sixty-three. Age, twenty."

Harry Hayden frowned. "Twenty?" he repeated, looking up.

Oh, God, here it comes again.

"Yes, sir," said Tom Rogers.

Harry Hayden's face hardened. "You've tried to enlist before? You were turned down?"

"This is my first application."

Sudden hostility swept aside Harry Hayden's expression of kindliness. He scowled at Tom's file. "Born July 18, 2020. This is July 16, 2041. In two days you'll be twenty-one. We don't issue new licenses to people over twenty-one."

"I—I know, sir. The psychiatrists believe you adjust better to Driving when you're young."

"In fact," glowered Harry Hayden, "in two days you'd have been classified as an enlistment evader. Our robo-statistics department would have issued an automatic warrant of arrest."

"I know, sir."

"Then why'd you wait so long?" The voice was razor-sharp.

Tom wiped a fresh burst of sweat from his forehead. "Well, you know how one keeps putting things off. I just—"

"You don't put off things like this, boy. Why, my three sons were lined up here at five in the morning on their sixteenth birthdays. Every mother's son of 'em. They'd talked of nothing else since they were twelve. Used to play Drivers maybe six, seven hours every day...." His voice trailed.

"Most kids are like that," said Tom.

"Weren't you?" The hostility in Harry Hayden seemed to be churning like boiling water.

"Oh, sure," lied Tom.

"I don't get it. You say you wanted to Drive, but you didn't try to enlist."

Tom squirmed.

You can't tell him you've been scared of jetmobiles ever since you saw that crash when you were three. You can't say that, at seven, you saw your grandfather die in a jetmobile and that after that you wouldn't even play with a jetmobile toy. You can't tell him those things because five years of psychiatric treatment didn't get the fear out of you. If the medics didn't understand, how could Harry Hayden?

Tom licked his lips. And you can't tell him how you used to lie in bed praying you'd die before you were sixteen—or how you've pleaded with Mom and Dad not to make you enlist till you were twenty. You can't—

Inspiration struck him. He clenched his fists. "It—it was my mother, sir. You know how mothers are sometimes. Hate to see their kids grow up. Hate to see them put on a uniform and risk being killed."

Harry Hayden digested the explanation for a few seconds. It seemed to pacify him. "By golly, that's right. Esther took it hard when Mark died in a five-car bang-up out of San Francisco. And when Larry got his three summers ago in Europe. Esther's my wife—Mark was my youngest, Larry the oldest."

He shook his head. "But it isn't as bad as it used to be. Organ and limb grafts are pretty well perfected, and with electro-hypnosis operations are painless. The only fatalities now are when death is immediate, when it happens before the medics get to you. Why, no more than one out of ten Drivers died in the last four-year period."

A portion of his good nature returned. "Anyway, your personal life's none of my business. You understand the enlistment contract?"

Tom nodded. Damn you, Harry Hayden, let me out of here. Tell me I failed, tell me I passed. But damn you, let me out.

"Well?" said Harry Hayden, waiting.

"Oh. The enlistment contract. First enlistment is for four years. Renewal any time during the fourth year at the option of the enlistee. Minimum number of hours required per week: seven. Use of unauthorized armour or offensive weapons punishable by $5,000.00 fine or five years in prison. All accidents and deaths not witnessed by a Jetway 'copter-jet must be reported at once by visi-phone to nearest Referee and Medical Depot. Oh yes, maximum speed: 900 miles per."

"Right! You got it, boy!" Harry Hayden paused, licking his lips. "Now, let's see. Guess I'd better ask another question or two. This is your final examination, you know. What do you remember about the history of Driving?"

Tom was tempted to say, "Go to Hell, you fat idiot," but he knew that whatever he did or said now was of no importance. The robot-training tests he'd undergone during the past three weeks, only, were of importance.

Dimly, he heard himself repeating the phrases beaten into his mind by school history-tapes:

"In the 20th Century a majority of the Earth's peoples were filled with hatreds and frustrations. Humanity was cursed with a world war every generation or so. Between wars, young people had no outlets for their energy, and many of them formed bands of delinquents. Even older people developed an alarming number of psychoses and neuroses.

"The institution of Driving was established in 1998 after automobiles were declared obsolete because of their great number. The Jetways were retained for use of young people in search of thrills."

"Right!" Harry Hayden broke in. "Now, the kids get all the excitement they need, and there are no more delinquent bands and wars. When you've spent a hitch or two killing or almost being killed, you're mature. You're ready to settle down and live a quiet life—just like most of the old-time war veterans used to do. And you're trained to think and act fast, you've got good judgment. And the weak and unfit are weeded out. Right, boy?"

Tom nodded. A thought forced its way up from the layer of fear that covered his mind. "Right—as far as it goes."

"How's that?"

Tom's voice quavered, but he said, "I mean that's part of it. The rest is that most people are bored with themselves. They think that by traveling fast they can escape from themselves. After four or eight years of racing at 800 per, they find out they can't escape after all, so they become resigned. Or, sometimes if they're lucky enough to escape death, they begin to feel important after all. They aren't so bored then because a part of their mind tells them they're mightier than death."

Harry Hayden whistled. "Hey, I never heard that before. Is that in the tapes now? Can't say I understand it too well, but it's a fine idea. Anyway, Driving's good. Cuts down on excess population, too—and with Peru putting in Jetways, it's world-wide. Yep, by golly. Yes, sir!"

He thrust a pen at Tom. "All right, boy. Just sign here."

Tom Rogers took the pen automatically. "You mean, I—"

"Yep, you came through your robot-training tests A-1. Oh, some of the psycho reports aren't too flattering. Lack of confidence, sense of inferiority, inability to adjust. But nothing serious. A few weeks of Driving'll fix you up. Yep, boy, you've passed. You're getting your license. Tomorrow morning you'll be on the Jetway. You'll be Driving, boy, Driving!"

Oh Mother of God, Mother of God....


"And now," said Harry Hayden, "you'll want to see your Hornet."

"Of course," murmured Tom Rogers, swaying.

The paunchy man rose and led Tom down an aluminite ramp and onto a small observation platform some ninety feet above the ground.

A dry summer wind licked at Tom's hair and stung his eyes. Nausea twisted at his innards. He felt as if he were perched on the edge of a slippery precipice.

"There," intoned Harry Hayden, "is the Jetway. Beautiful, eh?"

"Uh-huh."

Trembling, Tom forced his vision to the bright, smooth canyon beneath him. Its bottom was a shining white asphalt ribbon, a thousand feet wide, that cut arrow-straight through the city. Its walls were naked concrete banks a hundred feet high whose reinforced lips curved inward over the antiseptic whiteness.

Harry Hayden pointed a chubby finger downward. "And there they are—the Hornets. See 'em, boy? Right there in front of the assembly shop. Twelve of 'em. Brand new DeLuxe Super-Jet '41 Hornets. Yes, sir. Going to be twelve of you initiated tomorrow."

Tom scowled at the twelve jetmobiles shaped like flattened tear-drops. No sunlight glittered on their dead-black bodies. They squatted silent and foreboding, oblivious to sunlight, black bullets poised to hurl their prospective occupants into fury and horror.

Grandpa looked so very white in his coffin, so very dead—

"What's the matter, boy? You sick?"

"N—no, of course not."

Harry Hayden laughed. "I get it. You thought you'd get to really see one. Get in it, I mean, try it out. It's too late in the day, boy. Shop's closing. You couldn't drive one anyway. Regulation is that new drivers start in the morning when they're fresh. But tomorrow morning one of those Hornets'll be assigned to you. Delivered to the terminal nearest your home. Live far from your terminal?"

"About four blocks."

"Half a minute on the mobile-walk. What college you go to?"

"Western U."

"Lord, that's 400 miles away. You been living there?"

"No. Commuting every day on the monorail."

"Hell, that's for old women. Must have taken you over an hour to get there. Now you'll make it in almost thirty minutes. Still, it's best to take it easy the first day. Don't get 'er over 600 per. But don't let 'er fall beneath that either. If you do, some old veteran'll know you're a greenhorn and try to knock you off."

Suddenly Harry Hayden stiffened.

"Here come a couple! Look at 'em, boy!"

The low rumbling came out of the west, as of angry bees.

Twin pinpoints of black appeared on the distant white ribbon. Louder and louder the rumbling. Larger and larger the dots. To Tom, the sterile Jetway was transformed into a home of horror, an amphitheatre of death.

Louder and larger—

Brooommmmmm.

Gone.

"Hey, how'ja like that, boy? They're gonna crack the sonic barrier or my name's not Harry Hayden!"

Tom's white-knuckled hands grasped a railing for support. Christ, I'm going to be sick. I'm going to vomit.

"But wait'll five o'clock or nine in the morning. That's when you see the traffic. That's when you really do some Driving!"

Tom gulped. "Is—is there a rest room here?"

"What's that, boy?"

"A—a rest room."

"What's the matter, boy? You do look sick. Too much excitement, maybe?"

Tom motioned frantically.

Harry Hayden pointed, slow comprehension crawling over his puffy features. "Up the ramp, to your right."

Tom Rogers made it just in time....


Many voices:

"Happy Driving to You,
Happy Driving to You,
Happy Driving, Dear Taaa-ahmmm—" (pause)
"Happy Driving to—" (flourish) "—You!"

An explosion of laughter. A descent of beaming faces, a thrusting forward of hands.

Mom reached him first. Her small face was pale under its thin coat of make-up. Her firm, rounded body was like a girl's in its dress of swishing Martian silk, yet her blue eyes were sad and her voice held a trembling fear:

"You passed, Tom?" Softly.

Tom's upper lip twitched. Was she afraid that he'd passed the tests—or that he hadn't! He wasn't sure.

Before he could answer, Dad broke in, hilariously. "Everybody passes these days excepts idiots and cripples!"

Tom tried to join the chorus of laughter.

Dad said, more softly, "You did pass, didn't you?"

"I passed," said Tom, forcing a smile. "But, Dad, I didn't want a surprise party. Really, I—"

"Nonsense." Dad straightened. "This is the happiest moment of our lives—or at least it should be."

Dad grinned. An understanding, intimate and gentle, flickered across his handsome, gray-thatched features. For an instant Tom felt that he was not alone.

Then the grin faded. Dad resumed his role of proud and blustering father. Light glittered on his three rows of Driver's Ribbons. The huge Blue Ribbon of Honor was in their center, like a blue flower in an evil garden of bronze accident stars, crimson fatality ribbons and silver death's-heads.

In a moment of desperation Tom turned to Mom. The sadness was still in her face, but it seemed over-shadowed by pride. What was it she'd once said? "It's terrible, Tom, to think of your becoming a Driver, but it'd be a hundred times more terrible not to see you become one."

He knew now that he was alone, an exile, and Mom and Dad were strangers. After all, how could one person, entrenched in his own little world of calm security, truly know another's fear and loneliness?

"Just a little celebration," Dad was saying. "You wouldn't be a Driver unless we gave you a real send-off. All our friends are here, Tom. Uncle Mack and Aunt Edith and Bill Ackerman and Lou Dorrance—"

No, Dad, Tom thought. Not our friends. Your friends. Don't you remember that a man of twenty who isn't a Driver has no friends?

A lank, loose-jowled man jostled between them. Tom realized that Uncle Mack was babbling at him.

"Knew you'd make it, Tom. Never believed what some people said 'bout you being afraid. My boy, of course, enlisted when he was only seventeen. Over thirty now, but he still Drives now and then. Got a special license, you know. Only last week—"

Dad exclaimed, "A toast to our new Driver!"

Murmurs of delight. Clinkings of glasses. Gurglings of liquid.

Someone bounded a piano chord. Voices rose:

"A-Driving he will go,
A-Driving he will go,
To Hell and back in a coffin-sack
A-Driving he will go."

Tom downed his glass of champagne. A pleasant warmth filled his belly. A satisfying numbness dulled the raw ache of fear.

He smiled bitterly.

There was kindness and gentleness within the human heart, he thought, but like tiny inextinguishable fires, there were ferocity and savageness, too. What else could one expect from a race only a few thousand years beyond the spear and stone axe?

Through his imagination passed a parade of sombre scenes:

The primitive man dancing about a Paleolithic fire, chanting an invocation to strange gods who might help in tomorrow's battle with the hairy warriors from the South.

The barrel-chested Roman gladiator, with trident and net, striding into the great stone arena.

The silver-armored knight, gauntlet in gloved hand, riding into the pennant-bordered tournament ground.

The rock-shouldered fullback trotting beneath an avalanche of cheers into the 20th Century stadium.

Men needed a challenge to their wits, a test for their strength. The urge to combat and the lust for danger was as innate as the desire for life. Who was he to say that the law of Driving was unjust?

Nevertheless he shuddered.

And the singers continued:

"A thousand miles an hour,
A thousand miles an hour,
Angels cry and devils sigh
At a thousand miles an hour...."

The jetmobile terminal was like a den of chained, growling black tigers. White-cloaked attendants scurried from stall to stall, deft hands flying over atomic-engine controls and flooding each vehicle with surging life.

Ashen-faced, shivering in the early-morning coolness, Tom Rogers handed an identification slip to an attendant.

"Okay, kid," the rat-faced man wheezed, "there she is—Stall 17. Brand new, first time out. Good luck."

Tom stared in horror at the grumbling metal beast.

"But remember," the attendant said, "don't try to make a killing your first day. Most Drivers aren't out to get a Ribbon every day either. They just want to get to work or school, mostly, and have fun doing it."

Have fun doing it, thought Tom. Good God.

About him passed other black-uniformed Drivers. They paused at the heads of their stalls, donned crash-helmets and safety belts, adjusted goggles. They were like primitive warriors, like cocky Roman gladiators, like armored knights, like star fullbacks. They were formidable and professional.

Tom's imagination wandered.

By Jupiter's beard, we'll vanquish Attila and his savages. We'll prove ourselves worthy of being men and Romans.... The Red Knight? I vow, Mother, that his blood alone shall know the sting of the lance.... Don't worry, Dad. Those damned Japs and Germans won't lay a hand on me.... Watch me on TV, folks. Three touchdowns today—I promise!

The attendant's voice snapped him back to reality. "What you waiting for, kid? Get in!"

Tom's heart pounded. He felt the hot pulse of blood in his temples.

The Hornet lay beneath him like an open, waiting coffin.

He swayed.

"Hi, Tom!" a boyish voice called. "Bet I beat ya!"

Tom blinked and beheld a small-boned, tousled-haired lad of seventeen striding past the stall. What was his name? Miles. That was it. Larry Miles. A frosh at Western U.

A skinny, pimply-faced boy suddenly transformed into a black-garbed warrior. How could this be?

"Okay," Tom called, biting his lip.

He looked again at the Hornet. A giddiness returned to him.

You can say you're sick, he told himself. It's happened before: a hangover from the party. Sure. Tomorrow you'll feel better. If you could just have one more day, just one—

Other Hornets were easing out into the slip, sleek black cats embarking on an insane flight. One after another, grumbling, growling, spatting scarlet flame from their tail jets.

Perhaps if he waited a few minutes, the traffic would be thinner. He could have coffee, let the other nine-o'clock people go on ahead of him.

No, dammit, get it over with. If you crash, you crash. If you die, you die. You and Grandpa and a million others.

He gritted his teeth, fighting the omnipresent giddiness. He eased his body down into the Hornet's cockpit. He felt the surge of incredible energies beneath the steelite controls. Compared to this vehicle, the ancient training jets were as children's toys.

An attendant snapped down the plexite canopy. Ahead, a guide-master twirled a blue flag in a starting signal.

Tom flicked on a switch. His trembling hands tightened about the steering lever. The Hornet lunged forward, quivering as it was seized by the Jetway's electromagnetic guide-field.

He drove....


One hundred miles an hour, two hundred, three hundred.

Down the great asphalt valley he drove. Perspiration formed inside his goggles, steaming the glass. He tore them off. The glaring whiteness hurt his eyes.

Swish, swish swish.

Jetmobiles roared past him. The rushing wind of their passage buffeted his own car. His hands were knuckled white around the steering lever.

He recalled the advice of Harry Hayden: Don't let 'er under 600 per. If you do, some old veteran'll know you're a greenhorn and try to knock you off.

Lord. Six hundred.

But strangely, a measure of desperate courage crept into his fear-clouded mind. If Larry Miles, a pimply-faced kid of seventeen, could do it, so could he. Certainly, he told himself.

His foot squeezed down on the accelerator. Atomic engines hummed smoothly.

To his right, he caught a kaleidoscopic glimpse of a white gyro-ambulance. A group of metal beasts lay huddled on the emergency strip like black ants feeding on a carcass.

Like Grandfather, he thought. Like those two moments out of the dark past, moments of screaming flame and black death and a child's horror.

Swish.

The scene was gone, transformed into a cluster of black dots on his rear-vision radarscope.

His stomach heaved. For a moment he thought he was going to be sick again.

But stronger now than his horror was a growing hatred of that horror. His body tensed as if he were fighting a physical enemy. He fought his memories, tried to thrust them back into the oblivion of lost time, tried to leave them behind him just as his Hornet had left the cluster of metal beasts.

He took a deep breath. He was not going to be sick after all.

Five hundred now. Six hundred. He'd reached the speed without realizing it. Keep 'er steady. Stay on the right. If Larry Miles can do it, so can you.

Swooommmm.

God, where did that one come from?

Only ten minutes more. You'll be there. You'll make a right hand turn at the college. The automatic pilot'll take care of that. You won't have to get in the fast traffic lanes.

He wiped perspiration from his forehead. Not so bad, these Drivers. Like Harry Hayden said, the killers come out on Saturdays and Sundays. Now, most of us are just anxious to get to work and school.

Six hundred, seven hundred, seven-twenty—

Did he dare tackle the sonic barrier?

The white asphalt was like opaque mist. The universe seemed to consist only of the broad expanse of Jetway.

Swooommmm.

Someone passing even at this speed! The crazy fool! And cutting in, the flame of his exhaust clouding Tom's windshield!

Tom's foot jerked off the accelerator. His Hornet slowed. The car ahead disappeared into the white distance like a black arrow.

Whew!

His legs were suddenly like ice water. He pulled over to the emergency strip. Down went the speedometer—five hundred, four, three, two, one, zero....

He saw the image of the approaching Hornet in his rear-vision radarscope. It was traveling fast and heading straight toward him. Heading onto the emergency strip.

A side-swiper!

Tom's heart churned. There would be no physical contact between the two Hornets—but the torrent of air from the inch-close passage would be enough to hurl his car into the Jetway bank like a storm-blown leaf.

There was no time to build enough acceleration for escape. His only chance was to frighten the attacker away. He swung his Hornet right, slammed both his acceleration and braking jet controls to full force. The car shook under the sudden release of energy. White-hot flame roared from its two dozen jets. Tom's Hornet was enclosed by a sphere of flame.

But dwarfing the roar was the thunder of the attacking Hornet. A black meteor in Tom's radarscope, it zoomed upon him. Tom closed his eyes, braced himself for the impact.

There was no impact. There was only an explosion of sound and a moderate buffeting of his car. It was as if many feet, not inches, had separated the two Hornets.

Tom opened his eyes and flicked off his jet controls.

Ahead, through the plexite canopy, he beheld the attacker.

It was far away now, like an insane, fiery black bird. Both its acceleration and braking jets flamed. It careened to the far side of the Jetway and zig-zagged up the curved embankment. Its body trembled as its momentum fought the Jetway's electromagnetic guide-field.



As if in an incredible carnival loop-the-loop, the Hornet topped the lip of the wall. It left the concrete, did a backward somersault, and gyrated through space like a flaming pinwheel.

It descended with an earth-shaking crash in the center of the gleaming Jetway.

What happened? Tom's dazed mind screamed. In God's name, what happened?

He saw the sleek white shape of a Referee's 'copter-jet floating to the pavement beside him. Soon he was being pulled out of his Hornet. Someone was pumping his hand and thumping his back.

"Magnificent," a voice was saying. "Simply magnificent!"


Night. Gay laughter and tinkling glasses. Above all, Dad's voice, strong and proud:

"... and on his very first day, too. He saw the car in his rear radarscope, guessed what the devil was up to. Did he try to escape? No, he stayed right there. When the car closed in for the kill, he spun around and turned on all his jets full-blast. The killer never had a chance to get close enough to do his side-swiping. The blast roasted him like a peanut."

Dad put his arm around Tom's shoulder. All eyes seemed upon Tom's bright new crimson fatality ribbon embossed not only with a silver death's-head, but also with a sea-blue Circle of Honor.

Tom thought:

Behold the conquering hero. Attila is vanquished and Rome is saved. The Red Knight has been defeated, and the fair princess is mine. That Jap Zero didn't have a chance. A touchdown in the final five seconds of the fourth quarter—not bad, eh?

Dad went on:

"That devil really was a killer. Fellow name of Wilson. Been Driving for six years. Had thirty-three accident ribbons with twenty-one fatalities—not one of them honorable. That Wilson drove for just one purpose: to kill. He met his match in our Tom Rogers."

Applause from Uncle Mack and Aunt Edith and Bill Ackerman and Lou Dorrance—and more important, from young Larry Miles and big Norm Powers and blonde Geraldine Oliver and cute little Sally Peters.

Tom smiled. Not only your friends tonight, Dad. Tonight it's my friends, too. My friends from Western U.

Fame was as unpredictable as the trembling of a leaf, Tom thought, as delicate as a pillar of glass. Yet the yoke of fame rested pleasantly on his shoulders. He had no inclination to dislodge it. And while a fear was still in him, it was now a fragile thing, an egg shell to be easily crushed.

Later Mom came to him. There was a proudness in her features, and yet a sadness and a fear, too. Her eyes held the thoughtful hesitancy of one for whom time and event have moved too swiftly for comprehension.

"Tomorrow's Saturday," she murmured. "There's no school, and no one'll expect you to Drive after what happened today. You'll be staying home for your birthday, won't you, Tom?"

Tom Rogers shook his head. "No," he said wistfully. "Sally Peters is giving a little party over in New Boston. It's the first time anyone like Sally ever asked me anywhere."

"I see," said Mom, as if she really didn't see at all. "You'll take the monorail?"

"No, Mom," Tom answered very softly. "I'm Driving."

Sunday, February 21, 2016

The Lonely Ones by Edward W. Ludwig

The Lonely Ones
By Edward W. Ludwig
Illustrated by PAUL ORBAN

The line between noble dreams and madness is thin, and loneliness can push men past it....

Onward sped the Wanderer, onward through cold, silent infinity, on and on, an insignificant pencil of silver lost in the terrible, brooding blackness.

But even more awful than the blackness was the loneliness of the six men who inhabited the silver rocket. They moved in loneliness as fish move in water. Their lives revolved in loneliness as planets revolve in space and time. They bore their loneliness like a shroud, and it was as much a part of them as sight in their eyes. Loneliness was both their brother and their god.

Yet, like a tiny flame in the darkness, there was hope, a savage, desperate hope that grew with the passing of each day, each month, and each year.

And at last....

"Lord," breathed Captain Sam Wiley.

Lieutenant Gunderson nodded. "It's a big one, isn't it?"

"It's a big one," repeated Captain Wiley.

They stared at the image in the Wanderer's forward visi-screen, at the great, shining gray ball. They stared hard, for it was like an enchanted, God-given fruit handed them on a star-flecked platter of midnight. It was like the answer to a thousand prayers, a shining symbol of hope which could mean the end of loneliness.

"It's ten times as big as Earth," mused Lieutenant Gunderson. "Do you think this'll be it, Captain?"

"I'm afraid to think."

A thoughtful silence.

"Captain."

"Yes?"

"Do you hear my heart pounding?"

Captain Wiley smiled. "No. No, of course not."

"It seems like everybody should be hearing it. But we shouldn't get excited, should we? We mustn't hope too hard." He bit his lip. "But there should be life there, don't you think, Captain?"

"There may be."

"Nine years, Captain. Think of it. It's taken us nine years to get here. There's got to be life."

"Prepare for deceleration, Lieutenant."

Lieutenant Gunderson's tall, slim body sagged for an instant. Then his eyes brightened.

"Yes, sir!"


Captain Sam Wiley continued to stare at the beautiful gray globe in the visi-screen. He was not like Gunderson, with boyish eagerness and anxiety flowing out of him in a ceaseless babble. His emotion was as great, or greater, but it was imprisoned within him, like swirling, foaming liquid inside a corked jug.

It wouldn't do to encourage the men too much. Because, if they were disappointed....

He shook his silver-thatched head. There it was, he thought. A new world. A world that, perhaps, held life.

Life. It was a word uttered only with reverence, for throughout the Solar System, with the exception of on Earth, there had been only death.

First it was the Moon, airless and lifeless. That had been expected, of course.

But Mars. For centuries men had dreamed of Mars and written of Mars with its canals and dead cities, with its ancient men and strange animals. Everyone knew there was or had been life on Mars.

The flaming rockets reached Mars, and the canals became volcanic crevices, and the dead cities became jagged peaks of red stone, and the endless sands were smooth, smooth, smooth, untouched by feet of living creatures. There was plant-life, a species of green-red lichen in the Polar regions. But nowhere was there real life.

Then Venus, with its dust and wind. No life there. Not even the stars to make one think of home. Only the dust and wind, a dark veil of death screaming eternally over hot dry land.

And Jupiter, with its seas of ice; and hot Mercury, a cracked, withered mummy of a planet, baked as hard and dry as an ancient walnut in a furnace.

Next, the airless, rocky asteroids, and frozen Saturn with its swirling ammonia snows. And last, the white, silent worlds, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.

World after world, all dead, with no sign of life, no reminder of life, and no promise of life.

Thus the loneliness had grown. It was not a child of Earth. It was not born in the hearts of those who scurried along city pavements or of those in the green fields or of those in the cool, clean houses.

It was a child of the incredible distances, of the infinite night, of emptiness and silence. It was born in the hearts of the slit-eyed men, the oldish young men, the spacemen.

For without life on other worlds, where was the sky's challenge? Why go on and on to discover only worlds of death?

The dream of the spacemen turned from the planets to the stars. Somewhere in the galaxy or in other galaxies there had to be life. Life was a wonderful and precious thing. It wasn't right that it should be confined to a single, tiny planet. If it were, then life would seem meaningless. Mankind would be a freak, a cosmic accident.

And now the Wanderer was on the first interstellar flight, hurtling through the dark spaces to Proxima Centauri. Moving silently, as if motionless, yet at a speed of 160,000 miles a second. And ahead loomed the great, gray planet, the only planet of the sun, growing larger, larger, each instant....


A gentle, murmuring hum filled the ship. The indicator lights on the control panel glowed like a swarm of pink eyes.

"Deceleration compensator adjusted for 12 G's, sir," reported Lieutenant Gunderson.

Captain Wiley nodded, still studying the image of the planet.

"There—there's something else, Captain."

"Yes?"

"It's Brown, sir. He's drunk."

Captain Wiley turned, a scowl on his hard, lined face. "Drunk? Where'd he get the stuff?"

"He saved it, sir, saved it for nine years. Said he was going to drink it when we discovered life."

"We haven't discovered life yet."

"I know. He said he wouldn't set foot on the planet if he was sober. Said if there isn't life there, he couldn't take it—unless he was drunk."

Captain Wiley grunted. "All right."

They looked at the world.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful, Captain? Just think—to meet another race. It wouldn't matter what they were like, would it? If they were primitive, we could teach them things. If they were ahead of us, they could teach us. You know what I'd like? To have someone meet us, to gather around us. It wouldn't matter if they were afraid of us or even if they tried to kill us. We'd know that we aren't alone."

"I know what you mean," said Captain Wiley. Some of his emotion overflowed the prison of his body. "There's no thrill in landing on dead worlds. If no one's there to see you, you don't feel like a hero."

"That's it, Captain! That's why I came on this crazy trip. I guess that's why we all came. I...."

Captain Wiley cleared his throat. "Lieutenant, commence deceleration. 6 G's."

"Yes, sir!"

The planet grew bigger, filling the entire visi-screen.

Someone coughed behind Captain Wiley.

"Sir, the men would like to look at the screen. They can't see the planet out of the ports yet." The speaker was Doyle, the ship's Engineer, a dry, tight-skinned little man.

"Sure." Captain Wiley stepped aside.

Doyle looked, then Parker and Fong. Just three of them, for Watkins had sliced his wrists the fourth year out. And Brown was drunk.

As they looked, a realization came to Captain Wiley. The men were getting old. The years had passed so gradually that he'd never really noticed it before. Lieutenant Gunderson had been a kid just out of Space Academy. Parker and Doyle and Fong, too, had been in their twenties. They had been boys. And now something was gone—the sharp eyes and sure movements of youth, the smooth skin and thick, soft hair.

Now they had become men. And yet for a few moments, as they gazed at the screen, they seemed like happy, expectant children.

"I wish Brown could see this," Doyle murmured. "He says now he isn't going to get off his couch till we land and discover life. Says he won't dare look for himself."

"The planet's right for life," said Fong, the dark-faced astro-physicist. "Atmosphere forty per cent oxygen, lots of water vapor. No poisonous gases, according to spectroscopic analyses. It should be ideal for life."

"There is life there," said Parker, the radarman. "You know why? Because we've given up eighteen years of our lives. Nine years to get here, nine to get back. I'm thirty now. I was twenty-one when we left Earth. I gave up all those good years. They say that you can have something if you pay enough for it. Well, we've paid for this. There has to be a—a sort of universal justice. That's why I know there's life here, life that moves and thinks—maybe even life we can talk to."

"You need a drink," said Fong.

"It's getting bigger," murmured Lieutenant Gunderson.

"The Centaurians," mused Doyle, half to himself. "What'll they be like? Monsters or men? If Parker's right about universal justice, they'll be men."

"Hey, where there's men, there's women!" yelled Parker. "A Centaurian woman! Say!"

"Look at those clouds!" exclaimed Doyle. "Damn it, we can't see the surface."

"Hey, there! Look there, to the right! See it? It's silver, down in a hole in the clouds. It's like a city!"

"Maybe it's just water."

"No, it's a city!"

"Bring 'er down, Captain. God, Captain, bring 'er down fast!"

"Drag Brown in here! He ought to see this!"

"Can't you bring 'er down faster, Captain?"

"Damn it, it is a city!"

"Why doesn't someone get Brown?"

"Take to your couches, men," said Captain Wiley. "Landing's apt to be a bit bumpy. Better strap yourselves in."


Down went the rocket, more slowly now, great plumes of scarlet thundering from its forward braking jets. Down, down into soft, cotton-like clouds, the whiteness sliding silently past the ports.

Suddenly, a droning voice:

"To those in the ship from the planet called Earth: Please refrain from landing at this moment. You will await landing instructions."

Parker leaped off his couch, grasping a stanchion for support. "That voice! It was human!"

Captain Wiley's trembling hand moved over the jet-control panel. The ship slowed in its descent. The clouds outside the portholes became motionless, a milky whiteness pressed against the ship.

"The voice!" Parker cried again. "Am I crazy? Did everyone hear it?"

Captain Wiley turned away from the panel. "We heard it, Parker. It was in our minds. Telepathy."

He smiled. "Yes, the planet is inhabited. There are intelligent beings on it. Perhaps they're more intelligent than we are."

It was strange. The men had hoped, dreamed, prayed for this moment. Now they sat stunned, unable to comprehend, their tongues frozen.

"We'll see them very soon," said Captain Wiley, his voice quivering. "We'll wait for their directions."

Breathlessly, they waited.

Captain Wiley's fingers drummed nervously on the base of the control panel. Lieutenant Gunderson rose from his couch, stood in the center of the cabin, then returned to his couch.

Silence, save for the constant, rumbling roar of the jets which held the ship aloft.

"I wonder how long it'll be," murmured Fong at last.

"It seems like a long time!" burst Parker.

"We've waited nine years," said Captain Wiley. "We can wait a few more minutes."

They waited.

"Good Lord!" said Parker. "How long is it going to be? What time is it? We've been waiting an hour! What kind of people are they down there?"

"Maybe they've forgotten about us," said Fong.

"That's it!" cried Parker. "They've forgotten about us! Hey, you! Down there—you that talked to us! We're still here, damn it! We want to land!"

"Parker," said Captain Wiley, sternly.

Parker sat down on his couch, his lips quivering.

Then came the voice:

"We regret that a landing is impossible at this moment. Our field is overcrowded, and your vessel is without priority. You must wait your turn."

Captain Wiley stared forward at nothing. "Whoever you are," he whispered, "please understand that we have come a long way to reach your planet. Our trip...."

"We do not wish to discuss your trip. You will be notified when landing space is available."

Captain Wiley's body shook. "Wait, tell us who you are. What do you look like? Tell us...."

"Talking to you is quite difficult. We must form our thoughts so as to form word-patterns in your minds. You will be notified."

"Wait a minute!" called Captain Wiley.

No answer.

Captain Wiley straightened in an effort to maintain dignity.

They waited....


It was night.

The darkness was an impenetrable blanket, a solid thing, like thick black velvet glued over the ports. It was worse than the darkness of space.

Captain Wiley sat before the control panel, slowly beating his fists against the arms of his chair, a human metronome ticking off the slow seconds.

Parker stood before a porthole.

"Hey, look, Captain! There's a streak of red, like a meteor. And there's another!"

Captain Wiley rose, looked out. "They're rockets. They're going to land. These people are highly advanced."

His face became grim. Below them lay a planet, an intelligent race hidden beneath clouds and darkness. What manner of creatures were they? How great was their civilization? What marvelous secrets had their scientists discovered? What was their food like, their women, their whiskey?

The questions darted endlessly through his mind like teasing needle-points. All these wondrous things lay below them, and here they sat, like starving men, their hands tied, gazing upon a steaming but unobtainable dinner. So near and yet so far.

He trembled. The emotion grew within him until it burst out as water bursts through the cracked wall of a dam. He became like Parker.

"Why should we wait?" he yelled. "Why must we land in their field? Parker! Prepare to release flares! We're going down! We'll land anywhere—in a street, in the country. We don't have to wait for orders!"

Parker bounced off his couch. Someone called, "Brown, we're going to land!"

A scurrying of feet, the rush of taut-muscled bodies, the babble of excited voices.

"We're going down!"

"We're going down!"

The grumble of the Wanderer's jets loudened, softened, spluttered, loudened again. Vibration filled the ship as it sank downward.

Suddenly it lurched upward, like a child's ball caught in a stream of rising water. The jolt staggered the men. They seized stanchions and bulkhead railings to keep their balance.

"What the hell?"

Abruptly, the strange movement ceased. The ship seemed motionless. There was no vibration.

"Captain," said Lieutenant Gunderson. "There's no change in altitude. We're still at 35,000 feet, no more, no less."

"We must be going down," said Captain Wiley, puzzled. "Kill jets 4 and 6."

The Lieutenant's hands flicked off two switches. A moment later: "There's no change, Captain."

Then came the voice:

"To those in the vessel from the planet Earth: Please do not oppose orders of the Landing Council. You are the first visitors in the history of our world whom we have had to restrain with physical force. You will be notified when landing space is available."


Morning.

The warm sunlight streamed into the clouds, washing away the last shadows and filtering through the portholes.

The men breakfasted, bathed, shaved, smoked, sat, twisted their fingers, looked out the ports. They were silent men, with dark shadows about their eyes and with tight, white-lipped mouths.

Frequently, the clouds near them were cut by swift, dark shapes swooping downward. The shapes were indistinct in the cotton-like whiteness, but obviously they were huge, like a dozen Wanderers made into one.

"Those ships are big," someone murmured, without enthusiasm.

"It's a busy spaceport," grumbled Captain Wiley.

Thoughts, words, movements came so slowly it was like walking under water. Enthusiasm was dead. The men were automatons, sitting, waiting, eating, sitting, waiting.

A day passed, and a night.

"Maybe they've forgotten us," said Fong.

No one answered. The thought had been voiced before, a hundred times.

Then, at last, the droning words:

"To those in the vessel from the planet Earth: You will now land. We will carry you directly over the field. Then you will descend straight down. The atmosphere is suitable to your type of life and is free of germs. You will not need protection."

The men stared at one another.

"Hey," Doyle said, "did you hear that? He says we can go down."

The men blinked. Captain Wiley swallowed hard. He rose with a stiff, slow, nervous hesitancy.

"We're going down," he mumbled, as if repeating the words over and over in his mind and trying to believe them.

The men stirred as realization sprouted and grew. They stirred like lethargic animals aroused from the long, dreamless sleep of hibernation.

"We're going to land," breathed Parker, unbelievingly.

The Wanderer moved as though caught in the grip of a giant, invisible hand.

The voice said:

"You may now descend."

Captain Wiley moved to the jet-control panel. "Lieutenant!" he snapped. "Wake up. Let's go!"

The ship sank downward through the thick sea of clouds. The men walked to the ports. A tenseness, an excitement grew in their faces, like dying flame being fanned into its former brilliancy.

Out of the clouds loomed monstrous, shining, silver spires and towers, Cyclopean bridges, gigantic lake-like mirrors, immense golden spheres. It was a nightmare world, a jungle of fantastic shape and color.

The men gasped, whispered, murmured, the flame of their excitement growing, growing.

"The whole planet is a city!" breathed Parker.


Thump!

The Wanderer came to rest on a broad landing field of light blue stone. The jets coughed, spluttered, died. The ship quivered, then lay still, its interior charged with an electric, pregnant silence.

"You first, Captain." Lieutenant Gunderson's voice cracked, and his face was flushed. "You be the first to go outside."

Captain Wiley stepped through the airlock, his heart pounding. It was over now—all the bewilderment, the numbness.

And his eyes were shining. He'd waited so long that it was hard to believe the waiting was over. But it was, he told himself. The journey was over, and the waiting, and now the loneliness would soon be over. Mankind was not alone. It was a good universe after all!

He stepped outside, followed by Lieutenant Gunderson, then by Parker, Doyle and Fong.

He rubbed his eyes. This couldn't be! A world like this couldn't exist! He shook his head, blinked furiously.

"It—it can't be true," he mumbled to Lieutenant Gunderson. "We're still on the ship—dreaming."

The landing field was huge, perhaps ten miles across, and its sides were lined with incredible ships, the smallest of which seemed forty times as large as the Wanderer. There were silver ships, golden ships, black ships, round ships, transparent ships, cigar-shaped ships, flat-topped ships.

And scattered over the field were—creatures.

A few were the size of men, but most were giants by comparison. Some were humanoid, some reptilian. Some were naked, some clad in helmeted suits, some enveloped with a shimmering, water-like luminescence. The creatures walked, slithered, floated, crawled.

Beyond the ships and the field lay the great city, its web-work of towers, minarets, spheres and bridges like the peaks of an enormous mountain range stretching up into space itself. The structures were like the colors of a rainbow mixed in a cosmic paint pot, molded and solidified into fantastic shapes by a mad god.

"I—I'm going back to the ship," stammered Parker. The whiteness of death was in his face. "I'm going to stay with Brown."

He turned, and then he screamed.

"Captain, the ship's moving!"

Silently, the Wanderer was drifting to the side of the field.

The toneless voice said:

"We are removing your vessel so that other descending ships will not damage it."

Captain Wiley shouted into the air. "Wait! Don't go away! Help us! Where can we see you?"

The voice seemed to hesitate. "It is difficult for us to speak in thoughts that you understand."


Silence.

Captain Wiley studied the faces of his men. They were not faces of conquerors or of triumphant spacemen. They were the faces of dazed, frightened children who had caught a glimpse of Hell. He attempted, feebly, to smile.

"All right," he said loudly, "so it isn't like we expected. So no one came to meet us with brass bands and ten cent flags. We've still succeeded, haven't we? We've found life that's intelligent beyond our comprehension. What if our own civilization is insignificant by comparison? Look at those beings. Think of what we can learn from them. Why, their ships might have exceeded the speed of light. They might be from other galaxies!"

"Let's find out," said Parker.

They strode to the nearest ship, an immense, smooth, bluish sphere. Two creatures stood before it, shaped like men and yet twice the size of men. They wore white, skin-tight garments that revealed muscular bodies like those of gods.

They looked at Captain Wiley and smiled.

One of them pointed toward the Wanderer. Their smiles widened and then they laughed.

They laughed gently, understandingly, but they laughed.

And then they turned away.

"Talk to them," Parker urged.

"How?" Beads of perspiration shone on Captain Wiley's face.

"Any way. Go ahead."

Captain Wiley wiped his forehead. "We are from Earth, the third planet...."

The two god-like men seemed annoyed. They walked away, ignoring the Earthmen.

Captain Wiley spat. "All right, so they won't talk to us. Look at that city! Think of the things we can see there and tell the folks on Earth about! Why, we'll be heroes!"

"Let's go," said Parker, his voice quavering around the edges.

They walked toward a large, oval opening in a side of the field, a hole between mountainous, conical structures that seemed like the entrance to a street.

Suddenly breath exploded from Captain Wiley's lungs. His body jerked back. He fell to the blue stone pavement.

Then he scrambled erect, scowling, his hands outstretched. He felt a soft, rubbery, invisible substance.

"It's a wall!" he exclaimed.

The voice droned:

"To those of Earth: Beings under the 4th stage of Galactic Development are restricted to the area of the landing field. We are sorry. In your primitive stage it would be unwise for you to learn the nature of our civilization. Knowledge of our science would be abused by your people, and used for the thing you call war. We hope that you have been inspired by what you have seen. However, neither we nor the other visitors to our planet are permitted to hold contact with you. It is suggested that you and your vessel depart."

"Listen, you!" screamed Parker. "We've been nine years getting here! By Heaven, we won't leave now! We're...."

"We have no time to discuss the matter. Beings under the 4th stage of Galactic...."

"Never mind!" spat Captain Wiley.

Madness flamed in Parker's eyes. "We won't go! I tell you, we won't, we won't!"

His fists streaked through the air as if at an invisible enemy. He ran toward the wall.

He collided with a jolt that sent him staggering backward, crying, sobbing, screaming, all at once.

Captain Wiley stepped forward, struck him on the chin. Parker crumpled.

They stood looking at his body, which lay motionless except for the slow rising and falling of his chest.

"What now, Captain?" asked Lieutenant Gunderson.

Captain Wiley thought for a few seconds.

Then he said, "We're ignorant country bumpkins, Lieutenant, riding into the city in a chugging jalopy. We're stupid savages, trying to discuss the making of fire with the creators of atomic energy. We're children racing a paper glider against an atomic-powered jet. We're too ridiculous to be noticed. We're tolerated—but nothing more."

"Shall we go home?" asked Fong, a weariness in his voice.

Lieutenant Gunderson scratched his neck. "I don't think I'd want to go home now. Could you bear to tell the truth about what happened?"

Fong looked wistfully at the shining city. "If we told the truth, they probably wouldn't believe us. We've failed. It sounds crazy. We reached Proxima Centauri and found life, and yet somehow we failed. No, I wouldn't like to go home."

"Still, we learned something," said Doyle. "We know now that there is life on worlds beside our own. Somewhere there must be other races like ours."

They looked at each other, strangely, for a long, long moment.

At last Lieutenant Gunderson asked, "How far is Alpha Centauri?"

Captain Wiley frowned. "Alpha Centauri?" Through his mind swirled chaotic visions of colossal distances, eternal night, and lonely years. He sought hard to find a seed of hope in his mind, and yet there was no seed. There were only a coldness and an emptiness.

Suddenly, the voice:

"Yes, Men of Earth, we suggest that you try Alpha Centauri."

The men stood silent and numb, like bewildered children, as the implication of those incredible words sifted into their consciousness.

Finally Fong said, "Did—did you hear that? He said..."

Captain Sam Wiley nodded, very slowly. "Yes. Alpha Centauri. Alpha Centauri."

His eyes began to twinkle, and then he smiled....


Onward sped the Wanderer, onward through cold, silent infinity, on and on, an insignificant pencil of silver lost in the terrible, brooding blackness.

Yet even greater than the blackness was the flaming hope in the six men who inhabited the silver rocket. They moved in hope as fish move in water. Their lives revolved in hope as planets revolve in space and time. They bore their hope like a jeweled crown, and it was as much a part of them as sight in their eyes. Hope was both their brother and their god.

And there was no loneliness.

THE END

Transcribers note: This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

The Holes and John Smith by Edward W. Ludwig

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science Fiction June 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

 

 

He was something out of a nightmare but his music was straight from heaven. He was a ragged little man out of a hole but he was money in the bank to Stanley's four-piece combo. He was—whoops!...

 

The Holes and John Smith

By Edward W. Ludwig

 

Illustration by Kelly Freas


 

It all began on a Saturday night at The Space Room. If you've seen any recent Martian travel folders, you know the place: "A picturesque oasis of old Martian charm, situated on the beauteous Grand Canal in the heart of Marsport. Only half a mile from historic Chandler Field, landing site of the first Martian expedition nearly fifty years ago in 1990. A visitor to the hotel, lunch room or cocktail lounge will thrill at the sight of hardy space pioneers mingling side by side with colorful Martian tribesmen. An evening at The Space Room is an amazing, unforgettable experience."

Of course, the folders neglect to add that the most amazing aspect is the scent of the Canal's stagnant water—and that the most unforgettable experience is seeing the "root-of-all-evil" evaporate from your pocketbook like snow from the Great Red Desert.

We were sitting on the bandstand of the candle-lit cocktail lounge. Me—Jimmie Stanley—and my four-piece combo. Maybe you've seen our motto back on Earth: "The Hottest Music This Side of Mercury."

But there weren't four of us tonight. Only three. Ziggy, our bass fiddle man, had nearly sliced off two fingers while opening a can of Saturnian ice-fish, thus decreasing the number of our personnel by a tragic twenty-five per cent.

Which was why Ke-teeli, our boss, was descending upon us with all the grace of an enraged Venusian vinosaur.

"Where ees museek?" he shrilled in his nasal tenor. He was almost skeleton thin, like most Martians, and so tall that if he fell down he'd be half way home.

I gulped. "Our bass man can't be here, but we've called the Marsport local for another. He'll be here any minute."

Ke-teeli, sometimes referred to as Goon-Face and The Eye, leered coldly down at me from his eight-foot-three. His eyes were like black needle points set deep in a mask of dry, ancient, reddish leather.

"Ees no feedle man, ees no job," he squeaked.

I sighed. This was the week our contract ended. Goon-Face had displayed little enough enthusiasm for our music as it was. His comments were either, "Ees too loud, too fast," or "Ees too slow, too soft." The real cause of his concern being, I suspected, the infrequency with which his cash register tinkled.

"But," I added, "even if the new man doesn't come, we're still here. We'll play for you." I glanced at the conglomeration of uniformed spacemen, white-suited tourists, and loin-clothed natives who sat at ancient stone tables. "You wouldn't want to disappoint your customers, would you?"

Ke-teeli snorted. "Maybe ees better dey be deesappointed. Ees better no museek den bad museek."

Fat Boy, our clarinetist who doubles on Martian horn-harp, made a feeble attempt at optimism. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli. That new bass man will be here."

"Sure," said Hammer-Head, our red-haired vibro-drummer. "I think I hear him coming now."

Suspiciously, Ke-teeli eyed the entrance. There was only silence. His naked, parchment-like chest swelled as if it were an expanding balloon.

"Five meenutes!" he shrieked. "Eef no feedle, den you go!" And he whirled away.

We waited.

Fat Boy's two hundred and eighty-odd pounds were drooped over his chair like the blubber of an exhausted, beach-stranded whale.

"Well," he muttered, "there's always the uranium pits of Neptune. Course, you don't live more than five years there—"

"Maybe we could make it back to Lunar City," suggested Hammer-Head.

"Using what for fare?" I asked. "Your brains?"

Hammer-Head groaned. "No. I guess it'll have to be the black pits of Neptune. The home of washed-up interplanetary musicians. It's too bad. We're so young, too."

The seconds swept by. Ke-teeli was casting his razor-edged glare in our direction. I brushed the chewed finger nails from the keyboard of my electronic piano.

Then it happened.


From the entrance of The Space Room came a thumping and a grating and a banging. Suddenly, sweeping across the dance floor like a cold wind, was a bass fiddle, an enormous black monstrosity, a refugee from a pawnbroker's attic. It was queerly shaped. It was too tall, too wide. It was more like a monstrous, midnight-black hour-glass than a bass.

The fiddle was not unaccompanied as I'd first imagined. Behind it, streaking over the floor in a waltz of agony, was a little guy, an animated matchstick with a flat, broad face that seemed to have been compressed in a vice. His sandcolored mop of hair reminded me of a field of dry grass, the long strands forming loops that flanked the sides of his face.

His pale blue eyes were watery, like twin pools of fog. His tightfitting suit, as black as the bass, was something off a park bench. It was impossible to guess his age. He could have been anywhere between twenty and forty.

The bass thumped down upon the bandstand.

"Hello," he puffed. "I'm John Smith, from the Marsport union." He spoke shrilly and rapidly, as if anxious to conclude the routine of introductions. "I'm sorry I'm late, but I was working on my plan."

A moment's silence.

"Your plan?" I echoed at last.

"How to get back home," he snapped as if I should have known it already.

Hummm, I thought.

My gaze turned to the dance floor. Goon-Face had his eyes on us, and they were as cold as six Indians going South.

"We'll talk about your plan at intermission," I said, shivering. "Now, we'd better start playing. John, do you know On An Asteroid With You?"

"I know everything," said John Smith.

I turned to my piano with a shudder. I didn't dare look at that horrible fiddle again. I didn't dare think what kind of soul-chilling tones might emerge from its ancient depths.

And I didn't dare look again at the second monstrosity, the one named John Smith. I closed my eyes and plunged into a four-bar intro.

Hammer-Head joined in on vibro-drums and Fat Boy on clarinet, and then—

My eyes burst open. A shiver coursed down my spine like gigantic mice feet.

The tones that surged from that monstrous bass were ecstatic. They were out of a jazzman's Heaven. They were great rolling clouds that seemed to envelop the entire universe with their vibrance. They held a depth and a volume and a richness that were astounding, that were like no others I'd ever heard.

First they went Boom-de-boom-de-boom-de-boom, and then, boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom-de-de-boom, just like the tones of all bass fiddles.

But there was something else, too. There were overtones, so that John wasn't just playing a single note, but a whole chord with each beat. And the fullness, the depth of those incredible chords actually set my blood tingling. I could feel the tingling just as one can feel the vibration of a plucked guitar string.

I glanced at the cash customers. They looked like weary warriors getting their first glimpse of Valhalla. Gap-jawed and wide-eyed, they seemed in a kind of ecstatic hypnosis. Even the silent, bland-faced Martians stopped sipping their wine-syrup and nodded their dark heads in time with the rhythm.

I looked at The Eye. The transformation of his gaunt features was miraculous. Shadows of gloom dissolved and were replaced by a black-toothed, crescent-shaped smile of delight. His eyes shone like those of a kid seeing Santa Claus.

We finished On An Asteroid With You, modulated into Sweet Sally from Saturn and finished with Tighten Your Lips on Titan.

We waited for the applause of the Earth people and the shrilling of the Martians to die down. Then I turned to John and his fiddle.

"If I didn't hear it," I gasped, "I wouldn't believe it!"

"And the fiddle's so old, too!" added Hammer-Head who, although sober, seemed quite drunk.

"Old?" said John Smith. "Of course it's old. It's over five thousand years old. I was lucky to find it in a pawnshop. Only it's not a fiddle but a Zloomph. This is the only one in existence." He patted the thing tenderly. "I tried the hole in it but it isn't the right one."

I wondered what the hell he was talking about. I studied the black, mirror-like wood. The aperture in the vesonator was like that of any bass fiddle.

"Isn't right for what?" I had to ask.

He turned his sad eyes to me. "For going home," he said.

Hummm, I thought.


We played. Tune after tune. John knew them all, from the latest pop melodies to a swing version of the classic Rhapsody of The Stars. He was a quiet guy during the next couple of hours, and getting more than a few words from him seemed as hard as extracting a tooth. He'd stand by his fiddle—I mean, his Zloomph—with a dreamy expression in those watery eyes, staring at nothing.

But after one number he studied Fat Boy's clarinet for a moment. "Nice clarinet," he mused. "Has an unusual hole in the front."

Fat Boy scratched the back of his head. "You—you mean here? Where the music comes out?"

John Smith nodded. "Unusual."

Hummm, I thought again.

Awhile later I caught him eyeing my piano keyboard. "What's the matter, John?"

He pointed.

"Oh, there," I said. "A cigarette fell out of my ashtray, burnt a hole in the key. If The Eye sees it, he'll swear at me in seven languages."

"Even there," he said softly, "even there...."

There was no doubt about it. John Smith was peculiar, but he was the best bass man this side of a musician's Nirvana.

It didn't take a genius to figure out our situation. Item one: Goon-Face's countenance had evidenced an excellent imitation of Mephistopheles before John began to play. Item two: Goon-Face had beamed like a kitten with a quart of cream after John began to play.

Conclusion: If we wanted to keep eating, we'd have to persuade John Smith to join our combo.

At intermission I said, "How about a drink, John? Maybe a shot of wine-syrup?"

He shook his head.

"Then maybe a Venusian fizz?"

His grunt was negative.

"Then some old-fashioned beer?"

He smiled. "Yes, I like beer."

I escorted him to the bar and assisted him in his arduous climb onto a stool.

"John," I ventured after he'd taken an experimental sip, "where have you been hiding? A guy like you should be playing every night."

John yawned. "Just got here. Figured I might need some money so I went to the union. Then I worked on my plan."

"Then you need a job. How about playing with us steady? We like your style a lot."

He made a long, low humming sound which I interpreted as an expression of intense concentration. "I don't know," he finally drawled.

"It'd be a steady job, John." Inspiration struck me. "And listen, I have an apartment. It's got everything, solar shower, automatic chef, 'copter landing—if we ever get a 'copter. Plenty of room there for two people. You can stay with me and it won't cost you a cent. And we'll even pay you over union wages."

His watery gaze wandered lazily to the bar mirror, down to the glittering array of bottles and then out to the dance floor.

He yawned again and spoke slowly, as if each word were a leaden weight cast reluctantly from his tongue:

"No, I don't ... care much ... about playing."

"What do you like to do, John?"

His string-bean of a body stiffened. "I like to study ancient history ... and I must work on my plan."

Oh Lord, that plan again!

I took a deep breath. "Tell me about it, John. It must be interesting."

He made queer clicking noises with his mouth that reminded me of a mechanical toy being wound into motion. "The whole foundation of this or any other culture is based on the history of all the time dimensions, each interwoven with the other, throughout the ages. And the holes provide a means of studying all of it first hand."

Oh, oh, I thought. But you still have to eat. Remember, you still have to eat.

"Trouble is," he went on, "there are so many holes in this universe."

"Holes?" I kept a straight face.

"Certainly. Look around you. All you see is holes. These beer bottles are just holes surrounded by glass. The doors and windows—they're holes in walls. The mine tunnels make a network of holes under the desert. Caves are holes, animals live in holes, our faces have holes, clothes have holes—millions and millions of holes!"

I winced and thought, humor him because you gotta eat, you gotta eat.

His voice trembled with emotion. "Why, they're everywhere. They're in pots and pans, in pipes, in rocket jets, in bumpy roads. There are buttonholes and well holes, and shoelace holes. There are doughnut holes and stocking holes and woodpecker holes and cheese holes. Oceans lie in holes in the earth, and rivers and canals and valleys. The craters of the Moon are holes. Everything is—"

"But, John," I said as patiently as possible, "what have these holes got to do with you?"

He glowered at me as if I were unworthy of such a confidence. "What have they to do with me?" he shrilled. "I can't find the right one—that's what!"

I closed my eyes. "Which particular hole are you looking for, John?"

He was speaking rapidly again now.

"I was hurrying back to the University with the Zloomph to prove a point of ancient history to those fools. They don't believe that instruments which make music actually existed before the tapes! It was dark—and some fool researcher had forgotten to set a force-field over the hole—I fell through."

I closed my eyes. "Now wait a minute. Did you drop something, lose it in the hole—is that why you have to find it?"

"Oh I didn't lose anything important," he snapped, "just my own time dimension. And if I don't get back they will think I couldn't prove my theory, that I'm ashamed to come back, and I'll be discredited."

His chest sagged for an instant. Then he straightened. "But there's still time for my plan to work out—with the relative difference taken into account. Only I get so tired just thinking about it."

"Yes, I can see where thinking about it would tire any one."

He nodded. "But it can't be too far away."

"I'd like to hear more about it," I said. "But if you're not going to play with us—"

"Oh, I'll play with you," he beamed. "I can talk to you. You understand."

Thank heaven!


Heaven lasted for just three days. During those seventy-two golden hours the melodious tinkling of The Eye's cash register was as constant as that of Santa's sleigh bells.

John became the hero of tourists, spacemen, and Martians, but nevertheless he remained stubbornly aloof. He was quiet, moody, playing his Zloomph automatically. He'd reveal definite indications of belonging to Homo Sapiens only when drinking beer and talking about his holes.

Goon-Face was still cautious.

"Contract?" he wheezed. "Maybe. We see. Eef feedleman stay, we have contract. He stay, yes?"

"Oh, sure," I said. "He'll stay—just as long as you want him."

"Den he sign contract, too. No beeg feedle, no contract."

"Sure. We'll get him to sign it." I laughed hollowly. "Don't worry, Mr. Ke-teeli."

Just a few minutes later tragedy struck.

A reporter from the Marsport Times ambled into interview the Man of The Hour. The interview, unfortunately, was conducted over the bar and accompanied by a generous guzzling of beer. Fat Boy, Hammer-Head and I watched from a table. Knowing John as we did, a silent prayer was in our eyes.

"This is the first time he's talked to anybody," Fat Boy breathed. "I—I'm scared.

"Nothing can happen," I said, optimistically. "This'll be good publicity."

We watched.

John murmured something. The reporter, a paunchy, balding man, scribbled furiously in his notebook.

John yawned, muttered something else. The reporter continued to scribble.

John sipped beer. His eyes brightened, and he began to talk more rapidly.

The reporter frowned, stopped writing, and studied John curiously.

John finished his first beer, started on his second. His eyes were wild, and he was talking more and more rapidly.

"He's doing it," Hammer-Head groaned. "He's telling him!"

I rose swiftly. "We better get over there. We should have known better—"

We were too late. The reporter had already slapped on his hat and was striding to the exit. John turned to us, dazed, his enthusiasm vanishing like air from a punctured balloon.

"He wouldn't listen," he said, weakly. "I tried to tell him, but he said he'd come back when I'm sober. I'm sober now. So I quit. I've got to find my hole."

I patted him on the back. "No, John, we'll help you. Don't quit. We'll—well, we'll help you."

"We're working on a plan, too," said Fat Boy in a burst of inspiration. "We're going to make a more scientific approach."

"How?" John asked.

Fat Boy gulped.

"Just wait another day," I said. "We'll have it worked out. Just be patient another day. You can't leave now, not after all your work."

"No, I guess not," he sighed. "I'll stay—until tomorrow."


All night the thought crept through my brain like a teasing spider: What can we do to make him stay? What can we tell him? What, what, what?

Unable to sleep the next morning, I left John to his snoring and went for an aspirin and black coffee. All the possible schemes were drumming through my mind: finding an Earth blonde to capture John's interest, having him electro-hypnotized, breaking his leg, forging a letter from this mythical university telling him his theory was proved valid and for him to take a nice long vacation now. He was a screwball about holes and force fields and dimensional worlds but for that music of his I'd baby him the rest of his life.

It was early afternoon when I trudged back to my apartment.

John was squatting on the living room floor, surrounded by a forest of empty beer bottles. His eyes were bulging, his hair was even wilder than usual, and he was swaying.

"John!" I cried. "You're drunk!"

His watery eyes squinted at me. "No, not drunk. Just scared. I'm awful scared!"

"But you mustn't be scared. That reporter was just stupid. We'll help you with your theory."

His body trembled. "No, it isn't that. It isn't the reporter."

"Then what is it, John?"

"It's my body. It's—"

"Yes, what about your body? Are you sick?"

His face was white with terror. "No, my—my body's full of holes. Suppose it's one of those holes! How will I get back if it is?"

He rose and staggered to his Zloomph, clutching it as though it were somehow a source of strength and consolation.

I patted him gingerly on the arm. "Now John. You've just had too much beer, that's all. Let's go out and get some air and some strong black coffee. C'mon now."

We staggered out into the morning darkness, the three of us. John, the Zloomph, and I.

I was hanging on to him trying to see around and over and even under the Zloomph—steering by a sort of radar-like sixth sense. The street lights on Marsport are pretty dim compared to Earthside. I didn't see the open manhole that the workmen had figured would be all right at that time of night. It gets pretty damned cold around 4: A.M. of a Martian morning, and I guess the men were warming up with a little nip at the bar across the street.

Then—he was gone.

John just slipped out of my grasp—Zloomph and all—and was gone—completely and irrevocably gone. I even risked a broken neck and jumped in the manhole after him. Nothing—nothing but the smell of ozone and an echo bouncing crazily off the walls of the conduit.

"—is it.—is it.—is it.—is it."

John Smith was gone, so utterly and completely and tragically gone it was as if he'd never existed....


Tonight is our last night at The Space Room. Goon-Face is scowling again with the icy fury of a Plutonian monsoon. As Goon-Face has said, "No beeg feedle, no contract."

Without John, we're notes in a lost chord.

We've searched everything, in hospitals, morgues, jails, night clubs, hotels. We've hounded spaceports and 'copter terminals. Nowhere, nowhere is John Smith.

Ziggy, whose two fingers have healed, has already bowed to what seems inevitable. He's signed up for that trip to Neptune's uranium pits. There's plenty of room for more volunteers, he tells us. But I spend my time cussing the guy who forgot to set the force field at the other end of the hole and let John and his Zloomph back into his own time dimension. I cuss harder when I think how we were robbed of the best bass player in the galaxy.

And without a corpus delecti we can't even sue the city.

... THE END

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Spacemen Die at Home by Edward W. Ludwig


Spacemen Die at Home

By EDWARD W. LUDWIG

Illustrated by THORNE

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction October 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


One man's retreat is another's prison ... and
it takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home!


Forty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it's been, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell you what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing fear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura.

Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning....

It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos, were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after spawning its first-born.

For it was June in this year of 1995, and we were the graduating class of the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight.

The first graduating class, Laura. That's why it was so important, because we were the first.

We sat on a little platform, twenty-five of us. Below us was a beach of faces, most of them strange, shining like pebbles in the warm New Mexican sunlight. They were the faces of mothers and fathers and grandparents and kid brothers and sisters—the people who a short time ago had been only scrawled names on letters from home or words spoken wistfully at Christmas. They were the memory-people who, to me, had never really existed.

But today they had become real, and they were here and looking at us with pride in their eyes.

A voice was speaking, deep, sure, resonant. "... these boys have worked hard for six years, and now they're going to do a lot of big things. They're going to bring us the metals and minerals that we desperately need. They're going to find new land for our colonists, good rich land that will bear food and be a home for our children. And perhaps most important of all, they'll make other men think of the stars and look up at them and feel humility—for mankind needs humility."

The speaker was Robert Chandler, who'd brought the first rocket down on Mars just five years ago, who'd established the first colony there, and who had just returned from his second hop to Venus.

Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time, for I was thinking:

He's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the first!


Mickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. "I don't see 'em, Ben," he whispered. "Where do you suppose they are?"

I blinked. "Who?"

"My folks."

That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those "You are cordially invited" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie Taggart.

Stardust Charlie, we called him, although I never knew why. He was a veteran of Everson's first trip to the Moon nearly twenty-five years ago, and he was still at it. He was Chief Jetman now on the Lunar Lady, a commercial ore ship on a shuttle between Luna City and White Sands.

I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. And I remembered, too, how his recommendation had finally made me a cadet.

My gaze wandered over the faces, but I couldn't find Charlie's. It wasn't surprising. The Lunar Lady was in White Sands now, but liberties, as Charlie said, were as scarce as water on Mars.

It doesn't matter, I told myself.

Then Mickey stiffened. "I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!"

Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only half as big.

And then it seemed that all the proud faces were looking at us as if we were gods. A shiver went through my body. Though it was daytime, I saw the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by the sons of Earth.

They expect a lot from us. They expect us to make a new kind of civilization and a better place out of Earth. They expect all this and a hell of a lot more. They think there's nothing we can't do.

I felt very small and very humble. I was scared. Damned scared.


At last it was over, and the proud faces descended upon us in a huge, babbling wave.

Then I saw him. Good old Stardust Charlie.

His wizened little body was shuffling down an aisle, his eyes shining like a child's. He'd been sandwiched, evidently, in one of the rear rows.

But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that it was hard to believe he'd once been young.

He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.

"You made it, boy," he chortled, "and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as good spacemen should!"

Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again, walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm with some silent melody.

And you, Laura, were with him.

"Meet the Brat," he said. "My sister Laura."

I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.

"I'm happy to meet you, Ben," you said. "I've heard of no one else for the past year."

A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an introduction of Charlie.

You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol. His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing.

And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I knew, would find them ugly.

You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: "It's a privilege to meet you, Charlie. Just think—one of Everson's men, one of the first to reach the Moon!"

Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: "Still going to spend the weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?"

I shook my head. "Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're planning to see the town tonight."

"Why don't you both come with us?" you asked. "Our folks have their own plane, so it would be no problem. And we've got a big guest room. Charlie, wouldn't you like a home-cooked meal before going back to the Moon?"

Charlie's answer was obscured by a sudden burst of coughing. I knew that he'd infinitely prefer to spend his liberty sampling Martian fizzes and Plutonian zombies.

But this night seemed too sacred for Charlie's kind of celebration.

"We'd really like to come," I said.


On our way to the 'copter parking field, Dean Dawson passed us. He was a tall, willowy man, spectacled, looking the way an academy professor should look.

"Ben," he called, "don't forget that offer. Remember you've got two months to decide."

"No, thanks," I answered. "Better not count on me."

A moment later Mickey said, frowning, "What was he talking about, Ben? Did he make you an offer?"

I laughed. "He offered me a job here at the Academy teaching astrogation. What a life that would be! Imagine standing in a classroom for forty years when I've got the chance to—"

I hesitated, and you supplied the right words: "When you've got the chance to be the first to reach a new planet. That's what most of you want, isn't it? That's what Mickey used to want."

I looked at you as if you were Everson himself, because you seemed to understand the hunger that could lie in a man's heart.

Then your last words came back and jabbed me: "That's what Mickey used to want."

"Used to want?" I asked. "What do you mean?"

You bit your lip, not answering.

"What did she mean, Mickey?"

Mickey looked down at his feet. "I didn't want to tell you yet, Ben. We've been together a long time, planning to be on a rocket. But—"

"Yes?"

"Well, what does it add up to? You become a spaceman and wear a pretty uniform. You wade through the sands of Mars and the dust of Venus. If you're lucky, you're good for five, maybe ten years. Then one thing or another gets you. They don't insure rocketmen, you know."

My stomach was full of churning, biting ice. "What are you trying to say, Mickey?"

"I've thought about it a long time. They want me for Cargo Supervisor of White Sands Port." He raised his hand to stop me. "I know. It's not so exciting. I'll just live a lot longer. I'm sorry, Ben."

I couldn't answer. It was as if someone had whacked the back of my knees with the blast of a jet.

"It doesn't change anything, Ben—right now, I mean. We can still have a good weekend."

Charlie was muttering under his breath, smoldering like a bomb about to reach critical mass. I shook my head dazedly at him as we got to the 'copter.

"Sure," I said to Mickey, "we can still have a good weekend."


I liked your folks, Laura. There was no star-hunger in them, of course. They were simple and solid and settled, like green growing things, deep-rooted, belonging to Earth. They were content with a home that was cool on this warm summer night, with a 'copter and a tri-dimensional video, and a handsome automatic home that needed no servants or housework.

Stardust Charlie was as comfortable as a Martian sand-monkey in a shower, but he tried courageously to be himself.

At the dinner table he stared glassily at nothing and grated, "Only hit Mars once, but I'll never forget the kid who called himself a medic. Skipper started coughing, kept it up for three days. Whoopin' cough, the medic says, not knowin' the air had chemicals that turned to acid in your lungs. I'd never been to Mars before, but I knew better'n that. Hell, I says, that ain't whoopin' cough, that's lung-rot."

That was when your father said he wasn't so hungry after all.

Afterward, you and I walked onto the terrace, into the moonlit night, to watch for crimson-tailed continental rockets that occasionally streaked up from White Sands.

We gazed for a few seconds up into the dark sky, and then you said: "Charlie is funny, isn't he? He's nice and I'm glad he's here, but he's sort of funny."

"He's an old-time spaceman. You didn't need much education in those days, just a lot of brawn and a quick mind. It took guts to be a spaceman then."

"But he wasn't always a spaceman. Didn't he ever have a family?"

I smiled and shook my head. "If he had, he never mentioned it. Charlie doesn't like to be sentimental, at least not on the outside. As far as I know, his life began when he took off for the Moon with Everson."

You stared at me strangely, almost in a sacred kind of way. I knew suddenly that you liked me, and my heart began to beat faster.

There was silence.

You were lovely, your soft hair like strands of gold, and there were flecks of silver in your dark eyes. Somehow I was afraid. I had the feeling that I shouldn't have come here.

You kept looking at me until I had to ask: "What are you thinking, Laura?"

You laughed, but it was a sad, fearful laugh. "No, I shouldn't be thinking it. You'd hate me if I told you, and I wouldn't want that."

"I could never hate you."

"It—it's about the stars," you said very softly. "I understand why you want to go to them. Mickey and I used to dream about them when we were kids. Of course I was a girl, so it was just a game to me. But once I dreamed of going to England. Oh, it was going to be so wonderful. I lived for months, just thinking about it.

"One summer we went. I had fun. I saw the old buildings and castles, and the spaceports and the Channel Tube. But after it was over, I realized England wasn't so different from America. Places seem exciting before you get to them, and afterward they're not really."

I frowned. "And you mean it might be the same with the stars? You think maybe I haven't grown up yet?"

Anxiety darkened your features. "No, it'd be good to be a spaceman, to see the strange places and make history. But is it worth it? Is it worth the things you'd have to give up?"

I didn't understand at first, and I wanted to ask, "Give up what?"

Then I looked at you and the promise in your eyes, and I knew.

All through the years I'd been walking down a single, narrow path.

Government boarding school, the Academy, my eyes always upward and on the stars.

Now I'd stumbled into a cross-roads, beholding a strange new path that I'd never noticed before.

You can go into space, I thought, and try to do as much living in ten years as normal men do in fifty. You can be like Everson, who died in a Moon crash at the age of 36, or like a thousand others who lie buried in Martian sand and Venusian dust. Or, if you're lucky, like Charlie—a kind of human meteor streaking through space, eternally alone, never finding a home.

Or there's the other path. To stay on this little prison of an Earth in cool, comfortable houses. To be one of the solid, rooted people with a wife and kids. To be one of the people who live long enough to grow old, who awake to the song of birds instead of rocket grumblings, who fill their lungs with the clean rich air of Earth instead of poisonous dust.

"I'm sorry," you said. "I didn't mean to make you sad, Ben."

"It's all right," I said, clenching my fists. "You made sense—a lot of sense."


The next morning Charlie said good-bye in our room. He rubbed his scarred face nervously as he cleared his throat with a series of thin, tight coughs.

Then he pointed to a brown, faded tin box lying on the bed. "I'm leavin' that for you. It's full of old stuff, souvenirs mostly. Thought maybe you'd like to have 'em."

I scowled, not understanding. "Why, Charlie? What for?"

He shrugged as if afraid he might be accused of sentimentality. "Oh, it's just that I've been dodgin' meteors now for twenty-five years. That's a long time, boy. Ain't one spaceman in a thousand that lucky. Some of these days, I won't be so lucky."

I tried to laugh. "You're good for another twenty-five years, Charlie."

He shook his head stiffly, staring at nothing. "Maybe. Anyway, I'm gonna get off the Shuttle this time, make one more trip to Mars. Tell you what. There's a little stone cafe on Mars, the Space Rat, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal. When you get to Mars, take a look inside. I'll probably be there."

He coughed again, a deep, rasping cough that filled his eyes with tears.

"Not used to this Earth air," he muttered. "What I need's some Martian climate."

Suddenly that cough frightened me. It didn't seem normal. I wondered, too, about his stiff movements and glassy stare. It was as if he were drugged.

I shook the thought away. If Charlie was sick, he wouldn't talk about going to Mars. The medics wouldn't let him go even as far as Luna.

We watched him leave, you and Mickey and I.

"When will you be back?" you asked.

Charlie's hard face contorted itself into a gargoylish grin. "Maybe a couple of months, maybe a couple of years. You know spacemen."

Then he waved and strode away, a strange, gray, withered gnome of a man.

I wanted him to say something, to tell me the secret that would kill the doubt worming through my brain.

But he rounded a corner, still grinning and waving, and then he was gone.


That afternoon Mickey showed me his room. It was more like a boy's room than a spaceman's. In it were all the little things that kids treasure—pennants, models of Everson's two ships, a tennis trophy, books, a home-made video.

I began to realize how important a room like this could be to a boy. I could imagine, too, the happiness that parents felt as they watched their children grow to adulthood.

I'd missed something. My folks were shadow-people, my impressions of them drawn half from ancient photos, half from imagination. For me, it had been a cold, automatic kind of life, the life of dormitories and routines and rules. I'd been so blinded by the brilliancy of my dreams, I hadn't realized I was different.

My folks were killed in a rocket crash. If it weren't for rockets, I'd have lived the kind of life a kid should live.

Mickey noticed my frown.

"What's the matter, Ben? Still sore? I feel like a heel, but I'm just not like you and Charlie, I guess. I—"

"No, I understand, Mickey. I'm not sore, really."

"Listen, then. You haven't accepted any offer yet, have you?"

"No. I got a couple of possibilities. Could get a berth on the Odyssey, the new ship being finished at Los Angeles. They want me, too, for the Moon Patrol, but that's old stuff, not much better than teaching. I want to be in deep space."

"Well, how about staying with us till you decide? Might as well enjoy Earth life while you can. Okay?"

I felt like running from the house, to forget that it existed. I wanted someone to tell me one of the old stories about space, a tale of courage that would put fuel on dying dreams.

But I wanted, also, to be with you, Laura, to see your smile and the flecks of silver in your eyes and the way your nose turned upward ever so slightly when you laughed. You see, I loved you already, almost as much as I loved the stars.

And I said, slowly, my voice sounding unfamiliar and far away, "Sure, I'll stay, Mickey. Sure."


Forty days of joy, forty nights of fear and indecision. We did all the little things, like watching the rockets land at White Sands and flying down to the Gulf to swim in cool waters. You tried, unsuccessfully, to teach me to dance, and we talked about Everson and Charlie and the Moon and the stars. You felt you had to give the stars all the beauty and promise of a child's dream, because you knew that was what I wanted.

One morning I thought, Why must I make a choice? Why can't I have both you and the stars? Would that be asking too much?

All day the thought lay in my mind like fire.

That evening I asked you to marry me. I said it very simply: "Laura, I want you to be my wife."

You looked up at Venus, and you were silent for a long while, your face flushed.

Then you murmured, "I—I want to marry you, Ben, but are you asking me to marry a spaceman or a teacher?"

"Can't a spaceman marry, too?"

"Yes, a spaceman can marry, but what would it be like? Don't you see, Ben? You'd be like Charlie. Gone for maybe two months, maybe two years. Then you'd have a twenty-four hour liberty—and I'd have what?"

Somehow I'd expected words like these, but still they hurt. "I wouldn't have to be a spaceman forever. I could try it for a couple of years, then teach."

"Would you, Ben? Would you be satisfied with just seeing Mars? Wouldn't you want to go on to Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and on and on?"

Your voice was choked, and even in the semi-darkness I saw tears glittering in your eyes.

"Do you think I'd dare have children, Ben? Mickey told me what happened on the Cyclops. There was a leak in the atomic engines. The ship was flooded with radiation—just for a second. It didn't seem serious. The men had no burns. But a year later the captain had a child. And it was—"

"I know, Laura. Don't say it."

You had to finish. "It was a monster."

That night I lay awake, the fears and doubts too frantic to let me sleep.

You've got to decide now, I told myself. You can't stay here. You've got to make a choice.

The teaching job was still open. The spot on the Odyssey was still open—and the big ship, it was rumored, was equipped to make it all the way to Pluto.

You can take Dean Dawson's job and stay with Laura and have kids and a home and live to see what happens in this world sixty years from now.

Or you can see what's on the other side of the mountain. You can be a line in a history book.

I cursed. I knew what Charlie would say. He'd say, "Get the hell out of there, boy. Don't let a fool woman make a sucker out of you. Get out there on the Odyssey where you belong. We got a date on Mars, remember? At the Space Rat, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal."

That's what he'd say.

And yet I wanted you, Laura. I wanted to be with you, always.

"Oh God," I moaned, "what shall I do?"


Next morning the door chimes pealed, and you went to the door and brought back the audiogram. It was addressed to me; I wondered who could be sending me a message.

I pressed the stud on the little gray cylinder, and a rasping, automatic voice droned: "Luna City, Luna, July 27, 1995. Regret to inform you of death of Charles Taggart, Chief Jetman...."

Then there was a Latin name which was more polite than the word "lung-rot" and the metallic phrase, "This message brought to you by courtesy of United Nations Earth-Luna Communication Corps."

I stood staring at the cylinder.

Charles Taggart was dead.

Charles Taggart was Charlie. Stardust Charlie.

My heart thudded crazily against my chest. It couldn't be! Not Charlie! The audiogram had lied!

I pressed the stud again. "... regret to inform you of death of Charles ..."

I hurled the cylinder at the wall. It thudded, fell, rolled. The broken voice droned on.

You ran to it, shut it off. "I'm sorry, Ben, so terribly—"

Without answering, I walked into my room. I knew it was true now. I remembered Charlie's coughing, his gaunt features, his drugged gaze. The metallic words had told the truth.

I sat for a long time on my bed, crying inside, but staring dry-eyed at Charlie's faded tin box.

Then, finally, I fingered his meager possessions—a few wrinkled photos, some letters, a small black statue of a forgotten Martian god, a gold service medal from the Moon Patrol.



This was what remained of Charlie after twenty-five years in space. It was a bitter bargain. A statue instead of a wife, yellowed letters instead of children, a medal instead of a home.

It'd be a great future, I thought. You'd dream of sitting in a dingy stone dive on the Grand Canal with sand-wasps buzzing around smoky, stinking candles. A bottle of luchu juice and a couple of Martian girls with dirty feet for company. And a sudden cough that would be the first sign of lung-rot.

To hell with it!

I walked into your living room and called Dean Dawson on the visiphone.

I accepted that job teaching.


And now, Laura, it's nearly midnight. You're in your room, sleeping, and the house is silent.

It's hard to tell you, to make you understand, and that is why I am writing this.

I looked through Charlie's box again, more carefully this time, reading the old letters and studying the photographs. I believe now that Charlie sensed my indecision, that he left these things so that they could tell me what he could not express in words.

And among the things, Laura, I found a ring.

A wedding ring.

In that past he never talked about, there was a woman—his wife. Charlie was young once, his eyes full of dreams, and he faced the same decision that I am facing. Two paths were before him, but he tried to travel both. He later learned what we already know—that there can be no compromise. And you know, too, which path he finally chose.

Do you know why he had to drug himself to watch me graduate? So he could look at me, knowing that I would see the worlds he could never live to see. Charlie didn't leave just a few trinkets behind him. He left himself, Laura, for he showed me that a boy's dream can also be a man's dream.

He made his last trip to Luna when he knew he was going to die. Heaven knows how he escaped a checkup. Maybe the captain understood and was kind—but that doesn't matter now.

Do you know why he wanted to reach Mars? Do you know why he didn't want to die in the clean, cool air of Earth?

It was because he wanted to die nearer home. His home, Laura, was the Universe, where the ship was his house, the crew his father, mother, brothers, the planets his children.

You say that the beauty of the other side of the mountain vanishes after you reach it. But how can one ever be sure until the journey is made? Could I or Charlie or the thousand before us bear to look upon a star and think, I might have gone there; I could have been the first?

We said, too, that the life of a spaceman is lonely. Yet how could one be lonely when men like Charlie roam the spaceways?

Charlie wanted me to himself that night after graduation. He wanted us to celebrate as spacemen should, for he knew that this would be his last night on Earth. It might have seemed an ugly kind of celebration to you, but he wanted it with all his heart, and we robbed him of it.

Because of these things, Laura, I will be gone in the morning. Explain the best you can to Mickey and to your parents and Dean Dawson.

Right now I've got a date that I'm going to keep—at a dingy stone cafe on Mars, the Space Rat, just off Chandler Field on the Grand Canal.

Stardust Charlie will be there; he'll go with me in memory to whatever part of the Galaxy I may live to reach. And so will you, Laura.

I have two wedding rings with me—his wife's ring and yours.