To Each His Star.
by Bryce Walton.
_"Nothing around those other suns but ashes and dried blood," old Dunbar told the s.p.a.ce-wrecked, desperate men.
"Only one way to go, where we can float down through the clouds to Paradise. That"s straight ahead to the sun with the red rim around it."_
_But Dunbar"s eyes were old and uncertain. How could they believe in his choice when every star in this forsaken section of s.p.a.ce was surrounded by a beckoning red rim?_
There was just blackness, frosty glimmering terrible blackness, going out and out forever in all directions. Russell didn"t think they could remain sane in all this blackness much longer. Bitterly he thought of how they would die--not knowing within maybe thousands of light years where they were, or where they were going.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
After the wreck, the four of them had floated a while, floated and drifted together, four men in bulbous pressure suits like small individual rockets, held together by an awful pressing need for each other and by the "gravity-rope" beam.
Dunbar, the oldest of the four, an old s.p.a.ce-buster with a face wrinkled like a dried prune, burned by cosmic rays and the suns of worlds so far away they were scarcely credible, had taken command.
Suddenly, Old Dunbar had known where they were. Suddenly, Dunbar knew where they were going.
They could talk to one another through the etheric transmitters inside their helmets. They could live ... if this was living ... a long time, if only a man"s brain would hold up, Russell thought. The suits were complete units. 700 pounds each, all enclosing shelters, with atmosphere pressure, temperature control, mobility in s.p.a.ce, and electric power. Each suit had its own power-plant, reprocessing continuously the precious air breathed by the occupants, putting it back into circulation again after enriching it. Packed with food concentrates. Each suit a rocket, each human being part of a rocket, and the special "life-gun" that went with each suit each blast of which sent a man a few hundred thousand miles further on toward wherever he was going.
Four men, thought Russell, held together by an invisible string of gravity, plunging through a lost pocket of h.e.l.l"s dark where there had never been any sound or life, with old Dunbar the first in line, taking the lead because he was older and knew where he was and where he was going. Maybe Johnson, second in line, and Alvar who was third, knew too, but were afraid to admit it.
But Russell knew it and he"d admitted it from the first--that old Dunbar was as crazy as a Jovian juke-bird.
A lot of time had rushed past into darkness. Russell had no idea now how long the four of them had been plunging toward the red-rimmed sun that never seemed to get any nearer. When the ultra-drive had gone crazy the four of them had blanked out and n.o.body could say now how long an interim that had been. n.o.body knew what happened to a man who suffered a s.p.a.ce-time warping like that. When they had regained consciousness, the ship was pretty banged up, and the meteor-repeller shields cracked. A meteor ripped the ship down the center like an old breakfast cannister.
How long ago that had been, Russell didn"t know. All Russell knew was that they were millions of light years from any place he had ever heard about, where the galactic s.p.a.ce lanterns had absolutely no recognizable pattern. But Dunbar knew. And Russell was looking at Dunbar"s suit up ahead, watching it more and more intently, thinking about how Dunbar looked inside that suit--and hating Dunbar more and more for claiming he knew when he didn"t, for his drooling optimism--because he was taking them on into deeper darkness and calling their destination Paradise.
Russell wanted to laugh, but the last time he"d given way to this impulse, the results inside his helmet had been too unpleasant to repeat.
Sometimes Russell thought of other things besides his growing hatred of the old man. Sometimes he thought about the ship, lost back there in the void, and he wondered if wrecked s.p.a.ce ships were ever found.
Compared with the universe in which one of them drifted, a wrecked ship was a lot smaller than a grain of sand on a nice warm beach back on Earth, or one of those specks of silver dust that floated like strange seeds down the night winds of Venus.
And a human was smaller still, thought Russell when he was not hating Dunbar. Out here, a human being is the smallest thing of all. He thought then of what Dunbar would say to such a thought, how Dunbar would laugh that high piping squawking laugh of his and say that the human being was bigger than the Universe itself.
Dunbar had a big answer for every little thing.
When the four of them had escaped from that prison colony on a sizzling hot asteroid rock in the Ronlwhyn system, that wasn"t enough for Dunbar. h.e.l.l no--Dunbar had to start talking about a place they could go where they"d never be apprehended, in a system no one else had ever heard of, where they could live like G.o.ds on a green soft world like the Earth had been a long time back.
And Dunbar had spouted endlessly about a world of treasure they would find, if they would just follow old Dunbar. That"s what all four of them had been trying to find all their lives in the big cold grabbag of eternity--a rich star, a rich far fertile star where no one else had ever been, loaded with treasure that had no name, that no one had ever heard of before. And was, because of that, the richest treasure of all.
We all look alike out here in these big rocket pressure suits, Russell thought. No one for G.o.d only knew how many of millions of light years away could see or care. Still--we might have a chance to live, even now, Russell thought--if it weren"t for old crazy Dunbar.
They might have a chance if Alvar and Johnson weren"t so d.a.m.n lacking in self-confidence as to put all their trust in that crazed old rum-dum. Russell had known now for some time that they were going in the wrong direction. No reason for knowing. Just a hunch. And Russell was sure his hunch was right.
Russell said. "Look--look to your left and to your right and behind us. Four suns. You guys see those other three suns all around you, don"t you?"
"Sure," someone said.
"Well, if you"ll notice," Russell said, "the one on the left also now has a red rim around it. Can"t you guys see that?"
"Yeah, I see it," Alvar said.
"So now," Johnson said, "there"s two suns with red rims around them."
"We"re about in the middle of those four suns aren"t we, Dunbar?"
Russell said.
"That"s right, boys!" yelled old Dunbar in that sickeningly optimistic voice. Like a hysterical old woman"s. "Just about in the sweet dark old middle."
"You"re still sure it"s the sun up ahead ... that"s the only one with life on it, Dunbar ... the only one we can live on?" Russell asked.
"That"s right! That"s right," Dunbar yelled. "That"s the only one--and it"s a paradise. Not just a place to live, boys--but a place you"ll have trouble believing in because it"s like a dream!"
"And none of these other three suns have worlds we could live on, Dunbar?" Russell asked. Keep the old duck talking like this and maybe Alvar and Johnson would see that he was cracked.
"Yeah," said Alvar. "You still say that, Dunbar?"
"No life, boys, nothing," Dunbar laughed. "Nothing on these other worlds but ashes ... just ashes and iron and dried blood, dried a million years or more."
"When in h.e.l.l were you ever here?" Johnson said. "You say you were here before. You never said when, or why or anything!"
"It was a long time back boys. Don"t remember too well, but it was when we had an old ship called the DOG STAR that I was here. A pirate ship and I was second in command, and we came through this sector.
That was--h.e.l.l, it musta" been fifty years ago. I been too many places n.o.body"s ever bothered to name or chart, to remember where it is, but I been here. I remember those four suns all spotted to form a perfect circle from this point, with us squarely in the middle. We explored all these suns and the worlds that go round "em. Trust me, boys, and we"ll reach the right one. And that one"s just like Paradise."
"Paradise is it," Russell whispered hoa.r.s.ely.
"Paradise and there we"ll be like G.o.ds, like Mercuries with wings flying on nights of sweet song. These other suns, don"t let them bother you. They"re Jezebels of stars. All painted up in the darkness and pretty and waiting and calling and lying! They make you think of nice green worlds all running waters and dews and forests thick as fleas on a wet dog. But it ain"t there, boys. I know this place. I been here, long time back."
Russell said tightly. "It"ll take us a long time won"t it? If it"s got air we can breath, and water we can drink and shade we can rest in--that"ll be paradise enough for us. But it"ll take a long time won"t it? And what if it isn"t there--what if after all the time we spend hoping and getting there--there won"t be nothing but ashes and cracked clay?"
"I know we"re going right," Dunbar said cheerfully. "I can tell. Like I said--you can tell it because of the red rim around it."
"But the sun on our left, you can see--it"s got a red rim too now,"
Russell said.
"Yeah, that"s right," said Alvar. "Sometimes I see a red rim around the one we"re going for, sometimes a red rim around that one on the left. Now, sometimes I"m not sure either of them"s got a red rim. You said that one had a red rim, Dunbar, and I wanted to believe it. So now maybe we"re all seeing a red rim that was never there."
Old Dunbar laughed. The sound brought blood hotly to Russell"s face.
"We"re heading to the right one, boys. Don"t doubt me ... I been here.
We explored all these sun systems. And I remember it all. The second planet from that red-rimmed sun. You come down through a soft atmosphere, floating like in a dream. You see the green lakes coming up through the clouds and the women dancing and the music playing. I remember seeing a ship there that brought those women there, a long long time before ever I got there. A land like heaven and women like angels singing and dancing and laughing with red lips and arms white as milk, and soft silky hair floating in the winds."
Russell was very sick of the old man"s voice. He was at least glad he didn"t have to look at the old man now. His bald head, his skinny bobbing neck, his simpering watery blue eyes. But he still had to suffer that immutable babbling, that idiotic cheerfulness ... and knowing all the time the old man was crazy, that he was leading them wrong.