Space Science Fiction Super Pack. Randall Garrett
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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 hell 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—hell, it musta’ been fifty years ago. I been too many places nobody’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 hoarsely.
“Paradise and there we’ll be like gods, 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.
I’d break away, go it alone to the right sun, Russell thought—but I’d never make it alone. A little while out here alone and I’d be nuttier than old Dunbar will ever be, even if he keeps on getting nuttier all the time.
Somewhere, sometime then ... Russell got the idea that the only way was to get rid of Dunbar.
*
You mean to tell us there are people living by that red-rimmed sun,” Russell said.
“Lost people ... lost ... who knows how long,” Dunbar said, as the four of them hurtled along. “You never know where you’ll find people on a world somewhere nobody’s ever named or knows about. Places where a lost ship’s landed and never got up again, or wrecked itself so far off the lanes they’ll never be found except by accident for millions of years. That’s what this world is, boys. Must have been a ship load of beautiful people, maybe actresses and people like that being hauled to some outpost to entertain. They’re like angels now, living in a land all free from care. Every place you see green forests and fields and blue lakes, and at nights there’s three moons that come around the sky in a thousand different colors. And it never gets cold ... it’s always spring, always spring, boys, and the music plays all night, every night of a long long year....”
Russell suddenly shouted. “Keep quiet, Dunbar. Shut up will you?”
Johnson said. “Dunbar—how long’ll it take us?”
“Six months to a year, I’d say,” Dunbar yelled happily. “That is—of our hereditary time.”
“What?” croaked Alvar.
Johnson didn’t say anything at all.
Russell screamed at Dunbar, then quieted down. He whispered. “Six months to a year—out here—cooped up in these damn suits. You’re crazy as hell, Dunbar. Crazy ... crazy! Nobody could stand it. We’ll all be crazier than you are—”
“We’ll make it, boys. Trust ole’ Dunbar. What’s a year when we know we’re getting to Paradise at the end of it? What’s a year out here ... it’s paradise ain’t it, compared with that prison hole we were rotting in? We can make it. We have the food concentrates, and all the rest. All we need’s the will, boys, and we got that. The whole damn Universe isn’t big enough to kill the will of a human being, boys. I been over a whole lot of it, and I know. In the old days—”
“The hell with the old days,” screamed Russell.
“Now quiet down, Russ,” Dunbar said in a kind of dreadful crooning whisper. “You calm down now. You younger fellows—you don’t look at things the way we used to. Thing is, we got to go straight. People trapped like this liable to start meandering. Liable to start losing the old will-power.”
He chuckled.
“Yeah,” said Alvar. “Someone says maybe we ought to go left, and someone says to go right, and someone else says to go in another direction. And then someone says maybe they’d better go back the old way. An’ pretty soon something breaks, or the food runs out, and you’re a million million miles from someplace you don’t care about any more because you’re dead. All frozen up in space ... preserved like a piece of meat in a cold storage locker. And then maybe in a million years or so some lousy insect man from Jupiter comes along and finds you and takes you away to a museum....”
“Shut up!” Johnson yelled.
Dunbar laughed. “Boys, boys, don’t get panicky. Keep your heads. Just stick to old Dunbar and he’ll see you through. I’m always lucky. Only one way to go ... an’ that’s straight ahead to the sun with the red-rim around it ... and then we tune in the gravity repellers,