Space Science Fiction Super Pack. Randall Garrett
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Johnson said. “I’ll cut off the gravity rope.”
“I’m ready,” Alvar said. “To go back toward whatever it was I started from.”
“Ready, Russ?”
Russell couldn’t say anything. He stared at the endless void which now he would share with no one. Not even crazy old Dunbar.
“All right,” Johnson said. “Good-bye.”
Russell felt the release, felt the sudden inexplicable isolation and aloneness even before Alvar and Johnson used their life-guns and shot out of sight, Johnson toward the left and Alvar back toward that other red-rimmed sun behind them.
And old Dunbar shooting right on ahead. And all three of them dwindling and dwindling and blinking out like little lights.
Fading, he could hear their voices. “Each to his own star,” Johnson said. “On a bee line.”
“On a bee line,” Alvar said.
Russell used his own life-gun and in a little while he didn’t hear Alvar or Johnson’s voices, nor could he see them. They were thousands of miles away, and going further all the time.
Russell’s head fell forward against the front of his helmet, and he closed his eyes. “Maybe,” he thought, “I shouldn’t have killed the old man. Maybe one sun’s as good as another....”
Then he raised his body and looked out into the year of blackness that waited for him, stretching away to the red-rimmed sun. Even if he were right—he was sure now he’d never make it alone.
*
The body inside the pressure suit drifted into a low-level orbit around the second planet from the sun of its choice, and drifted there a long time. A strato-cruiser detected it by chance because of the strong concentration of radio-activity that came from it.
They took the body down to one of the small, quiet towns on the edge of one of the many blue lakes where the domed houses were like bright joyful jewels. They got the leathery, well-preserved body from the pressure suit.
“An old man,” one of them mused. “A very old man. From one of the lost sectors. I wonder how and why he came so very far from his home?”
“Wrecked a ship out there, probably,” one of the others said. “But he managed to get this far. It looks as though a small meteor fragment pierced his body. Here. You see?”
“Yes,” another of them said. “But what amazes me is that this old man picked this planet out of all the others. The only one in this entire sector that would sustain life.”
“Maybe he was just a very lucky old man. Yes ... a man who attains such an age was usually lucky. Or at least that is what they say about the lost sectors.”
“Maybe he knew the way here. Maybe he was here before—sometime.”
The other shook his head. “I don’t think so. They say some humans from that far sector did land here—but that’s probably only a myth. And if they did, it was well over a thousand years ago.”
Another said. “He has a fine face, this old man. A noble face. Whoever he is ... wherever he came from, he died bravely and he knew the way, though he never reached this haven of the lost alive.”
“Nor is it irony that he reached here dead,” said the Lake Chieftain. He had been listening and he stepped forward and raised his arm. “He was old. It is obvious that he fought bravely, that he had great courage, and that he knew the way. He will be given a burial suitable to his stature, and he will rest here among the brave.
“Let the women dance and the music play for this old man. Let the trumpets speak, and the rockets fly up. And let flowers be strewn over the path above which the women will carry him to rest.”
Security
By Poul Anderson
In a world where Security is all-important, nothing can ever be secure. A mountain-climbing vacation may wind up in deep Space. Or loyalty may prove to be high treason. But it has its rewards.
*
It had been a tough day at the lab, one of those days when nothing seems able to go right. And, of course, it had been precisely the day Hammond, the Efficiency Inspector, would choose to stick his nose in. Another mark in his little notebook—and enough marks like that meant a derating, and Control had a habit of sending derated labmen to Venus. That wasn’t a criminal punishment, but it amounted to the same thing. Allen Lancaster had no fear of it for himself; the sector chief of a Project was under direct Control jurisdiction rather than Efficiency, and Control was friendly to him. But he’d hate to see young Rogers get it—the boy had been married only a week now.
To top the day off, a report had come to Lancaster’s desk from Sector Seven of the Project. Security had finally cleared it for general transmission to sector chiefs—and it was the complete design of an electronic valve on which some of the best men in Lancaster’s own division, Sector Thirteen, had been sweating for six months. There went half a year’s work down the drain, all for nothing, and Lancaster would have that much less to show at the next Project reckoning.
He had cursed for several minutes straight, drawing the admiring glances of his assistants. It was safe enough for a high-ranking labman to gripe about Security—in fact, it was more or less expected. Scientists had their privileges.
One of these was a private three-room apartment. Another was an extra liquor ration. Tonight, as he came home, Lancaster decided to make a dent in the latter. He’d eaten at the commissary, as usual, but hadn’t stayed to talk. All the way home in the tube, he’d been thinking of that whiskey and soda.
Now it sparkled gently in his glass and he sighed, letting a smile crease his lean homely face. He was a tall man, a little stooped, his clothes—uniform and mufti alike—perpetually rumpled. Solitary by nature, he was still unmarried in spite of the bachelor tax and had only one son. The boy was ten years old now, must be in the Youth Guard; Lancaster wasn’t sure, never having seen him.
It was dark outside his windows, but a glow above the walls across the skyway told of the city pulsing and murmuring beyond. He liked the quiet of his evenings alone and had withstood a good deal of personal and official pressure to serve in various patriotic organizations. “Damn it,” he had explained, “I’m not doing routine work. I’m on a Project, and I need relaxation of my own choosing.”
He selected a tape from his library. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik lilted joyously about him as he found a chair and sat down. Control hadn’t gotten around to making approved lists of music yet, though you’d surely never hear Mozart in a public place. Lancaster got a cigar from the humidor and collapsed his long gaunt body across chair and hassock. Smoke, whiskey, good music—they washed his mind clean of worry and frustration; he drifted off in a mist of unformed dreams. Yes, it wasn’t such a bad world.
*
The mail-tube went ping! and he opened his eyes, swearing. For a moment he was tempted to let the pneumo-roll lie where it fell, but habit was too strong. He grumbled his way over to the basket and took it out.
The stamp across it jerked his mind to wakefulness. OfiSal, sEkret, fOr adresE OnlE—and a Security seal!
After a moment he swallowed his thumping heart. It couldn’t be serious, not as far as he personally was concerned anyway. If that had been the case, a squad of monitors would have been at the door. Not this message tube.... He broke the seal and unfolded the flimsy with elaborate care. Slowly, he scanned it. Underneath the official letterhead, the words were curt. “Dis iz A matr uv urjensE and iz top sEkret. destrY Dis letr and Du tUb kontAniN it. tUmOrO, 15 jUn, at 2130 ourz, U wil gO tU Du obzurvatOrE, A nIt klub at 5730 viktOrE strEt, and ask Du hedwAtr fOr A mistr Berg. U wil asUm Dat hE iz an Old frend uv yOrz and Dat Dis iz A sOSal EveniN. Du UZUal penaltEz ar invOkt fOr fAlUr tU komplI.”
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