Galaxy Science Fiction Super Pack #2. Edgar Pangborn
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spin through the golden mists and crystal screams seemed to splinter in his mind.
For a fragment of time the KM units ceased their belabored sobbing and the fear drained from Roberto. In the instant he slammed the jump bar and they were in their own Black Space.
“We’ll never get home this way,” the navigator said. He was trembling with shock.
Roberto struggled to keep his own body from quivering. “I will take us home. We will dodge in and out of the two spaces. The danger seems unable to follow. Can you navigate such a course?”
*
The navigator was trembling violently and he began to sob. “What were they? So ma—magnificent ... and ... terrifying ... like great golden angels....”
“SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” Roberto screamed, his control shattering. He leaned to the limit of his pad straps and struck once and again at the navigator. Roberto pulled his hands back and crowded his anger and fear to the back of his mind. “Can you skip us home?” he again demanded of the navigator.
The man’s voice was steadier. “I’ll need three minutes in black each time to compute position and plot the next jump. But, yes, I can do it.”
“I make you a gift of three hours right now.” And perhaps more we will need, Roberto thought, to recover the courage for venturing again into the White Space. And my navigator spoke of angels but where were the faces and wings? And why did I also think of angels almost as if I felt a nebulous ancient memory of them? And do the others feel as my navigator and I?
They did! Roberto had gone around the ship carefully questioning his men. No matter how delicately he inquired, whenever he touched upon what they might have seen on the E-screen the fear would come into their eyes. Some spoke directly of heavenly creatures, others embarrassedly admitted such impressions and a few averted their eyes and denied such thoughts. But the words of them all were edged with terror and awe.
Roberto and his shaken crew were slowly regaining confidence. They had made a jump into the White Space and remained there for some hours before being frightened back into the Black by a vague alarm. Nothing more than a quivering needle and a lighter patch on an E-screen; but they had remained hidden in Black for many hours and now they were ready to make another jump.
Roberto pressed the jump bar, throwing them into White Space ... and the golden fury struck!!!! A-ROORRR-UH!!! A ROORRR-UH!!! The board blazed red. There were screams on the intercom. There was heat and savage bucking with a crashing and screeching tear of ultra-steel. The E-screens flared with a terrible molten dancing of golden fire. Roberto punched in the Omega beams in a shell pattern, cut them and snapped on the force shield in full crackling Power. It flared greenly against the golden furies. The reactive thrust slammed hard against the hull and the ship went hurtling end over end. Roberto slapped the jump bar but the ship remained trapped in the White Space. Blue energy licked along the heaving bulkheads and decks. There were more cries and an odor of scorched flesh, and the corpse of his first officer went spinning limply through the control cabin. Something wrenched loose and crunched heavily on Roberto’s leg before bouncing away. Too much red! Roberto cried within, looking from his crimsoning leg to the carmine lights of the board. He pounded his fists on the unresponsive jump bar. “Mama,” he whispered in agony, and suddenly something connected, and the tortured ship tumbled shudderingly into Black Space.
*
Mrs. Sanchez sat in the twilight with the darkened house at her back and unmovingly faced the mountains. She heard the jet whine of the taxi helicopter but could not see it because it landed in front of the house. She listened as the whine faded. And in the silence she heard an odd step that she could not recognize.
“Mama.”
The voice was different. There was no longer a smile under it. But it was Roberto’s.
She did not answer, but as she stood the noise of her chair brought him limping toward her. She started to move to him but he stopped abruptly and she suddenly felt a new bitter distance between them that mere steps could never cross. In the dusk she stared at his twisted leg.
“Roberto,” she whispered sadly.
“Call me Jacob,” he said harshly. “I have wrestled with angels.” He thrust out his crippled leg. “... and behold a man wrestled with him till morning. And when he saw that he could not overcome him he touched the sinew of his thigh and forthwith it shrank!”
With no triumph, but only a mother’s distressed remonstrance, Mrs. Sanchez softly wailed, “O Roberto, Roberto, I warned you. I told you.”
“Yes, Mama, you told me,” he said. “But you did not tell me the thing most important. You did not tell me that we are devils!”
She stared at him, uncomprehending.
“Yes, my fine, good Mama! With all your thoughts of heaven, we are a world of devils. How or why or from whence I do not yet know. But I am going back to the White Space to seek and I only come now to see you once more and say good-by ... and....” Roberto faltered and leaned toward her as if straining to see her face in the evening gloom that had almost deepened into night. “... and ... ask your blessing.” The words were hardly more than a whisper.
“Going back?” she said incredulously.
“I must.”
Anger was in her voice as she pointed to his leg. “Even with the mark of wrath you carry? You dare make more sacrilege?”
She turned to go into the house. Roberto limped a few steps after her. “Mama, as you love me, your blessing! For your son.”
She turned in the doorway, her face hard. “I can only pray for you.”
Roberto watched her go inside. No light appeared and he knew she would be kneeling before the shelf of holy things in the small flickering light of the votive candle. He made his way to the front of the house to the waiting heli-taxi. He looked back at the house.This is no longer my home, he thought. And then, a moment later: Was it ever?
He looked up at the stars and thought of the pure brilliance of White Space and the magnificent golden creatures. Why the sweet anguish in the depths of my being when I think of them and the white place? Why in spite of my fear am I drawn to it more than I am to this house which is my home? Home?
Roberto climbed into the machine and it moved upward a little closer to the stars before turning south.
Conditionally Human
By Walter M. Miller, Jr.
They were such cute synthetic creatures, it was impossible not to love them. Of course, that was precisely why they were dangerous!
There was no use hanging around after breakfast. His wife was in a hurt mood, and he could neither endure the hurt nor remove it. He put on his coat in the kitchen and stood for a moment with his hat in his hands. His wife was still at the table, absently fingering the handle of her cup and staring fixedly out the window at the kennels behind the house. He moved quietly up behind her and touched her silk-clad shoulder. The shoulder shivered away from him, and her dark hair swung shiningly as she shuddered. He drew his hand back and his bewildered face went slack and miserable.
“Honeymoon’s over, huh?”
She said nothing, but shrugged faintly.
“You knew I worked for the F.B.A.,” he said. “You knew I’d have charge of a district pound. You knew it before we got married.”
“I didn’t know you killed them,” she said venomously.
“I won’t have to kill many. Besides, they’re only animals.”
“Intelligent animals!”
“Intelligent as a human imbecile, maybe.”
“A small child is an imbecile. Would you kill a small