The Seventh Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®. Robert Silverberg
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Take-off was delayed almost twenty-four hours until a major flare-storm had cleared the Earth’s orbit. Even so, the Van Allen belts were still so active that we had to make our exit through the North Polar Gap.
It was a miserable flight. Apart from the usual trouble with weightlessness, we were all groggy with anti-radiation drugs. The ship was already over Farside before I took much interest in the proceedings, so I missed the sight of Earth dropping below the horizon. Nor was I really sorry. I wanted no reminders, and intended to think only of the future. Yet I could not shake off that feeling of guilt; I had deserted someone who loved and trusted me, and was no better than those who had abandoned Laika when she was a puppy, beside the dusty road to Palomar.
The news that she was dead reached me a month later.
There was no reason that anyone knew; the Andersons had done their best, and were very upset. She had just lost interest in living, it seemed. For a while, I think I did the same; but work is a wonderful anodyne, and my program was just getting under way.
Though I never forgot Laika, in a little while the memory ceased to hurt.
Then why had it come back to haunt me, five years later, on the far side of the Moon? I was searching my mind for the reason, when the metal building around me quivered as if under the impact of a heavy blow.
I reacted without thinking. I was already closing the helmet of my emergency suit when the foundations slipped and the wall tore open with a short-lived scream of escaping air. Because I had automatically pressed the General Alarm button we lost only two men, despite the fact that the tremor—the worst ever recorded on Farside—cracked all three of the Observatory’s pressure-domes.
It is hardly necessary for me to say that I do not believe in the supernatural. Everything that happened has a perfectly rational explanation, obvious to any man with the slightest knowledge of psychology. In the Second San Francisco earthquake, Laika was not the only dog to sense approaching disaster. Many such cases were reported. And on Farside, my own memories must have given me that heightened awareness, when my never-sleeping subconscious detected the first faint vibrations from within the Moon.
The human mind has strange and labyrinthine ways of going about its business. It knew the signal that would most swiftly rouse me to the knowledge of danger. There is nothing more to it than that; though in a sense one could say that Laika woke me on both occasions, there is no mystery about it, no miraculous warning across the gulf that neither man nor dog can ever bridge.
Of that I am sure, if I am sure of anything.
Yet sometimes I wake now, in the silence of the Moon, and wish that the dream could have lasted a few seconds longer—so that I could have looked just once more into those luminous brown eyes, brimming with an unselfish, undemanding love I have found nowhere else on this world, or on any other.
WHY I LEFT HARRY’S ALL-NIGHT HAMBURGERS, by Lawrence Watt-Evans
Harry’s was a nice place—probably still is. I haven’t been back lately. It’s a couple of miles off I-79, a few exits north of Charleston, near a place called Sutton. Used to do a pretty fair business until they finished building the Interstate out from Charleston and made it worthwhile for some fast-food joints to move in right next to the cloverleaf; nobody wanted to drive the extra miles to Harry’s after that. Folks used to wonder how old Harry stayed in business, as a matter of fact, but he did all right even without the Interstate trade. I found that out when I worked there.
Why did I work there, instead of at one of the fast-food joints? Because my folks lived in a little house just around the corner from Harry’s, out in the middle of nowhere—not in Sutton itself, just out there on the road. Wasn’t anything around except our house and Harry’s place. He lived out back of his restaurant. That was about the only thing I could walk to in under an hour, and I didn’t have a car.
This was when I was sixteen. I needed a job, because my dad was out of work again and if I was gonna do anything I needed my own money. Mom didn’t mind my using her car—so long as it came back with a full tank of gas and I didn’t keep it too long. That was the rule. So I needed some work, and Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers was the only thing within walking distance. Harry said he had all the help he needed—two cooks and two people working the counter, besides himself. The others worked days, two to a shift, and Harry did the late night stretch all by himself. I hung out there a little, since I didn’t have anywhere else, and it looked like pretty easy work—there was hardly any business, and those guys mostly sat around telling dirty jokes. So I figured it was perfect.
Harry, though, said that he didn’t need any help.
I figured that was probably true, but I wasn’t going to let logic keep me out of driving my mother’s car. I did some serious begging, and after I’d made his life miserable for a week or two Harry said he’d take a chance and give me a shot, working the graveyard shift, midnight to eight A.M., as his counterman, busboy, and janitor all in one.
I talked him down to 7:30, so I could still get to school, and we had us a deal. I didn’t care about school so much myself, but my parents wanted me to go, and it was a good place to see my friends, y’know? Meet girls and so on.
So I started working at Harry’s, nights. I showed up at midnight the first night, and Harry gave me an apron and a little hat, like something from a diner in an old movie, same as he wore himself. I was supposed to wait tables and clean up, not cook, so I don’t know why he wanted me to wear them, but he gave them to me, and I needed the bucks, so I put them on and pretended I didn’t notice that the apron was all stiff with grease and smelled like something nasty had died on it a few weeks back. And Harry—he’s a funny old guy, always looked fiftyish, as far back as I can remember. Never young, but never getting really old, either, y’know? Some people do that, they just seem to go on forever. Anyway, he showed me where everything was in the kitchen and back room, told me to keep busy cleaning up whatever looked like it wanted cleaning, and told me, over and over again, like he was really worried that I was going to cause trouble, “Don’t bother the customers. Just take their orders, bring them their food, and don’t bother them. You got that?”
“Sure,” I said. “I got it.”
“Good,” he said. “We get some funny guys in here at night, but they’re good customers, most of them, so don’t you screw up with anyone. One customer complains, one customer stiffs you for the check, and you’re out of work, you got that?”
“Sure,” I said, though I’ve gotta admit I was wondering what to do if some cheapskate skipped without paying. I tried to figure how much of a meal would be worth paying for in order to keep the job, but with taxes and all it got too tricky for me to work out, and I decided to wait until the time came, if it ever did.
Then Harry went back in the kitchen, and I got a broom and swept up out front a little until a couple of truckers came in and ordered burgers and coffee.
I was pretty awkward at first, but I got the hang of it after a little bit. Guys would come in, women, too, one or two at a time, and they’d order something, and Harry’d have it ready faster than you can say “cheese”, practically, and they’d eat it, and wipe their mouths, and go use the john, and drive off, and none of them said a damn thing to me except their orders, and I didn’t say anything back except “Yes, sir,” or “Yes, ma’am,” or “Thank you, come again.” I figured they were all just truckers who didn’t like the fast-food places.
That was what it was like at first, anyway, from midnight to about one, one-thirty, but then things would slow down. Even the truckers were off the roads by then, I guess, or they didn’t want to get that far off the Interstate, or they’d all had lunch, or something. Anyway, by about two that first night I was thinking it was pretty clear why Harry didn’t think he needed help on this shift, when the door opened and the little bell rang.
I jumped a bit; that bell startled me, and I turned around, but then I turned back to look at Harry, ’cause I’d seen him out of the corner of my eye, y’know, and he’d got this worried look on his face, and he was