Ten (Stories) to The Stars

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  Kath Devlin was in on what was done to him afterwards. There were tears in her eyes when she told Gannet, later.

  "His legs and one hand were artificial already, Norb," she told Gannet at the clinic. "The rest was really just the same. It was a thing he'd worked on, himself. Make the whole body artificial. Except the brain—which was all that could be salvaged. Put the latter in a case of nourishing fluid, kept warm. Blood is purified, re-oxygenated, supplied with food. An apparatus to do all that can be self-contained, compact, atom powered—operating for months without attention. Then all you do is hook the neuronic contacts to the outlet nerves of the brain—motor and sensory. Then the brain can control and live by a robot form. That is what will be done, Norb. It will take time to set everything up, and hook it together. Wonderful eh? And scientific and horrible!"

  She began to cry. Gannet patted her shoulder. He didn't feel that he should take her in his arms. Not remembering how Glodosky had felt about her.

  He got busy with the salvage and reconstruction work, making sure that there were no more dangerous unknowns in the bulk of the asteroid, by means of delicate radar. It was an oversight on the parts of many besides himself that among the asteroids such precautions had hitherto been neglected. He got busy with the salvage and reconstruction because it had to be done, and he had to be doing something while he waited.

  It was weeks before the doctors began the hookup work on Glodosky's doped brain. His mind was perhaps the first to submit to a complete substitution of mechanical form, after an accident. That was what this system of replacement of limbs and organs by mechanical equivalents was for. And here was its acme.

  Those doctors were more than doctors—they were artists. Glodosky, lying in a bed, at last looked almost as he had been—a squat young man with broad, irregular features, and sandy hair—of glass-fibre, now. There would be no shock of horror, or of immediate and obvious loss at awakening. He would not know at first that he had changed at all. That would come on him slowly, when he discovered things about himself—that he did not breathe or eat, for instance. Or that his voice was made by a tympanic buzzer in his throat. He could modulate these tones with his lips and tongue of soft plastic. He could smile if he felt like it. But his plastic eyes could not weep.

  Once he muttered in his sleep. "Did the Devlins get out of danger? And Gannet? And Kath? Kath!... Kath honey..."

  Gannet and Kath were among those who heard and winced.

  Glodosky was awake a moment later. He felt of his body, looked unbelieving. "Why," he stammered. "I'm like I was... How can it be?" Then his expression turned sheepish—almost embarrassed at his optimism. "No—of course not," he went on. "It's just that good... I ought to know, shouldn't I? Anyway I couldn't have gotten through what I remember, all in one piece. Hell, though—it's a fine job... Hi, folks! Hello, Kath!..." He even smiled a little, before the reaction came. His face contorted, and a scratchy sob came out of him.

  A physician pressed a bulb. A sedative went into the blood that fed Glodosky's brain. "He has a grasp of things as they are," the doctor said. "With that kind of reaction, he'll adjust... Let him sleep some more..."

  Glodosky sold himself a purpose the next day. That is, he did so for Gannet to hear. "l had a funny idea that something like this might happen to me," he said. "And there are big advantages. I don't need to breathe air. My body will never suffer from cold. I don't need food or outside water. I'm not nearly as subject to injury as you are. I don't need a space suit even. I could last as long as my brain does. So I'm getting a ship, and see if I can reach the farthest planets. Go down into the ammonia and methane blizzards of Uranus, maybe. Where a man of flesh and blood would have a tough time. Maybe the jinx is busted this time, Gannet. That nameless thing that statistical science recognizes... That some people are prone to accidents."

  Glodosky looked actually eager. He had lost most of being a man. Physical love was out of his reach. Yet he had become a little like a minor deity. But you couldn't probe into his mind. Gannet was among those who saw him wave jauntily, several days later, as he was fitted with improved Harmon jets. He flashed away on a streamer of blue fire a minute later. So here was another weird windup.

  Kath had tears in her eyes again. Gannet burned to take her in his arms, comfort her. But doing that didn't fit, now. He growled and went away—he didn't know entirely why.

  He couldn't talk.

  Later Kath talked to him. "It always was just you—with me, Norb. Oh, I know how you feel. He's your pal, and he had terrible luck, and you think he loved me, and though you know there's no sense in it, you can't help but feel it's unfair to him..."

  "That's part of it, Kath," Gannet admitted. "But it's only a detail. The final twist..."

  Devlin, working to piece together an ancient sunray tower, talked to him, too. "So we had a big accident out here," he said. "A few hundred people were killed. But more than two-thirds of our project is still intact. In history, there have been lots of accidents. How many times, at home, has Vesuvius erupted, and how many times were new cities built up again, afterwards? Maybe that case is even stupid. Vesuvius is a known danger spot. Here it's not like that. We just have to be careful, that's all. So why be down at the mouth?"

  Gannet grinned naturally enough. "I'm not down at the mouth, exactly, Devlin," he said. "It's quite a bit different from that..."

  He went to the small house he occupied by himself, and tried to think things out. A little, he was bitter. Not much. But the drives were out of him. He felt flat and confused. His trouble didn't seem to lie in philosophy, either. Life, to him, was simple and elemental in meaning. To take what came, to go after things, to taste everything, bitter and sweet, to feel that no part of time was an empty plateau.

  So far he had accomplished all of that, and expected to accomplish more. Plot, as in a story, he did not especially look for—though perhaps it was there. His race he did not glorify especially as a space conquering people. He knew that here it had been antedated, and among the stars there must be millions of other races, as knowing and aggressive, or more so. They spread from world to world. Like a growth of mold. And yet maybe it was magnificent. The thrill was in the doing.

  None of these thoughts had changed in him, basically. Yet he was mixed up. Over the wreckage of the far past—the failure of two great races—from Mars and the Old Planet—races who must have lived more or less by his own code, his own people were spreading, perhaps toward success. He thought of that. And again, of Benrus, the war flier who should have lived, Tobias who had gone mad for denying himself space, and of Phelps, the rich boy, who had achieved the ultimate poverty of death. Then there was Lenz, not especially industrious or clever, who was rich, now, with metal refineries and space ship factories, and what not—rich beyond Croesus' wildest dreams. Then there was Devlin, the sheltered kid who had found another kind of success in a place where it seemed that he could never belong. But he had impressed his inner self on space instead. Making a mood that had a little of the raggedness and charm of the south seas. Harwin, the soldier, the roustabout, the casual nerveless adventurer, was the only one who was not a surprise. Still asteroid-hopping. And Glodosky was the greatest surprise of all. The schlemiel who turned demigod with a sad touch, and hurtled farther out toward the stars than anyone. Who, then, was left out? Thomas. Little Thomas, reported now to be lecturing about Venus and Mercury on Earth. And Roscoe. And, of course, himself.

  Gannet saw Roscoe, who came out to see if his friends were all right after the accident, the next day. Roscoe, it seemed was in on the space ship factory deal with Lenz, and was the mainspring of it. According to report. But he didn't say much about it...

  "I figure on entering politics, Gannet," he said, grinning. "To bring better law and order out here... And I got a new hobby. Making violins. From wood from the Old Planet. Properly treated, that space cured wood can give wonderful tone. I've made three fiddles. Wish I'd brought one along. Used to hate music lessons when I was a kid."

 
This was Roscoe, the football man.

  "Ever been back to Earth?" Gannet asked.

  "Sure. Twice. Had to buy machinery. Why?"

  "Just thinking about it," Gannet answered.

  That seemed to be his guiding impulse, now. To go home. To chuck everything. It wasn't that he was bitter or hurt or anything—very much. Just flat and mixed up and fuzzy in his head. He was just twenty-six, now. Good night—was he old and burned out already? No—not exactly. He figured that he could take any kind of luck that came his way. Anything.

  He told Kath, rather formally. "I won't promise I'll be back," he said.

  She nodded. "l know, Norb," she said to him quietly. "I'll wait and see."

  Devlin didn't protest his decision, either. "Lots of folks are drifting back, Gannet," he said. "That'll always happen. I'm glad one way that you're making this trip. Davy'll have a traveling companion. To Earth..."

  Gannet turned a startled gaze toward Jeanne. She looked worried.

  "Davy is six, now," she said. "We want him to go to school—back home. "

  It seemed kind of odd to him for a moment—sending a kid away from his mother, so young.

  "Oh—break 'em in tough from the start," he laughed. "Well—I guess it's best."

  "Davy won't be much trouble—on the liner, or anywhere," Jeanne said.

  Gannet worked two months more on the restoration of his asteroid. He didn't see Kath so often. And whenever he did—well—they weren't exactly cool to each other. Just withdrawn. But they clung to each other tight, at the last moment. Kath didn't go along with her brother and Jeanne, to see him and Davy off from Ceres.

  Gannet didn't really begin to get acquainted with the kid until after the big ship was in space. He was a wiry, sun-browned little guy, with sullen lips. Gannet had never had the time to try to know Davy. He felt embarrassed by the effort to be friendly. But the kid helped him.

  "Are you scared, too, Gannet?" he asked.

  "Maybe," Gannet answered. "Of what are you scared?"

  "Of the Earth," Davy told him. "Some of the men at home say awful things about it. That its gravity almost breaks your legs. That its air almost smothers you. That you can drown in the oceans. I'm scared of Mars, too—but not so much..."

  The kid's fright of Earth added a new touch to Gannet's inner confusion. For to him it was hard to see how the home planet could scare anyone. Of course the answer was simple; still, it did not help him very much to realize that the asteroids were home to Davy, while Earth was a Great Unknown. Still it remained emotionally, a strange reversal of forces. An elusive thing of viewpoint, beyond reason.

  "Some men like to pull the legs of young fellas like you, Davy," Gannet laughed. '"Don't listen. Me—I was just the opposite from you. Scared, not of Earth, but of Mars and the asteroids. Maybe I still am—deep down."

  The liner passed Mars without landing. It came down at the Chicago space port. Davy was delivered into the care of a young man from his school. Then Gannet was free.

  He didn't bother to look the city over much, though it had soared higher and sprawled wider in seven years. Only seven. Not ten, as someone had said long ago, setting a date for a comparing of notes among ten men. But it seemed a naive idea, now... Chicago was fast becoming one of the capitals of a spreading space empire.

  Gannet headed north by train. Far north. To an island in a lake. The island had belonged to his father. It was his, now. The place had a cut-off feeling. There were no paths left on it, except the tiny ones of small animals, under the brush. All the trees had too many small tangled branches. The shack was half fallen in. Here was the same world, of centuries ago. The marsh at one edge of the island couldn't have changed much since the time when only Indians had hunted in it. Mosquitoes swarmed from its summer lushness. Frogs croaked. And an occasional heron swooped up from it with a primordial cry, and a silhouette against the sky that suggested the pterodactyls. All time seemed to linger here, like a static check-point.

  Gannet puttered with hammer and saw, repairing the shack. He fished. And the weeks went by. And he pondered. Yes, maybe it was time that he was trying to get hold of. Restless, moving time, making its changes. And the summers he'd spent here, long ago, before the war, seemed like a kind of norm or starting point to him. Space travel had just begun. It hadn't affected average living very much. Other planets still were remote...

  Now he would look up into the August sky soon after sunset, and it was much the same as it had been long ago. Mars was red in the southeast. Just a speck. How could you think of that as a world? A place he had been to? Almost died? A desert planet.

  Out there, much farther, and not visible at all, was the Asteroid Belt. Much more significant to him, but lost in the distance beyond the deepening blue of the sky, as if it didn't exist. Yet the Devlins were out there. Roscoe. Lenz, Harwin. And Kath, whom he loved... Infinitely farther, if he still existed at all, was a machine with the brain and form of a man. Glodosky it still was called.

  Gannet began to see his trouble. Not exhaustion. Not the griefs and trouble that came with success, and were part of living. No. Time had been changing things too fast. So there was an emotional indigestion, after too much newness, too many surprises. He was gorged on living. Maybe that was good. He hadn't missed much. But instinct drove you toward a time and place of relaxation, where you could think things out, shake them into their proper order, and grasp the rushing march outward.

  He began to see.... Still he stayed on the island far into the autumn, going into the nearest town every day for his mail. And finally a message came, printed from signals that crossed space at the speed of light from Ceres:

  “Dear Gannet: I made it; I’m back. I skimmed along beside Saturn’s rings. I was deep in a blizzard of Uranus. And I was clear out to Pluto. Some meteors from a broken comet riddled my ship. One even went through my chest. But I fixed myself up. Pluto is smaller than the Earth—some. I stood on its frozen snow of air and left my tracks on its mountaintops. It’s bleak and dark, Gannet. But there could be the sun-towers that Devlin figured out. There is oxygen, and carbon dioxide—congealed, of course. And some of the mountain tops are ice mixed with rock. Thaw Pluto out, and it would be almost a second Earth...”

  In the message Gannet read Glodosky’s elation and triumph, that could compensate for what he had lost. But he read a lot more in the coming years.

  He returned to the island, and began to pack. He was a little like Devlin then, mumbling to himself, anticipating in reverie coming moments; small and personal, yet part of a bigness.

  “You know I’d be back, Kath. No matter what..."

  The End

  ******************************

  Dawn of the Demigods,

  by Raymond Z. Gallun

  Planet Stories Summer 1954

  Novella - 25287 words - later expanded as People Minus X,Simon & Schuster 1957 / Ace 1958 - 52500 words

  As unheralded as ghosts, but as significant as a

  new dawn of history, there came to Earth from distant

  Ganymede's glowing crescent—three micro-androids,

  minuscule beings, carrying the moot treasure of immortality.

  I

  Somebody invented the first locomotive. Then came the nuclear bomb. I guess that people were somewhat scared of newness both times.

  Mostly, it has been worse ever since.

  World War III was also before my day. But then fear, the protective emotion, played a reasonable part. So no cities were actually vaporized. But our side came out the victors with bombers so high-flying that they were already atom-propelled rocket ships of space. We had artificial satellites circling the Earth, and a fortress on the Moon.

  I missed the first exploration of the solar system, too. There was hot Mercury, carbon dioxide-smothered Venus; Mars and its ruins and quiet colors; and what was left of Planet X, whose people destroyed the Martians in war, though their planet itself got blown all to bits in the same struggle, its fragments now being known as the asteroid
s.

  The moons of Jupiter and Saturn were also invaded by men, as were the frozen-methane-and-ammonia blizzards of Uranus and Neptune, and the frigid mountain peaks of Pluto, farthest world of all.

  There were always yarns about "Little Men" and whatnot, of course. Yet no contemporary intelligent races were found across space. There were just queer skeletons and dried up corpses millions of years old. Rusting on Mars, or floating free and broken among the Asteroids, were the remains of inventions, and other cultural evidences. Space ships had wandered as far as Pluto during those past ages, too; and various relics were left on this sphere or that. Scientific study of these things meant more speed for our technical progress in medicine, atomics, metallurgy, almost anything you could mention.

  Three cheers for us, and wasn't progress wonderful? But I guess plenty of folks felt dumb and slow and confused.

  I, Charles Harver, was born in Chicago, March 9th, 2014. But in my earliest, murky memories, Earth was only a place known from television, picture books, and the nostalgic remarks of my parents. We had a house and a flower and vegetable garden under a transparent airdome of dark blue plastic. The sun would shine among the stars for what I heard was fourteen days; then, for another two weeks the solar lamps would burn in the dome top.