Ten (Stories) to The Stars

by Raymond Z. Gallun

  But knowing this didn't dampen Lisky's feeling of companionship, or the memory of other moments long ago, when he'd had other pooches. Wandering in the woods and in the marsh; finding his first wild-duck's nest. Sometimes he'd been cruel. But he'd turned a mud-hen loose once, after he'd healed its injured wing. Freedom was part of Nature, wasn't it? Important.

  Lisky was only dimly aware just then of his folks, the girl he loved, and the probable mighty future of mankind in regions beyond the Earth, which he was helping to build. Just now his mind and his deep pleasure were mostly elsewhere.

  First he lectured a little—more for fun than seriously:

  "Never be destructive, Snowdrop. You'll regret it. For instance, about these ruins and junk among the Asteroids. We've been as thoughtless as rats. We should be ashamed . . ."

  Lisky laughed. His gaze wandered toward where a jewel-like little sphere had vanished.

  "You're quite a mutt, Snowdrop," Lisky rambled on. "You caught Thorne with the goods. You sniffed a world out of his jacket."

  Snowdrop's ears had pricked up. He listened attentively, and seemed to understand everything.

  The first tiny splinter of frosty regret for what he had done seemed to add to Lisky's whimsical and contemplative enjoyment, rather than the opposite.

  "What should we have called it, Snowdrop?" Lisky joshed musingly. "Thornela, Snowdropia, or what?"

  Raw space was around them, silent and unbounded. But it was just the bigger side of Nature. For man and dog it was like vaster forests and hills to ramble over. The situation was as old as the first caveboy who had found a wolflike cub.

  Snowdrop kept looking at Lisky eagerly, and it seemed to the man that they shared the deepest and most fragile secrets of the Universe.

  "Your next space armor will have a hinged tailpiece, Snowdrop," Lisky stated.

  Tom Lisky was a strange guy. Or maybe not so strange.

  The End

  *********************************

  Here is a bonus non-genre story from Gallun:

  Final Rite,

  by Raymond Z. Gallun

  Collier's Weekly July 6 1946

  Vignette - 1294 words

  NOBODY had ever told George Morris what it is guys do with the pictures of the other girls they had known, after they have finally singled out The One and married her.

  Back here in his old room, to check out with the rest of his possessions, he was facing this problem himself. Somehow it wasn't as simple as it should be. I might send them back to the girls, if I knew all the addresses, he thought. I could tear them up, or put them in the wastebasket whole, or burn them separately in the ash tray. Or I suppose I could keep them. . . .

  But the first four solutions were somehow unkind. The last—well—to begin with, he didn't want those pictures anymore. Besides, it was just possible that keeping them would hurt Carol.

  A slight sadness tinged his original feeling of humor. The pictures he was fumbling with on the rickety dresser were only a small part of a greater cause. He knew a lot about farewells.

  When he was a kid, back in the Middle West, he had listened to train whistles, thrilling to the call of distances he'd see, and ambitions he'd realize, knowing that it was right for his kind to leave. But when the farm was sold, and the moment to shove off had come, homesickness had hit him. He had been nineteen, then. He was thirty, now.

  After leaving home, he had studied at an art school here in New York. Then, afflicted by horizon-fever and wanting exotic subjects to paint, he had managed to ship out as a merchant seaman. That had been his job, too—through the war and until he had come down with pneumonia, four months ago.

  Those years were sprinkled with goodbys. To pals like Johnny Evans; or Chuck Noel, who was dead. To ships. Once even to a tiger tomcat. A drifter could get attached to most anything.

  Hello—so long. Start and break. It got monotonous with repetition. Wanderlust dimmed to habit. You thought more and more often of lost permanence. The war emphasized a yearning—millions of men understood that. When your job was finished, you were free.

  George had followed his inclinations with conviction, but with full knowledge that they also meant goodby to a whole way of life. And after two torpedoings,he began to realize there was plenty that he wouldn't have cared to do over.

  He turned from the pictures on the dresser, and looked at another photo, framed in bronze, on the stand by the bed. Carol, his bride of a week, was a pert, definite person. But she could be whimsical. Thank the Lord she was not as beautiful as her likeness. But even in the picture, her gray eyes were warm. Once she had said, "I'm a romantic, too, George. I like travel. After all, I was in the Wac, and I saw Europe. We'll take trips together, when we want to, and can. But now I want to make a home for my guy. I want to go to work with him, watch the cat in the alley with him . . . "

  George was all for it. "Together" was a swell word, especially in deep moments. Even though you couldn't always expect it to be practical. That was why he'd come downtown alone in the subway, instead of in the car with Carol. But some dreg of loneliness still made him wish that she could follow his thoughts completely, now.

  He grinned, as he thought that this had to be his own hour. Mostly he wanted it to be. Carol would understand, of course, that hearing a ship whistle from the docks near by could cause an ache in him, and that thinking how Honolulu rose on the mountainsides or how flat the line of land was behind Alexandria could add a touch, now in this time of finality. But it might worry her groundlessly to know about it.

  EVEN this room held something for him, in departure. He'd lived here three months. Besides, it was one of a

  succession of shabby rooms that he'd had, at various times, in brownstone houses. It even reminded him of a lodginghouse on Evelyn Street, near the Surrey Docks of London, that he had known before the war. . . .

  No, of course, Carol couldn't follow all of his reverie. And could he ever expect her to understand why he did not quite want just to tear up those photos and snapshots on the dresser?

  A couple of those girls were good kids. There was only one in the bunch that he had gone around with really often, and she was only a cute little kewpie gold digger. George was glad that a surprising amount of his past love life was a sailor's myth. Torch-carrying kept even some seamen lonely. None of those girls could have touched Carol, as far as he was concerned. Still, they were a kind of center to all he was saying goodby to. He wanted to respect that.

  Leaving the pictures on the dresser was probably as good a way as any.

  Now he started to clear up the room. His magazines he stacked on the floor, for the landlady to throw out. He packed his clothes. He was careful with his bundle of water colors, reminders of the time when he thought he was going to tear newness and fame out of his knowledge of ships and of the places they went and of the men in their hot guts. Painting could continue to be his hobby. He packed the sample drawings that had landed him the job with Anson, glad of another kinship with Carol. She was a commercial artist, too.

  He pocketed his bankbook. His green seaman's passport and his certificates he put with the minor treasures he would keep: his box of foreign coins; the pictures of his mother, who had died twelve years ago; his snapshots of pals. For once he took his time, stowing his stuff.

  The doorbell rang. It was probably Carol, come to pick him up in the car, after having done her errands. He almost made a move to get those pictures off the dresser. But no, he wouldn't start hiding things. He went down to let Carol in, saying, "Come on up, hon. I'm almost ready."

  She was full of simple talk, now: the theater tickets she'd bought; some kidding about how she was spending his first pay check from Anson. "And we're going to have broiled chicken tonight, George," she said. It gave him good thoughts—getting supper together, knowing where everything belonged, in the cupboards at her small apartment that they were lucky to have. He kissed her, and hurried his search for possibly forgotten articles.

  "Well, that's that, hon,
" he said. She had picked up his smaller grip. "Hey! . . . I'll handle that!" he protested.

  SHE was looking at the girls. He had wanted to show them to her long ago, but had doubted the wisdom of it. Now he had a strange, taut feeling.

  Presently she turned and seemed to study him. Her brows were knit.

  "Do you want the pictures?" she asked.

  He couldn't quite read her pert smile. Maybe it was amused, warm. Maybe not.

  "I travel light, hon," he grunted.

  "Okay, George," she said seriously. "But is it so nice to leave them behind like that—uncovered?"

  Then she did something that brought him a rare moment and made him want to crush her to his heart. Maybe she was joshing, but she seemed to know perfectly what the last hour in this room had meant to him. Fascinated, he watched her small hands tuck the pictures, one by one, into the discarded magazines stacked on the floor. Each picture to a magazine. Gently.

  The End

  ******************************

  INTERVIEW: RAYMOND GALLUN

  by Jeffrey Elliot

  {from Thrust Summer 1981}

  In his Introduction to The Best of Raymond Z. Gallun, author John J. Pierce aptly states: “Few today appreciate the importance of his (Gallun's) role in the creation of modern science fiction. Few realize he was one of three men—along with John W. Campbell and Stanley G. Weinbaum—who did most to set in motion the evolution of science fiction from crude pulp fiction to a form increasingly imaginative and literate." Despite his pioneering achievements, Gallun has somehow failed to win the recognition that such contributions warrant. This is attributable, in large measure, to the fact that he has steadfastly eschewed publicity, preferring instead to let his work stand on its own. Now, fortunately, Gallun’s work is being rediscovered by a new generation of science-fiction enthusiasts, who are beginning to pay attention to the impressive accomplishments of this “Quiet Revolutionary."

  Born in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, in 1911, Raymond Gallun received his early education at the Beaver Dam public schools. Upon graduation from high school in 1928, he attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison, for one year, before the “horizon fever" hit him. As a youth, he held “lots of knocking around jobs," including working as a canner, seaman, English instructor to refugees from Nazi Germany, telephone solicitor, boatyard worker, and farm hand, among others. By then, except for language and literature courses at the Alliance Francaise. Paris, France, and at San Marcos University, Lima, Peru, his formal education was ended. Marrying late in life and in a somewhat more settled mood, Gallun lost his first wife, Frieda Talmey, to cancer in 1974, and with her his "best friend." Four years later, in storybook fashion, he married his boyhood sweetheart—Bertha Erickson—and set sail for a honeymoon around the world.

  Penning his first two science-fiction tales at the age of sixteen, Gallun broke into print in 1929 with “The Space Dwellers" in Science Wonder Stories and “The Crystal Ray" in Air Wonder Stories. In 1934, he began publishing regularly in F. Orlin Tremaine's Astounding Stories, and winning much reader praise for his still popular "Old Faithful" series, which includes “Old Faithful," "The Son of Old Faithful,” and “Child of the Stars." This series, like much of Gallun's later fiction, was built around a Martian and, subsequently, his son. However, it was not the "typical" Martian as portrayed by most writers of the period. Indeed, Gallun rejected the “bug-eyed monster" treatment of Martians in favor of aliens who were more intelligent and emotional.

  Raymond Gallun's first book-length novel, Passport to Jupiter, appeared in Startling Stories in 1950. It concerned the substitution of beautiful and safe dream sequences, artificially induced, for the hazards and discomforts of real living— and the effect of total decadence to mindlessness that resulted from this bemusingly attractive change. Not given then to the writing of long works, Gallun did not do another novel for several years. People Minus X was a Simon and Schuster hard-cover in 1957, and the following year it was half of an Ace-double paperback. Like Gallun's earlier stories, it was rich in ideas: the replacement of the natural, protoplasmic tissues in the human body with a new kind of living-tissue substance called vitaplasm, genetic-engineering in the design and production of various, frightening monsters, and a serious attempt to work out the problems of body-miniaturization. People Minus X was followed, in 1961, by The Planet Strappers, which explores a group of young adventurers of various personalities who join the rush to pioneer the solar system.

  The Eden Cycle (Ballantine) appeared in 1974. This novel, which Gallun considers his best published science-fiction work, is a much closer examination of the dream-sequence idea, which he presented in the much earlier Passport to Jupiter. Given the means, by benign aliens, to create a boundless dream universe, in which anything is possible, realistic or fantastic—but usually in sensory terms indistinguishable from reality—people can change the dream-sequence they are following, simply by wishing. Thus, there is a boundless range of options. But is that what people want? Do they even know what they want? The many adventures of The Eden Cycle make up, as their main purpose, an exploration of the human psyche. This “what-if” story poses that ultimate question: What is the meaning of life?

  From about 1940, Gallun’s science-fiction appearances began to become sporadic, due to other interests and concerns. Exempted from military service, owing to a kidney damaged in a childhood fall from a tree, he spent the World War II years, first as a civilian employee of the U.S. Corps of Engineers in the Pacific, and later as a marine-blacksmith at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard, and thus did not write any science fiction. Further wanderings and activities extended this hiatus until the late 1940s, when, for a while, he again became intensively active as a science-fiction scribe. But in the mid-1950s, beset by waning enthusiasm, he once more retired from science fiction to the steadier life of a technical writer, and devoting interim-time to his lifelong passion—world travel. An inveterate traveller, Gallun has visited seventy-six countries, having recently returned from a three-week jaunt to the People’s Republic of China, where he visited Peking, Kun Ming, Xian, and environs. Between 1961 and 1974, Gallun wrote no science fiction at all.

  During the course of his sporadic career as a science-fiction writer, extending back fifty years, Gallun has published 120-odd stories and books, though most of them long ago. A prolific writer during his intervals of activity, his work appeared in virtually every science fiction magazine of those times, among them Astounding Science-Fiction, Amazing Stories, Marvel Tales, Wonder Stories, Startling Stories, Planet Stories, and Galaxy Science Fiction. His pseudonyms include "Dow Elstar," "E.V. Raymond," "Arthur Allport," and "William Callahan."

  Now sixty-eight years old, Raymond Gallun resides with his new bride in Forest Hills, New York, where he has once again resumed writing science fiction. Asked to describe his daily regimen, he observes: “Lately, I’ve been rough-drafting with pencil—feeling freer that way—then finishing on the typewriter. Just now I’m trying for shorter science fiction, while I'm subconsciously cooking on another book or two. When I’m going good, I’m busy a lot of hours a day—say from 8:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m., with a couple of hour breaks." Surrounded by shelves of books, both his and others’, and a lifetime of memorabilia and collectibles, Gallun finds himself refreshed for his first interest—science fiction. Those who know and love his work can only be pleased.

  Thrust: Looking back, can you recall your earliest attempts to write?

  Gallun: Yes. In the fifth grade, I got a notebook and put myself on schedule to write most every night—on something called the “Phantom Dahabeyeh”—rubbish, of course. Our fifth grade teacher read us Tarzan of the Apes, for a half hour after lunch, and introduced us kids to Edgar Rice Burroughs. I took his stuff to heart, and thought it might be nice to be a scribe.

  Thrust: What was it about science fiction that most appealed to you as a young reader?

  Gallun: A lonely rural setting, with natural things all around, and the presence of books, can liven t
he imagination, and provide an opportunity for pondering, though it may have other defects.

  Thrust: Once you made the decision to write professionally, why did you choose science fiction as a field in which to specialize?

  Gallun: Anybody with an extensive fantasy life is a candidate for scribbling. Reading is the borrowing of fantasy, of somebody else’s fantasies, real or imagined; the step from there, to constructing your own, isn't very great. And if they’re good enough, you're tempted to put them down on paper, and become puffed up by the imageries you’ve made and want others to look at and maybe admire! Of course, progression to Burroughs’ Mars books was automatic, and I had a broad interest in things natural and scientific—partly from genes, I suppose, part lonesome farm-kid. The mechanics of interest, first how it works basically, and then why it finds a specialty, remains an intriguing puzzle to me. I wasn’t all natural science, of course; that first interminably long effort concerned Egyptology. And as for market objectives, I would have been as happy to make American Mercury or True Story, as say, Weird Tales or Amazing Stories. But science fiction was less competitive, and considerably more in tune with my abilities and experiences—at least of then! And I did get a lot more charge out of H.G. Wells’ stuff, than say, Sinclair Lewis or Edna Ferber. He was more real to me than Burroughs; he got hold of things a lot more convincingly. I could feel that what he was writing about could be, and I was there. Jules Verne’s stuff had too many improbables, which spoiled the dreams he projected.