“But that was years ago. You’ve used up your chance.”
“Have I now? The clause doesn’t say a word about how soon a man has to take his trip back; it just says he’s got it coming to him. Go look it up. Skipper. If I’m wrong, I’ll not only walk out on my two legs, I’ll beg your humble pardon in front of your crew. Go on — look it up. Be a sport.”
Rhysling could feel the man’s glare, but he turned and stomped out of the compartment. Rhysling knew that he had used his blindness to place the Captain in an impossible position, but this did not embarrass Rhysling — he rather enjoyed it.
Ten minutes later the siren sounded, he heard the orders on the bull horn for Up-Stations. When the soft sighing of the locks and the slight pressure change in his ears let him know that take-off was imminent he got up and shuffled down to the power room, as he wanted to be near the jets when they blasted off. He needed no one to guide him in any ship of the Hawk class.
Trouble started during the first watch. Rhysling had been lounging in the inspector’s chair, fiddling with the keys of his accordion and trying out a new version of Green Hills.
“Let me breathe unrationed air again
Where there’s no lack nor dearth”
And “something, something, something ‘Earth’” — it would not come out right. He tried again.
“Let the sweet fresh breezes heal me
As they rove around the girth
Of our lovely mother planet,
Of the cool green hills of Earth.”
That was better, he thought. “How do you like that, Archie?” he asked over the muted roar.
“Pretty good. Give out with the whole thing.” Archie Macdougal, Chief Jetman, was an old friend, both spaceside and in bars; he had been an apprentice under Rhysling many years and millions of miles back.
Rhysling obliged, then said, “You youngsters have got it soft. Everything automatic. When I was twisting her tail you had to stay awake.”
“You still have to stay awake.” They fell to talking shop and Macdougal showed him the direct response damping rig which had replaced the manual vernier control which Rhysling had used. Rhysling felt out the controls and asked questions until he was familiar with the new installation. It was his conceit that he was still a jetman and that his present occupation as a troubadour was simply an expedient during one of the fusses with the company that any man could get into.
“I see you still have the old hand damping plates installed,” he remarked, his agile fingers flitting over the equipment.
“All except the links. I unshipped them because they obscure the dials.”
“You ought to have them shipped. You might need them.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think—” Rhysling never did find out what Macdougal thought for it was at that moment the trouble tore loose. Macdougal caught it square, a blast of radioactivity that burned him down where he stood.
Rhysling sensed what had happened. Automatic reflexes of old habit came out. He slapped the discover and rang the alarm to the control room simultaneously. Then he remembered the unshipped links. He had to grope until he found them, while trying to keep as low as he could to get maximum benefit from the baffles. Nothing but the links bothered him as to location. The place was as light to him as any place could be; he knew every spot, every control, the way he knew the keys of his accordion.
“Power room! Power room! What’s the alarm?”
“Stay out!” Rhysling shouted. “The place is ‘hot.’” He could feel it on his face and in his bones, like desert sunshine.
The links he got into place, after cursing someone, anyone, for having failed to rack the wrench he needed. Then he commenced trying to reduce the trouble by hand. It was a long job and ticklish. Presently he decided that the jet would have to be spilled, pile and all.
First he reported. “Control!”
“Control aye aye!”
“Spilling jet three — emergency.”
“Is this Macdougal?”
“Macdougal is dead. This is Rhysling, on watch. Stand by to record.”
There was no answer; dumbfounded the Skipper may have been, but he could not interfere in a power room emergency. He had the ship to consider, and the passengers and crew. The doors had to stay closed.
The Captain must have been still more surprised at what Rhysling sent for record. It was:
We rot in the molds of Venus,
We retch at her tainted breath.
Foul are her flooded jungles,
Crawling with unclean death.”
Rhysling went on cataloguing the Solar System as he worked, “—harsh bright soil of Luna—”,”—Saturn’s rainbow rings—”,”—the frozen night of Titan—”, all the while opening and spilling the jet and fishing it clean. He finished with an alternate chorus —
“We’ve tried each spinning space mote
And reckoned its true worth:
Take us back again to the homes of men
On the cool, green hills of Earth.”
—then, almost absentmindedly remembered to tack on his revised first verse:
“The arching sky is calling
Spacemen back to their trade.
All hands! Stand by! Free falling!
And the lights below us fade.
Out ride the sons of Terra,
Far drives the thundering jet,
Up leaps the race of Earthmen,
Out, far, and onward yet—”
The ship was safe now and ready to limp home shy one jet. As for himself, Rhysling was not so sure. That “sunburn” seemed sharp, he thought. He was unable to see the bright, rosy fog in which he worked but he knew it was there. He went on with the business of flushing the air out through the outer valve, repeating it several times to permit the level of radioaction to drop to something a man might stand under suitable armor. While he did this he sent one more chorus, the last bit of authentic Rhysling that ever could be:
“We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.”
WHY I SELECTED THE LOST RACE
Of all the tasks a writer can he asked to perform, he is surest to fail when he tries to name his “best” story. So in naming The Lost Race I specify that it is merely my favorite story at the moment. I hedge further by saying I hope to do better next week—or next year.
I like the yarn because it gave me a chance to talk about so many of my pet theories, of which one or two may even have sense to them. A moon-rocket is impractical though not impossible at the moment simply because the fuel is too cheap, by the pound. The best rocket-fuel we’ve got hasn’t too many times the energy-content of coal, and its value per pound is proportionate. Produce a fuel that is really practical and safe for a space-ship, and you’ll have a fuel that steamship companies will bid up to almost any price you can name, because with it they can carry cargo in the space now occupied by coal-bunkers and oil-tanks. In terms of light-years of travel, of course a ship’s fuel will be worth more than the ship itself! Which is one of the notions I wanted to play with.
Another is the matter of tedium in space-travel. Human beings being what they are, I think that sheer boredom is going to be the second biggest problem awaiting us in space-travel, fuel being the first. Also I had fun sorting out my ideas about precognition. Rhine’s work is promising, but I suspect that complete success would make us very sorry.
Most of all, though, I enjoyed working around to the very last sentence of the story. One finds a craftsmanlike satisfaction in having the last word of all wrap everything up in a neat package. This whole yarn leads up to the last sentence, and the point of the entire story is missing until the very last word. I like that. It isn’t too often that I manage it.
But there is one more thing. In one sense or another, there really was a Lost Race. And—poor devils!—1 suspect that they’d have felt pretty much the way the Lost Race
of my yarn did, if they’d guessed… .
MURRAY LEINSTER
The Lost Race - Murray Leinster
He Was an Ordinary Mortal in Love, but to Marry His Beloved He Had to Help Discover the Secret of a Civilization that Had Vanished.
When Jimmy Briggs signed on the Carilya he had every reason to think it would be a normal, but regrettably long voyage. He had almost enough credits saved up to get married on, and he needed a long trip to give him the rest. He knew the Carilya was bound for Cetis Alpha Two with a cargo for the new Space-Guard base there, and that she’d be taking a new route and making the customary one or two obligatory landings, on the way. All in all, it looked just the sort of trip he needed. And the Carilya was a brand-new ship, bessendium-fueled, five thousand tons cargo capacity, and eight men in the crew. The pay would be good, and he’d come back and get married.
But after he’d taken the psycho tests and was certified honest and reported on board—he couldn’t leave the space-port once he’d been on duty—he found that Danton was the chief engineer. Then he was not pleased. Danton was married to Jimmy’s girl’s best friend, and Jimmy knew what a life she led. He knew other things justifying sympathy—even more sympathy than her current unhappiness—but anyhow Danton alone was enough to make anybody prefer to ship on another vessel. He regarded Jimmy with ironic eyes the instant he came on board, and immediately tried to pump him about what his wife Jane had been doing.
“I haven’t seen Jane,” Jimmy told him. “I was busy with my own affairs! Sally and I had a lot of being-together to do, because I’ll be away a year. When I get back were going to get married. I didn’t bother asking about your wife. Come to think of it, I did see her for a minute on the vision-screen. She’d called Sally for something or other. She said you’d shipped out. But that was all.”
Danton ground his teeth.
“We haven’t lifted yet,” he raged, “and she’s already spreading the word I’ve gone.”
“Sally’s her best friend,” snapped Jimmy. “Should Jane try to keep it a secret from her? Look here, Danton! You’d better ask to be relieved and stay aground if you can’t trust Jane! And I’m busy!”
He went on to put away his dunnage. And he found he would share quarters with Ken Howell. He swore, as Howell looked up from a bunk and saw him. Howell was the man Jane had originally intended to marry. They’d quarreled, and he’d signed on for a voyage to Centaurus. When he got back she was married to Danton. Jimmy’s girl, Sally, said indignantly that Danton had lied to bring it about, and that he ought to be jailed. But it didn’t change the situation. Jane was married to Danton, and that was that. Jimmy put down his bag and said wrathfully:
“This is going to be a sweet voyage! Did you know Danton was going to be on board?”
“No,” said Howell. “I wouldn’t have signed on if I had.”
“Has he seen you?” demanded Jimmy.
“He has,” Howell said steadily. “He grinned at me and said that at least this time he didn’t have to worry about my hanging around Jane while he was gone!”
Jimmy unpacked in speechless rage. Space-travel on an interstellar trip isn’t too easy on the nerves, anyhow. Months on end of monotonous voyaging makes for ragged tempers. It’s a standard and only partly humorous saying among spacemen that the Lost Race committed suicide because it did too much space-traveling. There isn’t even much relaxation when a trip is over, unless a man takes his discharge.
The reason is bessendium, of course, which is the perfect space-ship fuel, with an atomic number of one hundred and seven and absolutely controllable fissionability. Five pounds of bessendium will power a ship like the Carilya for four thousand light-years of flight in overdrive. But it is worth eight million credits per pound, and there is an avid black market for it. A space-ship’s fuel is worth more than the ship and its cargo together, and with half a chance a man can put it in his pocket and walk away with it. So the precautions for its safe-keeping are extreme. In space a man fights tedium and nerves. On the ground he feels he’s watched every second. And he is.
With Danton on board the voyage was bound to be bad anyhow. With Howell also on board, it would be explosive. Jimmy contemplated the future with a violent indignation. He couldn’t be philosophical about it. For instance, when the Carilya lifted and they watched the surface of the earth change from a seeming flat plane to a monstrous bowl, and then finally flicker into its actual shape of a colossal ball, Danton was watching with him from a stem-port. When the Earth looks like a ball, you’re in space.
“Now,” said Danton, grinding his teeth, “Jane knows I can’t watch her! But she can’t take up with Howell, anyhow! Bad luck for him!”
Jimmy walked away. He kept busy while the Carilya went cautiously up beyond the plane of the ecliptic, meteor-detectors out, and then sighted on Dabla and went into overdrive. In overdrive she was safe from any external accident, but she was absolutely on her own. If anything happened short of her destination, it would be just too bad. Overdrive speed is so huge a multiple of the speed of light that it would take forty times the whole Space-Guard fleet six months to search along the path a ship should cover in a day. So if the Carilya didn’t turn up in port, there’d be no use looking for her. She’d be gone. Period.
Jimmy didn’t worry about that. A spaceman doesn’t. You face failure of machinery when you have to. But it isn’t only in prison that men go stir-crazy. Locked in a beryllium-steel hull, hurtling endlessly through the featureless nothing that is overdrive, nerves crack and men quarrel for no reason. Any one of the thousands of theories about the Lost Race is good for a fist-fight on any space voyage any day. More than once a man has jumped hysterically out of an air-lock for no cause that sober sense can fathom. Many a ship has come to port with its crew fitter for an insane asylum than the tedious examinations they have to undergo to make sure they haven’t hidden morsels of the ship’s fuel in their possessions or even their bodies. And the situation on the Carilya was bad from the beginning.
But after one week’s journeying, the stars winked into being and the Carilya was only some fifty million miles from Dabla, which was good astrogation. The Carilya reported by space-radio and of course her crew-members had the privilege of sending personal messages back to Earth. The messages would go by the first ship to make the run-on overdrive, of course.
Jimmy got his message off. Howell, he noticed, sent nothing. Danton grinned unpleasantly at Jimmy after the Carilya went back for more weeks of travel in the weird half-reality which is overdrive.
“I sent Jane a message,” said Danton, chuckling. “Told her I’d been hurt a little in an accident involving Howell and myself. She’ll read that as a fight. And she knows me! She’ll figure that if it’s started already, one of us won’t come back! And she won’t know which to expect! She’ll keep busy wondering.”
Jimmy said coldly:
“Do you intend that only one of you will go back?”
“It’s my intention,” snarled Danton, “to figure out some way to get aground and stay where I’ll know what is going on! If only I get a chance to clean up.”
Jimmy shrugged and moved away. Danton wouldn’t have admitted murderous intention, of course. If he had any such plan, he would make devious, elaborate arrangements for a seeming accident to Howell. And he’d have nearly a year of maddening space-travel in which to contrive it. The psychology of men in space is the psychology of men in prison, with nothing to think of but crazy grievances and wild plans for impossible actions. It was just important enough for Jimmy to sound Howell out, indirectly.
“What do you think about?” he asked Howell in apparent casualness. “You don’t read a lot. You don’t play games. You don’t do much talking. What do you do with your mind?”
Howell looked at him and shrugged.
“I don’t think about Danton, if that’s what you mean,” he said evenly. “I’d crack up. I used to, sometimes—Jane and the trick he played to make her think I’d married a space-port floozie befor
e I shoved off, one time. But that’s not healthy to remember.”’
“What do you think about, then?” demanded Jimmy.
“The Lost Race,” said Howell drily. “I’ve read everything that anybody’s ever written about the Lost Race, and listened to all the crazy theories that have sprung up in ships’ forecastles. I’m trying to fit them together and throw away the stuff that cancels out, to see if there’s anything left.”
Jimmy was relieved. A man who puzzles over the Lost Race can go crazy—it’s happened—but he isn’t objectionable. The pursuit leads to an argumentative streak and impassioned convictions, but nobody can be expected to do anything about it. The Lost Race, of course, is that unknown breed of creature which built the smashed cities on Mars, and the smashed installations on Titan, and the blown-up cities on the Centaurean planets, and the utterly devastated ruins on Sirius Four and Arcturis Three and some hundreds of other oxygen-atmosphere planets. Maybe they built on earth, but if so a hundred thousand years of the Earth’s climate has wiped out their traces. Their ruins are found in an area two thousand light-years across. They had metals and alloys—scraps of which have markedly advanced human metallurgy—and they built roads and dug canals and moved earth and stone in incredible masses. They must have mastered space travel, and they must have had arts and possibly music and literature. But above all they had a genius for the destruction of their own edifices, so that all that is left is rubble and dust. It is as if they committed suicide some fifty to a hundred thousand years ago, and painstakingly destroyed every vestige of their civilization in the process. And nobody knows any more than that.
“Are you getting anywhere?” asked Jimmy. “I wouldn’t mind hearing a new guess about them.”
Howell shook his head.
“They weren’t like us,” he said. “If we land on a new planet, somebody’s sure to scribble on a bit of rock, ‘John Smith of Earth stood here, June 28, 1994.’ We like to leave evidence of ourselves. If we knew the human race were going to die out, we’d probably tidy everything up and try to prepare records for somebody—or something—to find a million years from now, so they’d admire us. The Lost Race didn’t. They wanted to end. They wanted the universe to be as if they had never existed.”
My Best Science Fiction Story Page 30