by Rod Serling
"Any and all kinds of people," Koch repeated softly, "like my son."
The official shrugged. "Like anyone. They simply want more people." He looked down at the paper. "Their planet is roughly one-fiftieth the size of earth. But its atmosphere is almost identical. It's people are humanoid. Reasonably technologically advanced." He looked up from the paper again, smiling. "And altogether anxious, it would seem, to welcome anyone we might want to send. So anxious, as a matter of fact"—he tapped the paper—"they are willing to finance the entire operation. Now, how does that strike you, Mr. Koch? Isn't that the sort of thing that . . . that . . ."—he checked out another paper—" . . . that Victor might find exciting and to his liking?"
Koch wondered. Exiled. Marooned in space. "You tell me," he said softly. "You send a kid a million miles into space, dump him on some unknown planet—like a garbage run. Would you find that . . . 'exciting' . . . and 'to your liking'?"
The official leaned forward, pointing with the metal pencil. "If the alternative, Mr. Koch, were extermination—I think I should prefer the former." He rose from behind the desk. "Talk it over with the boy . . . and with your wife. Get back to me by tomorrow, if you can. We'll open up further communication with the planet . . . and arrange for his transport." He held out his hand. "Good day to you, Mr. Koch."
Koch shook it with a preoccupied limpness, then moved across the room. He stopped by the door. "There's just one diminutive little problem," he said over his shoulder.
"And that is?"
"When he finds out the alternatives," Koch said, feeling his eyes wet, "how do I keep him from cutting his throat?"
The single lamp in Victor's bedroom had a twenty-five-watt bulb that defeated the darkness, but did little else to illuminate the room. Victor himself wasn't sure of the color of the shirts that he had jammed into the little overnight case that lay open on his bed. He threw things into it with a kind of methodical and suppressed frenzy.
There was a knock on the door. It opened, and Koch and his wife entered. Her eyes were red from crying, her face held together tightly, as if by wires.
"About ready, son?" Koch asked with a desperate matter-of-factness.
Victor closed the suitcase and nodded. "All set."
"Vic," Koch said hesitantly, "your mother and I . . . your mother and I want you to know that . . ."
Victor turned to him, the top of the stocking cap bobbing. "I just want you to know," he said, "and you, too, Mom . . . no guilts, no self-recriminations, and no long good-byes."
"If we knew what the place was like," his mother said, her voice tremulous. "The place you're going. If we were just certain in our own minds that . . ." She stopped and reached for a handkerchief.
"You want to know something?" Victor said. "It can be a desert, frozen tundra, or a pit where the sun never shines. And it would be better than this!" He picked up the overnight bag. "Let's go," he said.
His father and mother left the room, and Victor started after them. He turned briefly at the door, took off the stocking cap, and threw it on the dresser, then surveyed the room. No pennants. No model airplanes. No photographs of any kind. No high-school-prom reminders. No anything. It had been an empty and unadorned way station between life and death—and that's all it had been. He felt no regrets. No regrets at all. It had offered him nothing but comforting darkness, and he was sure that comforting darkness he could find almost anywhere.
Long after the rocket had pierced the night sky and the flames of its afterburners had disappeared into the darkness, Koch and his wife stood behind a wire-mesh gate staring after it.
"What will it be like up there for him?" she asked.
Koch shook his head. "I don't know."
"Will he be happy?" Her voice broke. "Paul—will they treat him like a human being?"
There was silence for a moment. "I don't know that either," Koch said, "but I'm going to spend every last remaining day praying . . . praying that they will."
Then he took his wife's hand and gently prodded her away from the fence and toward the parking lot. He had a persistent, gnawing, ugly little thought that he wished would go away. Saying good-bye to Victor had been like a funeral. It had been like losing his son. Seeing him walk up the metal ladder to disappear inside the giant cylinder had been no different from watching a body placed in a casket under the ground. And there was one other similarity. And it was the recollection of this that ravaged him: Like any burial service, the deceased left without kissing you good-bye.
Hours later, while he stood in the darkness of the basement, crying, Koch kept thinking to himself that if only his son had allowed him an embrace—just a quick, fleeting, last embrace; something he and his mother could take with them ever the years as a remembrance. But Victor had been like an overanxious aspirant for an execution. Going up the metal ladder, he had run. Not looking back, he had disappeared. No look, no words, no farewells of any kind. The victim, afraid of being late for the gallows.
Koch let the tears come, flow, and then ebb. Then he walked back up the cellar steps, through the night-shrouded house, and past the door of Victor's bedroom that was now open. He looked briefly into the room. There was nothing left save for a stocking cap draped over a dresser. The effects of Victor Koch. All that was left of seventeen years.
Koch continued on into his bedroom, knowing that he Would not sleep that night.
It was like a long, dark tunnel with curved walls. Or like a metal cylindrical passageway with a light at the far end. The doors slid open noiselessly, and Victor, carrying his overnight bag, walked down its length toward the light. Sliding doors on the opposite end moved open, and a figure came toward him.
"Did you just get off the ship?" the figure asked as it stepped into the light.
Victor nodded, seeing the blond hair, the even features, the white teeth. The boy was his age. "From Earth?" the boy asked.
"That's right," Victor said. "Are you . . . are you the welcoming committee?"
The boy had moved past him, now stopped and turned. "The welcoming committee?" He shook his head. "I'm taking off on the ship. I'm going back to earth on the return leg. I've been waiting years to get permission."
Victor studied him. "You're not from here?"
The boy nodded. "I'm from here." Then he smiled. "I guess this is the first exchange we've made—your planet and mine." He half-waved. "I wish you luck."
"You, too," Victor said as he went through the sliding doors to the loading platform of the ship. "Hey," Victor called after him. "Could I ask you something?"
The boy stopped and turned.
"Why are you leaving?" Victor asked.
The boy stared at him. "You serious?"
Victor nodded.
"Look at me."
Victor looked. "What's . . . what's wrong?"
The boy laughed. A short, ugly, anguished laugh "What's wrong with me? Look, buddy—you don't have to be kind. I'm used to being this way. And I'm used to the reaction." He smiled. "Well—I hope it works out all right for you."
He turned on the platform and waited for the metal staircase that slid slowly toward him from the ship. Then the sliding doors closed.
"Victor Koch?" a woman's voice asked. "From the planet Earth?"
Victor turned abruptly. A young woman stood in front of him. She was smiling, holding out her hand. Her eyes were very big and very blue. Her smile was a soft, gentle, lovely thing. And her head spiraled up to a point, where a tuft of blond hair sprouted.
"I'm very happy to welcome you, Mr, Koch," she said.
Then out of the darkness from the other end of the tunnel came another group of young people. It was like watching moving church steeples. Each of them had the same funneled head.
"He's beautiful," one girl whispered.
"Shhhh—he'll hear you," came another girl's response.
A boy took Victor's bag from him and shook his hand. Another patted him on the arm.
"We hope you'll like it here, Mr. Koch," the first girl said. "The
climate is very temperate. And in terms of language and art—I think you'll find it almost identical to Earth the cultures are very similar."
As they walked toward the light at the end of the corridor, Victor found himself smiling and nodding and wanting to talk.
Two of the girls jostled each other to see who would walk next to him.
"I think," Victor said, feeling a warmth rise up in him, feeling a sense of pleasure he had never felt before, "I think I'll be very happy. I already feel as if . . . as if I belonged!"
Then the beautiful people left the tunnel, Victor amongst them, laughing and talking.
Lindemann's Catch
The fog and mist that rose up from the sea drifted over the wharves, spindly docks, and broken-down jetties, to mix with the gaslight over the cobblestoned streets. It slipped through the reefed sails and riggings of shabby little fishing boats, as if beckoned to by the distant frog-call of a foghorn and faraway ship's bells that rang out nervously as they groped through the night.
There was a big, orange, roaring fire in the hearth of the Bedford Village Inn, and the sporadic crack of burning logs mixed with the clatter of mugs and low voices of the men in the room. They were mostly local fishermen and a few sailors on leave from whalers—all men of the sea who sensed the tension of the fog-shrouded night and sought out each other's company in an unspoken thanksgiving that on that particular night they could anchor themselves to a tankard of rum instead of peering with aching eyes from a crow's nest, wondering at what death-filled moment they would strike a reef or a hidden shoal.
Mordecai Nichols, the town doctor, stood near the bay window of the inn, looking through a spyglass toward a distant promontory that angled out from the shore in a clawlike curve. He saw the faraway sails of a ship just moving past the farthest spit of land. He lowered the spyglass just as the inn's owner, a wooden-legged former sea captain named Bennett, moved past him with a tray of mugs.
"Looks like a lugger, doesn't it?" Nichols asked, pointing toward the window.
Bennett picked up the spyglass and briefly looked through it. "Too square in the stern," he announced, "and she's ketch-rigged. Trawler of some kind. And she better put some water between her and the coast, or she won't be seeing Boston this trip."
"She'll not make Boston."
Both men turned to look at Abner Suggs, who, as always, played solitaire at a distant table. Suggs had an emaciated, skeletal face and a look of perpetual worrying disapproval. He returned the look of the two men with intense, challenging eyes.
Nichols took a step toward him. "Who says?" he asked.
Suggs pointed to the cards and shrugged. "The cards."
The doctor winked at Bennett. "Where do they put her down, Master Suggs? I mean those cards." He moved closer to the table "Will she hole her bottom on a reef, or strip her sails in a gale?" He picked upone of the cards and looked at it. "Don't any of these damned cardboard squares offer anything but disaster?" He flipped the card back onto the table. "Cross-seas, swamped hulls, and man overboard—I swear, Suggs, that's all we hear from you." He pointed to the cards. "Is there not one single cheerful prediction in that net of doom you weave every night? Is there no good fishing? Light winds? Maybe a keg of treasure washed into this benighted little place to make our lot a little easier for a change?"
Suggs's head seemed to hunch down into his shoulders. "I simply tell what the cards say," he said glumly; then he blinked and tried to lighten his voice. "What about your fortune, Doctor? In the cards—or in your palms. For just the price of a short brandy or a spot of rum. Maybe I'll see a fortune coming for you."
Nichols laughed. "A fortune for me? Most likely you'll see a bony rider on a pale horse coming for me." He coughed and pounded on his chest. "Fog and damp and chill! Ask your cards how I survive my patients?"
He moved back over to the window, staring out at the fog. " 'Physician, heal thyself,' " he said softly, "or so it is said. But not in this bloody place!"
There was a sudden quiet when the door opened and Hendrick Lindemann entered. He carried with him an unspoken command into the room, only barely acknowledging with a slight nod the greetings of the men clustered around. He was a big man, well over six feet, his strength and bigness not even remotely hidden by his bulky slicker, now wet with fog and sea spray. He moved over to the bar, throwing back the hood of his slicker, to reveal the gold stubble of a light beard on a face in which wet, cold, and sullen bad humor gave battle to handsomeness. He moved directly over to the bar, nodding to Bennett, who stumped over on his wooden leg to serve him.
"Just coming in?" the innkeeper asked him.
Lindemann nodded and pointed to a bottle of rum.
"How was your catch?" Bennett asked as he poured the rum.
"Too light," Lindemann said. "Some under-nourished cod and a few dead shiners. Filthy catch—filthy night." He took the rum and downed it in a series of noisy, thirsty gulps, then held out the mug for Bennett to refill.
"See a ship out there?" Dr. Nichols asked him, coming up to sit alongside.
Lindemann nodded. "Two-master. Too shallow of draft and too big of sail. And badly skippered—too busy shifting ballast to look where she was going. Almost ran me down." This time he finished half the rum, then placed the mug down. "But in keeping with the night's sport," he said thoughtfully, "hopeful idiots like myself—to be killed by fearful fools."
"Captain Lindemann." Suggs's voice, shrill, unpleasant, and persistent, snaked across the room. "Perhaps the cards offer up a better future for you." He rose from the table, and with a smile that oozed from him like snake oil, walked diffidently toward Lindemann. "Or on the palms of your hands," he continued, "maybe a windfall on the way. Or the tea leaves, Cap'n. Let me read the leaves for you. Now, there's many a pretty picture painted for a man in the bottom of a cup. Or would a potion of a sort interest you? I've got ancient bottles that are the perfection of tile soothsayer's art." He stood there like a famished little gnome—lips wet, hands twitching, his eyes hungry little orbs that seemed desperate to devour anything they saw. He placed the cards on the bar.
Lindemann looked at them for a moment, then very slowly scooped them up. "Mr. Suggs," he said in a soft voice, "I have to live with the fog, because it's hell's blanket, and it creeps up through the earth to bedevil seamen like me. And there's nothing I can do about that. And I have to sail on that leaking rat catcher of mine because there's not a damned thing On heaven or earth that'll change that. I'll go out every freezing morning and I'll come back every wind-screaming night with just enough in my net to keep me alive." He held the cards out in front of him. "Now, all this is my miserable lot, Mr. Suggs, and it will be until God decides to cut bait, turn my sail into a shroud, and throw me back into the sea. But what I don't have to do"—he dropped the cards into the cuspidor at his feet—"is to come in here night after night and look at that wormy little face of yours and listen to that bilge about potions and palms and tea leaves."
He reached out, grabbing Suggs by his dirty shirt front, and yanked him off the floor with one incredibly strong hand. With the other he pointed toward the spittoon. "That's where your fortune is, Mr. Suggs. Where men spit."
He held Suggs out at an arm's length, while the little man wiggled like a speared fish and the onlookers laughed and exchanged winks. Then he slowly lowered him to the floor, where he stood, eyes averted, face burning.
Suggs's voice shook in a combination of rage and fear. He looked down at the cards' spread around the floor, some of them still protruding from the spilled brass pot at his feet. "You had no call to do that, Cap'n . . ."
"Didn't I now?" Lindemann's voice was steady and almost gentle. "Well, now, Mr. Suggs—now I'll tell your fortune. No charge to you. With my compliments. For taking up my time, you're going to wind up on your back with a bloody mouth."
His big hand left his side, the back of it connecting with Suggs's cheek, the sound of it like the sharp crack of a rifle.
Suggs was propelled backward, hitting hi
s back on the side of the bar, then rebounding off of it, to land face first, crunchingly spread-eagled onto the floor, one hand knocking over the cuspidor, which spilled over him as he lay there dazed—blood, drool, and tobacco juice a stinking porridge rolling down his face.
It was Dr. Nichols who helped raise him to a sitting position. The doctor's voice was ice-cold when he looked up at Lindemann. "Not an act to be proud of, Captain Lindemann—to take Your miseries out on harmless little men who'd do you no harm."
Lindemann raised his mug and drained the rum, not even looking at the doctor. "On whoever, my good Doctor—if he throws his line in my waters during the one free hour I've got to get drunk and forget those miseries."
He pounded the mug on the bar, and Bennett hurried from the opposite side of the bar back over to him, his peg leg thumping on the wooden floor. As he poured out more rum, Suggs rose slowly to his feet, his face the color of a fish's belly. He wiped the wet off his face and looked up at the big man in the slicker. "You're an evil man, Cap'n," he said in a shaking voice. "You've no heart in your body. You can't love. You can't give. You can't share."
Lindemann very deliberately emptied the mug, the rum coursing through him like some kind of medicinal lava. Then he very slowly turned to look down at Suggs. The men closest to them made nervous movements, as if to get between them. Lindemann had a murderous rage, well known and frequently experienced in the village. But the look on the captain's face froze them.
He reached out and touched Suggs's shirt, then flicked his fingers across the buttons, as if dusting. His voice was so soft as almost not to be heard. "You've just taken a share, Mr. Suggs; just a spoonful of the hate I've got in me for the place, the time, the company, the weather, and the night's catch." He reached into his pocket and took out a handful of coins, which he flung onto the bar; then he turned and surveyed the silent men around him. "And the rest of you half-frozen cod catchers—what would Mr. Suggs have you love?" He moved away from the bar, buttoning up his slicker as he walked. He stopped at the door, staring out of its window at the fog, then listening pensively to a distant foghorn. "The sea, maybe?" he asked. "Should we love the sea? It ties up our bowels with fear. It ages us, and it finally kills us. And still each morning we sail out for an embrace." He turned to look at the men at the bar. "We are such damned fools that we don't deserve any better."