Kinsman took a last look at the majestic beauty of the planet, serene and incomparable among the stars, before touching the button that slid the heat shield over his viewport. Then they felt the surge of rocket thrust, dipped into the atmosphere, knew that air heated beyond endurance surrounded them in a fiery grip and made their tiny craft into a flaming, falling star. Pressed into his seat by the acceleration, Kinsman let the automatic controls bring them through reentry, through the heat and buffeting turbulence, down to an altitude where their finned craft could fly like a rocketplane.
He took control and steered the craft back toward Patrick Air Force Base, back to the world of men, of weather, of cities, of hierarchies and official regulations. He did this alone, silently; he didn't need Jill's help or anyone else's. He flew the craft from inside his buttoned-tight pressure suit, frowning at the panel displays through his helmet's faceplate.
Automatically, he checked with ground control and received permission to slide the heat shield back. The viewport showed him a stretch of darkening clouds spreading from the sea across the beach and well inland. His earphones were alive with other men's voices now: wind conditions, altitude checks, speed estimates. He knew, but could not see that two jet planes were trailing along behind him, cameras focused on the returning spacecraft. To provide evidence if I crash.
They dipped into the clouds and a wave of gray mist hurtled up and covered the viewport. Kinsman's eyes flicked to the radar screen slightly off to his right. The craft shuddered briefly, then they broke below the clouds and he could see the long black gouge of the runway looming before him. He pulled back slightly on the controls, hands and feet working instinctively, flashed over some scrubby vegetation, and flared the craft onto the runway. The landing skids touched once, bounced them up momentarily, then touched again with a grinding shriek. They skidded for more than a mile before stopping.
He leaned back in the seat and felt his body oozing sweat.
"Good landing," Jill said.
"Thanks." He turned off all the craft's systems, hands moving automatically in response to long training. Then he slid his faceplate up, reached overhead and popped the hatch open.
"End of the line," he said tiredly. "Everybody out."
He clambered up through the hatch, feeling his own weight with a sullen resentment, then helped Linda and finally Jill out of the spacecraft. They hopped down onto the blacktop runway. Two vans, an ambulance, and two fire trucks were rolling toward them from their parking stations at the end of the runway, a half-mile ahead.
Kinsman slowly took his helmet off. The Florida heat and humidity annoyed him now. Jill walked a few paces away from him, toward the approaching trucks.
He stepped toward Linda. Her helmet was off, and she was carrying a bag full of film.
"I've been thinking," he said to her. "That business about having a lonely life . . .You know, you're not the only one. And it doesn't have to be that way. I can get to New York whenever . . ."
"Now who's taking things seriously?" Her face looked calm again, cool, despite the glaring heat.
"But I mean . . ."
"Listen Chet. We had our kicks. Now you can tell your friends about it, and I can tell mine. We'll both get a lot of mileage out of it. It'll help our careers."
"I never intended to . . .1 didn't . . ."
But she was already turning away from him, walking toward the men who were running up to meet them from the trucks. One of them, a civilian, had a camera in his hands. He dropped to one knee and took a picture of Linda holding the film out and smiling broadly.
Kinsman stood there with his mouth open.
Jill came back to him. "Well? Did you get what you were after?"
"No," he said slowly. "I guess I didn't."
She started to put her hand out to him. "We never do, do we?"
Afterword
Chet Kinsman has been with me for a long time. This is the third story about him to be published. In terms of Kinsman's own life history, this is the earliest story, the first part of his awakening to the real world. Or the first step in his fall from grace.
Kinsman was the star of a Great Unpublished Novel, written in 1950–51, which predicted the US vs. USSR space race with amazing accuracy. At least, I've been amazed. Unluckily, though, in those early fifties there; was a Senator McCarthy running loose. Not Gene. Publishers were distinctly unhappy about a book wherein the Russians got ahead of us in space. Obvious trash. And unhealthy. So that early version of Kinsman had to wait for the Russians to make his story believable. (In all honesty, the writing in that novel was pretty damned bad. Maybe it wasn't all Holy Joe's fault.)
The Mile High Club, incidentally, is no fiction. It was described to me by a man very much like Cy Calder. The windburn and fogged goggles, however, are reasonable extrapolations of the story as I originally heard it, and I offer them as an example of the hallmark of science fiction: accurate technical detail that lends credibility and pathos to the characters and their problems.
Introduction to
A MOUSE IN THE WALLS OF THE GLOBAL VILLAGE
Watching a writer mature through examination of the body of the work as it grows, is an interesting pastime. A writer who begins as a bright and promising innovator, frequently plays out his song in three or four books and begins either repeating themes and approaches, or capitalizes on early success by giving the audience more of the same. Contrariwise, a writer who learns the craft through contemporary analogues of the "pulp school"—inexpensive paperbacks, men's magazines of the lower orders, several of the lesser sf periodicals—and starts off as little better than a hack, can find a voice and a growing muscularity and develop into an important talent. There are numerous examples, they spring to mind almost unbidden, of both species of writer.
Dean Koontz represents the latter. His early work, for instance Star Quest (Ace, 1968), reads like typical, average, not-particularly-outstanding action-adventure of the 1940's Amazing Stories variety. His recent novels—notably the brilliant Beastchild, The Dark Symphony, and Hell's Gate (all Lancer, 1970)—demonstrate a vigorous fluency of imagination, a strengthening grasp of concept and plot-material, and an emerging style very much of his own making.
Until 1969, the name Koontz was considered by many to be simply one of those mortar-in-the-chinks names that filled the spaces between Zelazny, Delany, Moorcock and Spinrad, writers who were then drawing considerable attention with a volume of unusual and arresting stories. Koontz was just coming on the scene (when DV was assembled, his name was not even considered). But within just three years he has so solidified his position as a writer to watch, that when A,DV was on the drawing-boards, the Koontz solicitation was made a matter of immediacy. His contribution more than lives up to expectations.
If he continues as he has, the next five to seven years should see Dean Koontz rise to the enviable pinnacle of One-Mansmanship: the perch where he is the only man doing Dean Koontz stories, where he has the corner on a market demanding Koontz fiction.
Personally, Koontz is a very winning fellow. Met him in Pittsburgh in 1970. What's in a name? Well, seeing the cold name Dean R. Koontz in print, one gets the impression—God knows why—that he is a venerable gentleman of stooped manner and crypt breath. Not only is he a very hip and well-dressed dude in his middle twenties, but the only thing more attractive than the unseemly-named Koontz is his extravagantly beautiful wife, Gerda—which is a name I associated till meeting her with thick-ankled hausfrau living in Punxsutawney or possibly Przemków—with; whose collaboration he wrote the scathing non-fiction attack on The Pig Society (Aware Press, 1970).
In addition to the previously-noted books, Dean has also produced: Fear That Man and The Fall of the Dream Machine (Ace, 1969), Dark of the Woods and Soft Come the Dragons (Ace, 1970), and Anti-Man, (Paperback Library, 1970). By way of disillusioned autobiography, Dean I submits the following:
"I am somewhere around 26. I was born in a small Pennsylvania town, raised in a traditional lower-middle cl
ass home, and went to a small, traditional Pennsylvania college. I graduated after three years of intensified study and began teaching under the Appalachian Program in a small coal mining town which, unfortunately, no longer had any operative coal mines. During that first year of idealism when public service meant more to me than money, I became quickly disillusioned. Politicians talked loudly about how much was put into the poverty program. I discovered that, once the budget was approved, the President, then a Texan whose name I have forgotten, quietly but ruthlessly halved the poverty budget. My school would be promised 20,000 dollars for work with the poverty-stricken—and receive ten. To get nine dollars worth of paperback books for use in my classes, I had to do everything but sign away both legs to guarantee I would not split with the six dollars. Meanwhile, several thousand dollars earmarked for instructional materials in the Title III poverty classes was rerouted into the school's fund for construction of a new gymnasium. Somehow, the priorities seemed screwed up to me.
"As my idealism slowly drained away, I began to become more conscious of the need for money. We lived the first three months of our married life in a six room rented house—with only a studio couch for a bed and a kitchen table and chairs. Oh, a used refrigerator and a hot plate (no stove). There was certainly no hope of getting rich through teaching—even if I moved to a nice, urban school district and gave up the poverty program. How to get a little extra cash? While I had been a senior at college, my creative writing teacher had advised me to send a story to Readers And Writers, a new magazine aimed at college literature majors. I did. The story sold and brought a check for fifty dollars. Now, a year later, I began earnestly to try to sell more work. My first professional sale in the field was 'Soft Come the Dragons' to F&SF. When Ed Ferman bought a second story and Joe Ross at Amazing-Fantastic bought two more, I was hooked.
"The following year, I took a job teaching English at an urban school district outside Harrisburg. In the poverty program, the students put in my classes were all the discipline problems and the kids with police records, those the other teachers didn't want, not really those whom I could help. In this new urban situation, the students were better behaved, though generally as apathetic as they had been in the small coal-mining town. A year and a half later, disillusioned altogether, and earning enough writing to at least pay the rent, I decided to become a full time freelancer. At this supposedly advanced, upper-middle class school district, I had been constantly on the carpet for what I taught and had been accused of teaching obscene books. Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein, was one of those judged obscene. So was Catch-22. No one of the administration would read the books in question. They merely assumed the parents were right and asked me not to teach the novels in question. In one instance, an administrator told me the book was obviously obscene because the cover drawing depicted a partially disrobed girl (all strategic areas, though, were covered). Aside from this incident, I found that the younger generations were no more liberal, no more aware than the older. It was just that the small percentage that has always been aware was more vocal than ever before. One or two enlightened kids in a class of thirty, however, didn't make for enjoyable teaching. On January 27, 1969, I became a full-fledged writer.
"Thus far, I have sold over two dozen magazine stories and forty novels. I have seven other novels with my agent and have begun to branch into mainstream novels and suspense novels as well as science fiction.
"ASSORTED TRIVIA THAT MAY BE USEFUL: I stand slightly over 5' 10", weigh 160 pounds. I am madly addicted to movies and would one day like to see some of my suspense and mainstream work on film. I detest almost all sports. Married. No children. No religion. Read anywhere from four to six books a week. Think quite highly of John D. MacDonald. Paint and draw to relax and have actually sold some of my work to people who, apparently, were poor judges of art. Am highly interested in classical music and some modern rock (including The Beatles) and have written an sf novel structured like a i9th Century symphony The Dark Symphony. Have worked as a stock and bag boy in a grocery store, a cleaner (by high pressure steam) of engines, a forest ranger (one full summer) in a state park, and as the aforementioned English teacher. Have played in a rock combo and have written some rock ballads. Am planning on doing at least one—and hopefully a series—of science fiction books in collaboration with Vaughn Bode, the artist-illustrator. They will be multimedia art-and-text compilations that will go beyond mere illustration. Am presently collecting background for a mammoth mainstream novel about members of the paramilitary Minutemen and expect to spend six months of this year on the final writing of the book. That is all. Over and out."
A MOUSE IN THE WALLS OF THE GLOBAL VILLAGE
Dean R. Koontz
It has been three weeks now since it happened; three weeks is a long time. You would think that I could accept it now. You would think so, but I can't. Which means, while I lie here trying to remember, that secret little voice inside of me will be building up its reserves for a scream. One hell of a scream. Then they will come up the stairs, their feet thumping on the dusty, worn tread. They will come quickly down the corridor, mumbling so low that I will not be able to understand any of what they say. One of them will kick the door open while the other will come through and cross to my bed. Choreography of the first class. The one at my bed will tell me to stop screaming. I will try. Really, I will. But that secret little voice that is not really mine (they don't understand that, of course; they think I can control it) will go on and on, rising higher all the time until the one at the door will say, "Might as well get it over with." And I wonder why they bother speaking when they don't have to, when they are Empathists. "Might as well get it over with." And the other one will say, "Christ!" And then he will hit me. He will strike me with his open hands, again and again until my ears are ringing. Then he will drag me off the bed and throw me up against the wall and hit me some more with his fists until I am finally quiet. I don't think they really want to hurt me so much. It is just that it takes me so damned long to quit screaming.
But I've got to think about it, don't I? I mean, if there is ever to be an end to the memories, if I am ever to accept what has happened, I must go over and over and over it until I have bleached all the color out of it. All the color and sharp edges and pain. Perhaps repetition is the mother of acceptance.
I repeat . . .
The fan shuttles came under my window then, one every evening, came moaning down the street, their long, heavy bodies dancing daintily on toes of air. It was winter, and the snow kicked up around them in thick, fuzzy clouds until they were completely concealed in the shower they caused. Then the shuttle would stop before the lobby downstairs, up against the front steps. The fans would be turned off, and the coach would settle onto its hard rubber cushion as gently as the snow-flakes settled on the snow-flakes that fell before them. My bed is up against the window. I would lie there on the warm, gray blankets and watch all this with a curious, melancholy detachment, yet with a great deal of excitement for what was to come.
There would be a little while, then, when I would watch the shuttle, trying to see through the windows and pick out the passengers by the dim glow of the ceiling lights. Most of them would be sleeping, their heads against the glass, their breath fogging the panes so—mostly—I could not see much.
After a few minutes, the door at the front of the shuttle would open, and the driver would come out, dressed in a long, blue coat that flapped in the brisk wind. He would hunch against the drive of the snow and cross the walk into the lighted lobby, out of sight. Once, when I was especially curious about what the driver did in the lobby every night, I went out into the hall and crept down the stairs (I am only on the second floor) and looked around the stairwell corner. The driver and Belias, the night manager (big man, much dark hair, little eyes, quick hands), were standing next to the lobby fireplace, drinking coffee out of heavy brown mugs. They laughed a couple of times, but did not say anything. Of course, they're Empathists and don't have to talk.
After they had finished their coffee, Belias gave the driver three packages that had been mailed from the hotel post office, and the driver left, hurrying out into the snow to the snug haven of his cab. I went upstairs to my room and watched the fan shuttle leave in a gust of white. Then I cried, I think. Anyway, I never went to watch Belias and the driver again.
But I didn't stop signaling the passengers. Every night, when the two o'clock shuttle swung in against the steps before the lobby, I would have my lamp on the windowsill, the shade off and laid carefully to the side. When the driver left the shuttle, I would rapidly flick the light on and off several times. Then I would pause, waiting for something. I was never completely sure what it was that I waited for. I guess maybe I thought someone in the bus would fiddle with the light over his seat, flash his hand over it to make it pulsate. But no one ever did.
Except once.
Three weeks ago.
Listen . . .
I was lying on the bed, waiting for the two o'clock shuttle. I had moved the lamp to the window and had it ready. Outside, the snow was falling, a dry snow that was easily stirred by the wind, that screeched when it was blown against the glass and whirled away like bits of sand. I kept an old shirt next to me to wipe my breath from the window whenever the pane got too clouded. At one minute until two, the shuttle turned into the street several blocks away, just at the edge of my vision. I had my forehead pressed hard against the glass, numbing it with the cold, and that was how I saw it so far away. First, there was just the dim glowing circles of the headlamps, cut to almost nothing by the driving snow. Then as the shuttle drew closer, the lights became bright, warm things I wanted to touch and hold. My heart was pounding as always, and my fingers were on the lamp switch.
Again, Dangerous Visions Page 83