The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 1 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

Our stomachs were knotted with dread as the rescue ship disappeared beyond the horizon of the farthest television camera. By this time, it was on the other side of the world, speeding toward a carefully planned rendezvous with its sister.

  Hang on, Rev! Don’t give up!

  Fifty-six minutes. That was how long we had to wait. Fifty-six minutes from the takeoff until the ship was in its orbit. After that, the party would need time to match speeds, to send a space-suited crewman drifting across the emptiness between, over the vast, eerily turning sphere of the Earth beneath.

  In imagination, we followed them.

  Minutes would be lost while the rescuer clung to the ship, opened the airlock cautiously so that none of the precious remnants of air would be lost, and passed into the ship where one man had known utter loneliness.

  We waited. We hoped.

  Fifty-six minutes. They passed. An hour. Thirty minutes more. We reminded ourselves—and were reminded—that the first concern was Rev. It might be hours before we would get any real news.

  The tension mounted unbearably. We waited—a nation, a world—for relief.

  At eighteen minutes less than two hours—too soon, we told ourselves, lest we hope too much—we heard the voice of Captain Frank Pickrell, who was later to become the first commander of the Doughnut.

  “I have just entered the ship,” he said slowly. “The air­lock was open.” He paused. The implications stunned our emotions; we listened mutely. “Lieutenant McMillen is dead. He died heroically, waiting until all hope was gone, until every oxygen gauge stood at zero. And then—well, the airlock was open when we arrived.

  “In accordance with his own wishes, his body will be left here in its eternal orbit. This ship will be his tomb for all men to see when they look up toward the stars. As long as there are men on Earth, it will circle above them, an everlasting reminder of what men have done and what men can do.

  “That was Lieutenant McMillen’s hope. This he did not only as an American, but as a man, dying for all humanity, and all humanity can glory for it.

  “From this moment, let this be his shrine, sacred to all the generations of spacemen, inviolate. And let it be a sym­bol that Man’s dreams can be realized, but sometimes the price is steep.

  “I am going to leave now. My feet will be the last to touch this deck. The oxygen I released is almost used up. Lieutenant McMillen is in his control chair, staring out toward the stars. I will leave the airlock doors open behind me. Let the airless, frigid arms of space protect and pre­serve for all eternity the man they would not let go.”

  Good-by, Rev! Farewelll Good nightl

  Rev was not long alone. He was the first, but not the last to receive a space burial and a hero’s farewell.

  This, as I said, is no history of the conquest of space. Every child knows the story as well as I and can identify the make of a spaceship more swiftly.

  The story of the combined efforts that built the orbital platform irreverently called the Doughnut has been told by others. We have learned at length the political triumph that placed it under United Nations control.

  Its contribution to our daily lives has received the acco­lade of the commonplace. It is an observatory, a laboratory, and a guardian. Startling discoveries have come out of that weightless, airless, heatless place. It has learned how weather is made and predicted it with incredible accuracy. It has observed the stars clear of the veil of the atmosphere. And it has insured our peace…

  It has paid its way. No one can question that. It and its smaller relay stations made possible today’s worldwide television and radio network. There is no place on Earth where a free voice cannot be heard or the face of freedom be seen. Sometimes we find ourselves wondering how it could have been any other way.

  And we have had adventure. We have traveled to the dead gypsum seas of the Moon with the first exploration party. This year, we will solve the mysteries of Mars. From our armchairs, we will thrill to the discoveries of our pio­neers—our stand-ins, so to speak. It has given us a common heritage, a common goal, and for the first time we are united.

  This I mention only for background; no one will argue that the conquest of space was not of incalculable benefit to all mankind.

  The whole thing came back to me recently, an over­powering flood of memory. I was skirting Times Square, where every face is a stranger’s, and suddenly I stopped, incredulous.

  “Rev!” I shouted.

  The man kept on walking. He passed me without a glance. I turned around and stared after him. I started to run. I grabbed him by the arm. “Revl” I said huskily, swinging him around. “Is it really you?”

  The man smiled politely. “You must have mistaken me for someone else.” He unclamped my fingers easily and moved away. I realized then that there were two men with him, one on each side. I felt their eyes on my face, mem­orizing it.

  Probably it didn’t mean anything. We all have our doubles. I could have been mistaken.

  But it started me remembering and thinking.

  The first thing the rocket experts had to consider was expense. They didn’t have the money. The second thing was weight. Even a medium-sized man is heavy when rocket payloads are reckoned, and the stores and equipment es­sential to his survival are many times heavier.

  If Rev had escaped alive, why had they announced that he was dead? But I knew the question was all wrong.

  If my speculations were right, Rev had never been up there at all. The essential payload was only a thirty-day recording and a transmitter. Even if the major feat of sending up a manned rocket was beyond their means and their techniques, they could send up that much.

  Then they got the money; they got the volunteers and the techniques.

  I suppose the telemetered reports from the rocket helped. But what they accomplished in thirty days was an unparalleled miracle.

  The timing of the recording must have taken months of work; but the vital part of the scheme was secrecy. General Finch had to know and Captain—now Colonel—Pickrell. A few others—workmen, administrators—and Rev…

  What could they do with him? Disguise him? Yes. And then hide him in the biggest city in the world. They would have done it that way.

  It gave me a funny, sick kind of feeling, thinking about it. Like everybody else, I don’t like to be taken in by a phony plea. And this was a fraud perpetrated on all hu­manity.

  Yet it had led us to the planets. Perhaps it would lead us.beyond, even to the stars. I asked myself: could they have done it any other way?

  I would like to think I was mistaken. This myth has become part of us. We lived through it ourselves, helped make it. Someday, I tell myself, a spaceman whose rever­ence is greater than his obedience will make a pilgrimage to that swift shrine and find only an empty shell.

  I shudder then.

  This pulled us together. In a sense, it keeps us together. Nothing is more important than that.

  I try to convince myself that I was mistaken. The straight black hair was gray at the temples now and cut much shorter. The mustache was gone. The Clark Gable ears were flat to the head; that’s a simple operation, I under­stand.

  But grins are hard to change. And anyone who lived through those thirty days will never forget that voice.

  I think about Rev and the life he must have now, the things he loved and can never enjoy again, and I realize perhaps he made the greater sacrifice.

  I think sometimes he must wish he were really in the cave of night, seated in that icy control chair 1,075 miles above, staring out at the stars.

  <>

  * * * *

  THE HOOFER

  by

  Walter M. Miller, Jr.

  There is nothing I can say about Walt Miller’s work that I haven’t already said (enthusiastically) in several previous anthologies; nothing except that there has been far too little of it published recently—and that, like Abernathy, he has become an (anthology) editor’s nightmare. Of the four stories that appeared this year, one (“The
Darfstellar”) took the Novelette Award at the annual S-F Convention, and two more have already appeared in other anthologies.

  Here is the other one, the story of a man who did go out into the Cave of Night, and then came back—back to the real cave, the Cave of Earth.

  * * * *

  THEY ALL KNEW he was a spacer because of the white goggle marks on his sun-scorched face, and so they toler­ated him and helped him. They even made allowances for him when he staggered and fell in the aisle of the bus while pursuing the harassed little housewife from seat to seat and cajoling her to sit and talk with him.

  Having fallen, he decided to sleep in the aisle. Two men helped him to the back of the bus, dumped him on the rear seat, and tucked his gin bottle safely out of sight. After all, he had not seen Earth for nine months, and judging by the crusted matter about his eyelids, he couldn’t have seen it too well now, even if he had been sober. Glare-blindness, gravity-legs, and agoraphobia were excuses for a lot of things, when a man was just back from Big Bottomless. And who could blame a man for acting strangely?

  Minutes later, he was back up the aisle and swaying giddily over the little housewife. “How!” he said. “Me Chief Broken Wing. You wanta Indian wrestle?”

  The girl, who sat nervously staring at him, smiled wanly, and shook her head.

  “Quiet li’l pigeon, aren’tcha?” he burbled affectionately, crashing into the seat beside her.

  Two men slid out of their seats, and a hand clamped his shoulder. “Come on, Broken Wing, let’s go back to bed.”

  “My name’s Hogey,” he said. “Big Hogey Parker. I was just kidding about being a Indian.”

  “Yeah. Come on, let’s go have a drink.” They got him on his feet, and led him stumbling back down the aisle. “My ma was half Cherokee, see? That’s how come I said it. You wanta hear a war whoop? Real stuff.”

  “Never mind.”

  He cupped his hands to his mouth and favored them with a blood-curdling proof of his ancestry, while the fe­male passengers stirred restlessly and hunched in their seats. The driver stopped the bus and went back to warn him against any further display. The driver flashed a deputy’s badge and threatened to turn him over to a constable.

  “I gotta get home,” Big Hogey told him. “I got me a son now, that’s why. You know? A little baby pigeon of a son. Haven’t seen him yet.”

  “Will you just sit still and be quiet then, eh?”

  Big Hogey nodded emphatically. “Shorry, officer, I didn’t mean to make any trouble.”

  When the bus started again, he fell on his side and lay still. He made retching sounds for a time, then rested, snor­ing softly. The bus driver woke him again at Caine’s junc­tion, retrieved his gin bottle from behind the seat, and helped him down the aisle and out of the bus.

  Big Hogey stumbled about for a moment, then sat down hard in the gravel at the shoulder of the road. The driver paused with one foot on the step, looking around. There was not even a store at the road junction, but only a freight building next to the railroad track, a couple of farmhouses at the edge of a side-road, and, just across the way, a deserted filling station with a sagging roof. The land was Great Plains country, treeless, barren, and roll­ing.

  Big Hogey got up and staggered around in front of the bus, clutching at it for support, losing his duffle bag.

  “Hey, watch the traffic!” The driver warned. With a surge of unwelcome compassion he trotted around after his troublesome passenger, taking his arm as he sagged again. “You crossing?”

  “Yeah,” Hogey muttered. “Lemme alone, I’m okay.”

  The driver started across the highway with him. The traffic was sparse, but fast and dangerous in the central ninety-mile lane.

  “I’m okay,” Hogey kept protesting. “I’m a tumbler, ya know? Gravity’s got me. Damn gravity. I’m not used to gravity, ya know? I used to be a tumbler—huk!—only now I gotta be a hoofer. ‘Count of li’l Hogey. You know about li’1 Hogey?”

  “Yeah. Your son. Come on.”

  “Say, you gotta son? I bet you gotta son.”

  “Two kids,” said the driver, catching Hogey’s bag as it slipped from his shoulder. “Both girls.”

  “Say, you oughta be home with them kids. Man oughta stick with his family. You oughta get another job.” Hogey eyed him owlishly, wagged a moralistic finger, skidded on the gravel as they stepped onto the opposite shoulder, and sprawled again.

  The driver blew a weary breath, looked down at him, and shook his head. Maybe it’d be kinder to find a constable after all. This guy could get himself killed, wander­ing around loose.

  “Somebody supposed to meet you?” he asked, squinting around at the dusty hills.

  “Huk!—who, me?” Hogey giggled, belched, and shook his head. “Nope. Nobody knows I’m coming. S’prise. I’m supposed to be here a week ago.” He looked up at the driver with a pained expression. “Week late, ya know? Marie’s gonna be sore—woo-hoo!—is she gonna be sore!” He waggled his head severely at the ground.

  “Which way are you going?” the driver grunted impa­tiently.

  Hogey pointed down the side-road that led back into the hills. “Marie’s pop’s place. You know where? ‘Bout three miles from here. Gotta walk, I guess.”

  “Don’t,” the driver warned. “You sit there by the cul­vert till you get a ride. Okay?”

  Hogey nodded forlornly.

  “Now stay out of the road,” the driver warned, then hurried back across the highway. Moments later, the atomic battery-driven motors droned mournfully, and the bus pulled away.

  Big Hogey blinked after it, rubbing the back of his neck. “Nice people,” he said. “Nice buncha people. All hoofers.”

  With a grunt and a lurch, he got to his feet, but his legs wouldn’t work right. With his tumbler’s reflexes, he fought to right himself with frantic arm motions, but gravity claimed him, and he went stumbling into the ditch.

  “Damn legs, damn crazy legs!” he cried.

  The bottom of the ditch was wet, and he crawled up the embankment with mud-soaked knees, and sat on the shoulder again. The gin bottle was still intact. He had himself a long fiery drink, and it warmed him deep down. He blinked around at the gaunt and treeless land.

  The sun was almost down, forge-red on a dusty horizon. The blood-streaked sky faded into sulphurous yellow toward the zenith, and the very air that hung over the land seemed full of yellow smoke, the omnipresent dust of the plains.

  A farm truck turned onto the side-road and moaned away, its driver hardly glancing at the dark young man who sat swaying on his dufflebag near the culvert. Hogey scarcely noticed the vehicle. He just kept staring at the crazy sun.

  He shook his head. It wasn’t really the sun. The sun, the real sun, was a hateful eye-sizzling horror in the dead black pit. It painted everything with pure white pain, and you saw things by the reflected painlight. The fat red sun was strictly a phoney, and it didn’t fool him any. He hated it for what he knew it was behind the gory mask, and for what it had done to his eyes.

  With a grunt, he got to his feet, managed to shoulder the duffle bag, and started off down the middle of the farm road, lurching from side to side, and keeping his eyes on the rolling distances. Another car turned onto the side-road, honking angrily.

  Hogey tried to turn around to look at it, but he forgot to shift his footing. He staggered and went down on the pavement. The car’s tires screeched on the hot asphalt. Hogey lay there for a moment, groaning. That one had hurt his hip. A car door slammed and a big man with a florid face got out and stalked toward him, looking angry.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you, fella?” he drawled. “You soused? Man, you’ve really got a load.”

  Hogey got up doggedly, shaking his head to clear it. “Space legs,” he prevaricated. “Got space legs. Can’t stand the gravity.”

  The burly farmer retrieved his gin bottle for him, still miraculously unbroken. “Here’s your gravity,” he grunted. “Listen, fella, you better get home pronto.
”

  “Pronto? Hey, I’m no Mex. Honest, I’m just space burned. You know?”

  “Yeah. Say, who are you, anyway? Do you live around here?”

  It was obvious that the big man had taken him for a hobo or a tramp. Hogey pulled himself together. “Goin’ to the Hauptman’s place. Marie. You know Marie?”

  The farmer’s eyebrows went up. “Marie Hauptman? Sure I know her. Only she’s Marie Parker now. Has been, nigh on six years. Say—” He paused, then gaped. “You ain’t her husband by any chance?”

  “Hogey, that’s me. Big Hogey Parker.”

  “Well, I’ll be—! Get in the ear. I’m going right past John Hauptman’s place. Boy, you’re in no shape to walk it.”