by E. C. Tubb
Why don’t they leave the stars alone? she thought. Why don’t they leave the stars to God?
* * * *
The general’s second telegram came early the next morning:
Explorer XII doing splendidly. Expect to bring your son down sometime tomorrow.
She went about her work as usual, collecting the eggs and allocating them in their cardboard boxes, then setting off in the station wagon on her Tuesday morning run. She had expected a deluge of questions from her customers. She was not disappointed. “Is Terry really way up there all alone, Martha?” “Aren’t you scared, Martha?” “I do hope they can get him back down all right, Martha.” She supposed it must have given them quite a turn to have their egg woman change into a star mother overnight.
She hadn’t expected the TV interview, though, and she would have avoided it if it had been politely possible. But what could she do when the line of cars and trucks pulled into the drive and the technicians got out and started setting up their equipment in the backyard? What could she say when the suave young man came up to her and said, “We want you to know that we’re all very proud of your boy up there, ma’am, and we hope you’ll do us the honor of answering a few questions.”
Most of the questions concerned Terry, as was fitting. From the way the suave young man asked them, though, she got the impression that he was trying to prove that her son was just like any other average American boy, and such just didn’t happen to be the case. But whenever she opened her mouth to mention, say, how he used to study till all hours of the night, or how difficult it had been for him to make friends because of his shyness, or the fact that he had never gone out for football—whenever she started to mention any of these things, the suave young man was in great haste to interrupt her and to twist her words, by requestioning, into a different meaning altogether, till Terry’s behavior pattern seemed to coincide with the behavior pattern which the suave young man apparently considered the norm, but which, if followed, Martha was sure, would produce not young men bent on exploring space but young men bent on exploring trivia.
A few of the questions concerned herself: Was Terry her only child? (“Yes.”) What had happened to her husband? (“He was killed in the Korean War.”) What did she think of the new law granting star mothers top priority on any and all information relating to their sons? (“I think it’s a fine law…It’s too bad they couldn’t have shown similar humanity toward the war mothers of World War II.”)
* * * *
It was late in the afternoon by the time the TV crew got everything repacked into their cars and trucks and made their departure. Martha fixed herself a light supper, then donned an old suede jacket of Terry’s and went out into the garden to wait for the sun to go down. According to the time table the general had outlined in his first telegram, Terry’s first Tuesday night passage wasn’t due to occur till 9:05. But it seemed only right that she should be outside when the stars started to come out. Presently they did, and she watched them wink on, one by one, in the deepening darkness of the sky. She’d never been much of a one for the stars; most of her life she’d been much too busy on Earth to bother with things celestial. She could remember, when she was much younger and Bill was courting her, looking up at the moon sometimes; and once in a while, when a star fell, making a wish. But this was different. It was different because now she had a personal interest in the sky, a new affinity with its myriad inhabitants.
And how bright they became when you kept looking at them! They seemed to come alive, almost, pulsing brilliantly down out of the blackness of the night…And they were different colors, too, she noticed with a start. Some of them were blue and some were red, others were yellow…green…orange…
It grew cold in the April garden and she could see her breath. There was a strange crispness, a strange clarity about the night, that she had never known before…She glanced at her watch, was astonished to see that the hands indicated two minutes after nine. Where had the time gone? Tremulously she faced the southern horizon…and saw her Terry appear in his shining chariot, riding up the star-pebbled path of his orbit, a star in his own right, dropping swiftly now, down, down, and out of sight beyond the dark wheeling mass of the Earth…She took a deep, proud breath, realized that she was wildly waving her hand and let it fall slowly to her side. Make a wish! she thought, like a little girl, and she wished him pleasant dreams and a safe return and wrapped the wish in all her love and cast it starward.
* * * *
Sometime tomorrow, the general’s telegram had said—
That meant sometime today!
She rose with the sun and fed the chickens, fixed and ate her breakfast, collected the eggs and put them in their cardboard boxes, then started out on her Wednesday morning run. “My land, Martha, I don’t see how you stand it with him way up there! Doesn’t it get on yournerves?” (“Yes…Yes, it does.”) “Martha, when are they bringing him back down?” (“Today…Today!”) “It must be wonderful being a star mother, Martha.” (“Yes, it is—in a way.”)
Wonderful…and terrible.
If only he can last it out for a few more hours, she thought. If only they can bring him down safe and sound. Then the vigil will be over, and some other mother can take over the awesome responsibility of having a son become a star—
If only…
* * * *
The general’s third telegram arrived that afternoon:
Regret to inform you that meteorite impact on satellite hull severely damaged capsule-detachment mechanism, making ejection impossible. Will make every effort to find another means of accomplishing your son’s return.
Terry!—
See the little boy playing beneath the maple tree, moving his tiny cars up and down the tiny streets of his make-believe village; the little boy, his fuzz of hair gold in the sunlight, his cherub-cheeks pink in the summer wind—
Terry!—
Up the lane the blue-denimed young man walks, swinging his thin tanned arms, his long legs making near-grownup strides over the sun-seared grass; the sky blue and bright behind him, the song of cicada rising and falling in the hazy September air—
Terry…
—probably won’t get a chance to write you again before take-off, but don’t worry, Ma. The Explorer XII is the greatest bird they ever built. Nothing short of a direct meteorite hit can hurt it, and the odds are a million to one…
Why don’t they leave the stars alone? Why don’t they leave the stars to God?
* * * *
The afternoon shadows lengthened on the lawn and the sun grew red and swollen over the western hills. Martha fixed supper, tried to eat, and couldn’t. After a while, when the light began to fade, she slipped into Terry’s jacket and went outside.
Slowly the sky darkened and the stars began to appear. At length her star appeared, but its swift passage blurred before her eyes. Tires crunched on the gravel then, and headlights washed the darkness from the drive. A car door slammed.
Martha did not move. Please God, she thought, let it be Terry, even though she knew that it couldn’t possibly be Terry. Footsteps sounded behind her, paused. Someone coughed softly. She turned then—
“Good evening, ma’am.”
She saw the circlet of stars on the gray epaulet; she saw the stern handsome face; she saw the dark tired eyes. And she knew. Even before he spoke again, she knew—
“The same meteorite that damaged the ejection mechanism, ma’am. It penetrated the capsule, too. We didn’t find out till just a while ago—but there was nothing we could have done anyway…Are you all right, ma’am?”
“Yes. I’m all right.”
“I wanted to express my regrets personally. I know how you must feel.”
“It’s all right.”
“We will, of course, make every effort to bring back his…remains…so that he can have a fitting burial on Earth.”
“No,” she said.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am?”
She raised her eyes to the patch of sk
y where her son had passed in his shining metal sarcophagus. Sirius blossomed there, blue-white and beautiful. She raised her eyes still higher—and beheld the vast parterre of Orion with its central motif of vivid forget-me-nots, its far-flung blooms of Betelguese and Rigel, of Bellatrix and Saiph…And higher yet—and there flamed the exquisite flower beds of Taurus and Gemini, there burgeoned the riotous wreath of the Crab; there lay the pulsing petals of the Pleiades…And down the ecliptic garden path, wafted by a stellar breeze, drifted the ocher rose of Mars…
“No,” she said again.
The general had raised his eyes, too; now, slowly, he lowered them. “I think I understand, ma’am. And I’m glad that’s the way you want it…The stars are beautiful tonight, aren’t they.”
“More beautiful than they’ve ever been,” she said.
* * * *
After the general had gone, she looked up once more at the vast and variegated garden of the sky where her son lay buried, then she turned and walked slowly back to the memoried house.
THE SKY IS FALLING, by Lester Del Rey
I
“Dave Hanson! By the power of the true name be summoned cells and humors, ka and id, self and—”
Dave Hanson! The name came swimming through utter blackness, sucking at him, pulling him together out of nothingness. Then, abruptly, he was aware of being alive, and surprised. He sucked in on the air around him, and the breath burned in his lungs. He was one of the dead—there should be no quickening of breath within him!
He caught a grip on himself, fighting the fantasies of his mind, and took another breath of air. This time it burned less, and he could force an awareness of the smells around him. But there was none of the pungent odor of the hospital he had expected. Instead, his nostrils were scorched with a noxious odor of sulfur, burned hair and cloying incense.
He gagged on it. His diaphragm tautened with the sharp pain of long-unused muscles, and he sneezed.
“A good sign,” a man’s voice said. “The followers have accepted and are leaving. Only a true being can sneeze. But unless the salamander works, his chances are only slight.”
There was a mutter of agreement from others, before an older voice broke in. “It takes a deeper fire than most salamanders can stir, Ser Perth. We might aid it with high-frequency radiation, but I distrust the effects on the prepsyche. If we tried a tamed succubus—”
“The things are untrustworthy,” the first voice answered. “And with the sky falling, we dare not trust one.”
The words blurred off in a fog of semiconsciousness and half-thoughts. The sky was falling? Who killed Foxy Loxy? I, said the spider, who sat down insider, I went boomp in the night and the bull jumped over the moon.…
“Bull,” he croaked. “The bull sleeper!”
“Delirious,” the first voice muttered.
“I mean—bull pusher!” That was wrong, too, and he tried again, forcing his reluctant tongue around the syllables. “Bull dosser!”
Damn it, couldn’t he even pronounce simple Engaliss?
The language wasn’t English, however. Nor was it Canadian French, the only other speech he could make any sense of. Yet he understood it—had even spoken it, he realized. There was nothing wrong with his command of whatever language it was, but there seemed to be no word for bulldozer. He struggled to get his eyes open.
The room seemed normal enough, in spite of the odd smells. He lay on a high bed, surrounded by prim white walls, and there was even a chart of some kind at the bottom of the bedframe. He focused his eyes slowly on what must be the doctors and nurses there, and their faces looked back with the proper professional worry. But the varicolored gowns they wore in place of proper clothing were covered with odd designs, stars, crescents and things that might have been symbols for astronomy or chemistry.
He tried to reach for his glasses to adjust them. There were no glasses! That hit him harder than any other discovery. He must be delirious and imagining the room. Dave Hanson was so nearsighted that he couldn’t have seen the men, much less the clothing, without corrective lenses.
The middle-aged man with the small mustache bent over the chart near his feet. “Hmm,” the man said in the voice of the first speaker. “Mars trines Neptune. And with Scorpio so altered…hmm. Better add two cc. of cortisone to the transfusion.”
Hanson tried to sit up, but his arms refused to bear his weight. He opened his mouth. A slim hand came to his lips, and he looked up into soothing blue eyes. The nurse’s face was framed in copper-red hair. She had the transparent skin and classic features that occur once in a million times but which still keep the legend of redheaded enchantresses alive. “Shh,” she said.
He began to struggle against her hand, but she shook her head gently. Her other hand began a series of complicated motions that had a ritualistic look about them.
“Shh,” she repeated. “Rest. Relax and sleep, Dave Hanson, and remember when you were alive.”
There was a sharp sound from the doctor, but it began to blur out before Hanson could understand it. He fought to remember what he’d heard the nurse say—something about when he was alive—as if he’d been dead a long time.…He couldn’t hold the thought. At a final rapid motion of the girl’s hand his eyes closed, the smell faded from his nose and all sounds vanished. Once there was a stinging sensation, as if he were receiving the transfusion. Then he was alone in his mind with his memories—mostly of the last day when he’d still been alive. He seemed to be reliving the events, rethinking the thoughts he’d had then.
It began with the sight of his uncle’s face leering at him. Uncle David Arnold Hanson looked like every man’s dream of himself and every woman’s dreams of manliness. But at the moment, to Dave, he looked more like a personal demon. His head was tilted back and nasty laughter was booming through the air of the little office.
“So your girl writes that your little farewell activity didn’t fare so well, eh?” he chortled. “And you come crawling here to tell me you want to do the honorable thing, is that it? All right, my beloved nephew, you’ll do the honorable thing! You’ll stick to your contract with me.”
“But—” Dave began.
“But if you don’t, you’d better read it again. You don’t get one cent except on completion of your year with me. That’s what it says, and that’s what happens.” He paused, letting the fact that he meant it sink in. He was enjoying the whole business, and in no hurry to end it. “And I happen to know, Dave, that you don’t even have fare to Saskatchewan left. You quit and I’ll see you never get another job. I promised my sister I’d make a man of you and, by jumping Jupiter, I intend to do just that. And in my book, that doesn’t mean you run back with your tail between your legs just because some silly young girl pulls that old chestnut on you. Why, when I was your age, I already had.…”
Dave wasn’t listening any longer. In futile anger, he’d swung out of the office and gone stumbling back toward the computer building. Then, in a further burst of anger, he swung off the trail. To hell with his work and blast his uncle! He’d go on into town, and he’d—he’d do whatever he pleased.
The worst part of it was that Uncle David could make good on his threat of seeing that Dave got no more work anywhere. David Arnold Hanson was a power to reckon with. No other man on Earth could have persuaded anyone to let him try his scheme of building a great deflection wall across northern Canada to change the weather patterns. And no other man could have accomplished the impossible task, even after twelve countries pooled their resources to give him the job. But he was doing it, and it was already beginning to work. Dave had noticed that the last winter in Chicago had definitely shown that Uncle David’s predictions were coming true.
Like most of the world, Dave had regarded the big man who was his uncle with something close to worship. He’d jumped at the chance to work under Uncle David. And he’d been a fool. He’d been doing all right in Chicago. Repairing computers didn’t pay a fortune, but it was a good living, and he was good at it. And there
was Bertha—maybe not a movie doll, but a sort of pretty girl who was also a darned good cook. For a man of thirty who’d always been a scrawny, shy runt like the one in the “before” pictures, he’d been doing all right.
Then came the letter from his uncle, offering him triple salary as a maintenance man on the computers used for the construction job. There was nothing said about romance and beauteous Indian maids, but Dave filled that in himself. He would need the money when he and Bertha got married, too, and all that healthy outdoor living was just what the doctor would have ordered.
The Indian maids, of course, turned out to be a few fat old squaws who knew all about white men. The outdoor living developed into five months of rain, hail, sleet, blizzard, fog and constant freezing in tractors while breathing the healthy fumes of diesels. Uncle David turned out to be a construction genius, all right, but his interest in Dave seemed to lie in the fact that he was tired of being Simon Legree to strangers and wanted to take it out on one of his own family. And the easy job turned into hell when the regular computer-man couldn’t take any more and quit, leaving Dave to do everything, including making the field tests to gain the needed data.
Now Bertha was writing frantic letters, telling him how much he’d better come back and marry her immediately. And Uncle David thought it was a joke!
Dave paid no attention to where his feet were leading him, only vaguely aware that he was heading down a gully below the current construction job. He heard the tractors and bulldozers moving along the narrow cliff above him, but he was used to the sound. He heard frantic yelling from above, too, but paid no attention to it; in any Hanson construction program, somebody was always yelling about something that had to be done day before yesterday. It wasn’t until he finally became aware of his own name being shouted that he looked up. Then he froze in horror.