The Ninth Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack

by Dave Dryfoos

  Smiling, he placed a pebble on the watch, another on the lid. He sat up, moved his weakened body so they could perhaps tell it was a unit. He picked up a teardrop in each hand, held them at his visor, rolled his eyes, and opened and shut his mouth. He spoke to them. He sang to them. He swayed with them to show he too could dance.

  They made no sign of reply. None that he could recognize, at any rate.

  Carefully he felt and looked at the entire surface of a teardrop, putting one down to devote both hands to the other. He thought perhaps the lack of organs and openings might simply mean they were clothed or armored in some way. But the thing was apparently naked. The surfaces he touched were probably skin. He didn’t know.

  And they, would they know what a man was? Were they even certain he was alive?

  One of them was behind him, dancing before the tent. Seeing that, he was certain the teardrops hadn’t yet distinguished the animate from the inanimate in the objects around them here.

  And George had little time to teach them. Already he was dull and listless. His vision was playing tricks on him.

  Like as not he’d be dead before they knew for certain he’d been alive. Dead in the grotesque space-suit. Preserved in an atmosphere of formaldehyde. His body would seem like a machine that had run down. There would be no discernable difference between himself and his watch.

  But if they knew he’d been alive? They might remember, then. They were intelligent, could communicate with one another. By rights they should have some kind of legends or traditions or history. If they did, if they knew they’d seen alien life, they’d keep the memory alive.

  They’d recognize the next man to land on Venus, might find means to tell of this first expedition. Might lead a man to the buried space-ship, the bodies, the ship’s log.

  At least they could defeat the wind. The teardrops could keep his life and the lives of his mates from going utterly to waste. Whether men ever found out or not, the teardrops themselves would know that the expedition had reached Venus.

  But first, George had to prove he was alive, like them—not some strangely mobile meteorite, nor oddly contrived machine.

  His very lack of strength, his real nearness to death, provided George with the means he sought. Already he was half anesthetized by weakness and shock. He didn’t have to worry about pain.

  Holding his breath, he took off his helmet. He picked up a teardrop with each hand, held them to his hot cheeks. Then he let himself breathe.

  He knew the physical changes to follow would be obvious to the intelligent little dancers he held in his hands. He hoped they wouldn’t get hurt, when they fell.

  Hurt or not, they’d soon figure out he’d been alive—once he was dead.

  THE PRICE

  Like a louse on a lion, the fear had got under his hair, bored into his skin, swelling and reddening as it ate at him. Like an inaccessible insect, it was too close, too nearly a part of him, to be coped with by claw or craft. He could only pretend it wasn’t there. Hating the pretense, Ray Fincek hated himself.

  He sat behind a cluttered desk that huddled between supply bins in the Building Maintenance Section of America’s Moonbase. His grizzled head hardly topped the heaped-up papers on the blotter. His flat, thrice-broken nose pointed directly at a dog-eared telautograph message received from Earth the day before.

  His brown eves didn’t see that message. Only his mind’s eye focused, and with it he saw stars. Stars as they looked from space—cold in their hotness, close in their distantness, and bright as the Everlasting Light that burned in its own stream of oxygen at the Tomb of the Unreturned, the monument to missing spacemen he’d helped dedicate there on the Moon.

  The missing had seen those stars. In his mind’s eye, in the memory that ran back to the beginnings of spaceflight, Ray Fincek saw those missing men. He saw their ships, the planets he’d visited with them, the asteroids, the satellites, the whole solar system in a panorama as wide as space and as long as his twenty years of space-work.

  He told himself he hated every minute of it.

  * * * *

  Still evading the message, his eyes came to rest on his left hand. It was calloused. It was also grimy—tattooed with the ingrained dirt that comes from inadequate washing. The nails were filthy. They needed cutting, but they needed cleaning more, and that he could do by himself.

  He drew a nail file from the center drawer of his desk, and gripped the blunt end with his lips. He bent over till the shaft of the file slipped between the open jaws of a small vise clamped to the desk’s left corner. Then, holding the file in position with his lips, he tightened the vise around it.

  He sat up, a swarthy, graying, flat-nosed gnome, broad back hunched to a question-mark. Patiently he drew each fingernail in turn over the sharp end of the file—not once, but repeatedly, until each was fairly clean. Then he buffed them all on his empty right sleeve.

  By that time he was ready to face again the impact of the telautograph message. He could have recited it from memory but chose to read because it was in his son’s own neat and incisive script.

  Dear Dad,

  Have been accepted as Ph. D. candidate in astrophysics and assigned an asteroid to study. Will stop off for parental consent. Janet sends love.

  Twoie.

  So he was going to see his boy. Just what he’d dreamed of, all those long years. Just what he’d always promised himself—after the next trip. Then suddenly, with an arm gone, there’d been no next trip—and no assurance of a decent job, down Earthside.

  His dream was coming true anyhow. But Twoie must hate him, after those long years of neglect; despise him as a stove-up has-been. Besides, the boy shouldn’t be coming to the Moon. Dreams have no business coming true—

  He should have known the boy would come, he told himself. He should have known from the day Lisa wrote she was naming their baby Ray Fincek II, instead of Junior—boasting that their child was not a junior-grade Fincek, but a chip off the old block. But he’d put that down to a woman’s whim, and nicknamed the baby Twoie more or less after a famous atmospheric flier he’d heard of.

  He should have known as soon as Twoie began studying astronomy. But he’d pictured a quiet lecture hall in an ivy-league college, an air-conditioned office in Pasadena or some place.

  He should certainly have known a year ago when he’d grudgingly consented to his son’s marriage; grudgingly, because he thought nineteen too young for matrimony, but consenting because he’d hated to think what he might be told—he, and everyone else along the Moon-base grapevine—if he asked why marriage was so urgent.

  Janet, the girl’s name was. He’d seen her with Twoie in the last Christmas Video Party that Earth-base held with Moonbase for morale purposes. The men had jokingly complained Janet was bad for morale. “Too good-looking,” they’d said.

  He should have known that, too, Ray thought, sighing. He supposed he should have known a lot of things. But how could he, when he’d never seen his son face to face? All he really had of the boy was this handwriting, sent in a telautograph because that was the most personal form of message available to the public.

  A very nice form of message to send to one’s father, too—if the father were rich. Cheap enough, though, when you considered how far it had to travel. The price had been penciled on a corner by a message-center clerk: three hundred fifty-four dollars and sixty-five cents. Plus tax, of course.

  The delivery boy, all excited, had refused a tip. Which was lucky, because it was still three days before pay day. No! Four! Twoie would be here in an hour—a check, in four days. It was a relief to have to get up and do something about that.

  He unzipped a pocket of his patched red spacesuit and stuffed the message into it. He stood under his helmet, which hung on a cord from the ceiling, lowered it to his shoulders, uncoupled the hook, and made fast such thumbscrews as he could reach. He thrust his hand into a gaunt
let held by a special frame, and made the wrist-joint more or less air-tight by catching the free end of a roll of friction tape on his wrist, winding his arm around the tape-spindle a few times, cutting it against a knife-edge fixed there for the purpose, and smoothing the end against his chest.

  Then he lurched bearlike through a couple of vapor-barriers, and was out in the cold, half-pressured corridor. His toes hurt. He turned on the heat in his suit, but got no relief. His toes felt as if curled in tight fists under the balls of his feet, driving long toenails into his soles at every step.

  But here again, as he well knew, Ray Fincek was kidding himself. Since a spacesuit’s heating unit had failed him, fifteen years before, he’d had no toes.

  Probably the boy didn’t remember hearing of that. Probably the boy didn’t recall that he’d lost his arm to a meteoric dust-mote that pierced his suit, here on the Moon. Probably the boy hadn’t pictured how he’d look, all crippled with the bends from sudden decompression in a landing accident.

  Certainly the boy didn’t know that forty-one-year-old Ray Fincek looked like a man of sixty and felt eighty. Too many things, the boy didn’t know—But the main thing was, he didn’t know the boy!

  He knew only Martians. There was one in the corridor, working maskless and suitless in a thin and frigid semi-atmosphere that would have spun a man fainting to the floor. It moved backward down the long narrow tunnel, watching its progress in a mirror held in the right hand, and catching any missed spots with a rag held in the left. It walked on its two front feet, and in the two rear ones held buckets of soapy and clear water. Its left tail manipulated the wet mop and its right tail rinsed and dried.

  Ray remembered to smile and wave an answer to the friendly undulations of the Martian’s snout, but wasn’t convincing. Quickly the Martian downed tools and stood at attention, every feather electric with a quivering desire to be of service.

  Ray halted, pulled himself together, and reached up to pat the Martian’s snout. Then he gave the signal to resume work. This time no willing Martian could help him.

  The paymaster could. And he would, if asked. Asking was the hard part.

  * * * *

  On down the corridor Ray shuffled wearily. He entered the Administration Wing’s air lock, closed the door behind him, and sat heavily on the hard bench along the right wall. A red light flashed over the inner door, and pumps pulsed in his ears. The air grew hot. He turned off his suit-heat.

  When the light changed to green, the inner door unlocked itself, and he got up and went through it.

  A new little blond file girl, whose desk was just beyond, came up and began helping him remove his helmet. As he knew, she was stationed there to help all comers. But Ray Fincek had climbed unaided out of his first spacesuit before she’d been born—and had climbed unaided out of his last one just before he’d lost that right arm. It was all he could do to accept her routine assistance without rudeness.

  The blonde was lifting his helmet off when another woman bustled up, frankly fat, frankly forty, and frankly admiring.

  “That’ll do, Jane,” she said. “I’ll help Mr. Fincek myself.”

  “Mr. Fincek?” said Jane. “Oh, excuse me, sir. I should have recognized you from the pictures;” She paused, looked hesitantly at Ray for a second, and then asked the older woman, “Miss Stoat, would it be wrong of me to ask for an autograph?”

  Ray answered for himself: “Sure not! Just so you don’t want it on a check. I’ll stop by your desk.”

  Her brilliant smile so contrasted with his stupid joke that Ray sneered inwardly at himself. But he made another effort to live up to his reputation for wisecracking.

  “Still got those pictures of your kids, Miss Stoat?” he asked the older woman, forcing a grin.

  She giggled, and even managed a blush. “All right, Ray! Mrs., then! But Miss makes me feel younger—”

  She fumbled with the zippers of his suit. “Want anything out of the pockets, Ray?”

  “Yeah.” He extracted his son’s telautograph. “Got a letter from my boy.”

  Mrs. Stoat’s eyes sparkled. “I…we all heard, Ray. We’re so glad for you!”

  Ray just looked at her. She looked back at him, chins sagging.

  “What’s the matter, Ray? Don’t you want to see him?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Well, what’s eating you, then? This isn’t like you, Ray.”

  “He’s going up for his Ph. D.,” Ray blurted. “I’m head janitor here—”

  “You’re chief of a crew of Martians that you yourself found and trained. They work for you because they like you—and so will your son!”

  “Maybe—if he isn’t sore because I spent years with the Martians and not even an hour with him.”

  “He’ll understand—unless there’s something wrong with him.”

  “Not a thing! Don’t start that rumor, Felice!”

  He felt ashamed as soon as he heard himself. He’d hurt her. He’d hurt others, too—like Twoie, and Twoie’s long-dead mother, that he’d stayed away from so long.

  He recalled the year’s Moon-quarantine that formerly lay between a trip to a strange planet and an Earthside visit. He remembered thinking at the time that if he went home he’d arrive practically broke, and maybe have to take his boy out of school. But those memories he dismissed as alibis. Ray was sure he’d have gone if he hadn’t lacked courage—just as he now lacked the courage to face his boy, or even apologize to Felice Stoat.

  Felice had hung up his heavy suit and was breathing heavily.

  “Everything will probably come out O.K.,” she said. “Anyhow, you can count on us—”

  She sounded doubtful! Thinking of that, he got halfway down the aisle to the paymaster’s cage, within sight of the pale, poker-faced little man inside it, before recalling his promise to the blond file girl. On aching feet he shuffled back to her desk and signed his autograph.

  * * * *

  When he finally got to the cage, the paymaster kidded him about that retreat: “For a minute, there, I thought you’d lost your courage.”

  “I have, Harry. Got to talk you into an advance.”

  “That would be for the boy now, wouldn’t it? Well, there’s the credit union, and your unpaid salary, of course—or if you like, Ray, I can let you have what’s in my pocket.”

  “Thanks, Harry. There must be a week’s pay I’ve earned since the last check—”

  “All right. Sign here, while I dig up your payroll card. Boy, how I envy you! Haven’t seen my kids in three years!”

  “I envy you,” said Ray. “You’re not a total stranger to them. What’s it like, getting acquainted with your own family?”

  Harry glanced up in surprise. “Why, it’s wonderful!” he said. “I get along just fine. And I’m only a clerk. You…you’re Ray Fincek—”

  Ray shrugged. “Even if Twoie likes me now, he won’t when I tell him what I’m going to tell him.”

  “What, for Pete’s sake?”

  “That he’s got to go back to Earth! That he can’t waste himself up here!”

  Harry wet his thumb and counted out bills from a handful. “With me,” he said slowly, “kids have a habit of doing what they want to do. But then, I’m not Ray Fincek.”

  “No,” said Ray, painfully aware that a clerk has a skill that is salable on Earth, but a space-pilot hasn’t, “no, you’re not. Thanks for the dough, Harry.”

  The blond girl helped him into his suit again, Felice being out of sight. He went through the office to the transport air lock, walked through its outer door, and sat in the cylindrical car that waited there at the end of a tube. By remote control he opened the tube-gate at the blast-off point, and the few pounds of air in the lock drove him quickly to the field.

  There was no traffic at the moment, but his climb up the steel ladder to the meteorite-proofed control r
oom touched off a bustle of activity. A tall boy with a white junior’s suit and a sharp face helped him through the manhole to the semicircular room, twisted the dial of Ray’s suit-radio to the special flight-control frequency, and said a respectful, “Hello, sir.’ A dark boy, shorter than his mate and also white-suited, pushed the one comfortable swivel chair to the center of the plotting-table and stood at attention while Ray seated himself. But the boy was elbowed aside by the chair’s regular occupant, a tall man in a red suit like Ray’s.

  To this man, who took a stool, beside him, Ray spoke.

  “Well, Al,” he said, “I see he didn’t come in at Number Two site over there.”

  “No,” said Al, “but he’s here. The tractor’s hauling him over from Number Four. I’ll put him on C-Ring for blast-off, so he’ll be right out there in front of us.”

  * * * *

  Ray was so intent on his son that he saw the tow-tractors dust fountain as it might look to a boy fresh from Earth: every mote of dust or pebble of pumice sailing off the surface with whatever trajectory the treads gave it, uninfluenced by wind; all falling at the same speed, whether light or heavy. He remembered how unreasonable the effects of vacuum had looked to him when he first saw them.

  Up here, though, everything was unreasonable. Any man who came here was unreasonable—

  Watching the tractor haul its trailer bearing Twoie’s slim single-seater, he thought of an ant pulling a twig. Strange thought—he hadn’t seen an ant in years. When the gantry rolled up on its track and the armored crew hooked on to the ship, he held his breath, senselessly hoping they wouldn’t drop it.

  They didn’t. They’d never yet dropped a ship. They set Twoie on its tail as if it were a young tree being planted, instead of an unearthly dragon that would some day spout fire so fierce that safety demanded landings and take-offs be made from widely separated points.

  Dragons, twigs, ants—and safety. The louse of fear was infecting his mind, Ray decided.