* * * *
She was in sight, unrecognizable in space-suit and helmet, floating along the wreck-pack’s edge toward them. A mass of the glassite space-helmets tied together was in her grasp. She climbed bravely over the stern of a projecting wreck and shot on toward the Martian Queen.
The airlock’s door was open for her, and, when she was inside it, the outer door closed and air hissed into the lock. In a moment she was in among them, still clinging to the helmets. Kent grasped her swaying figure and removed her helmet.
“Marta, you’re all right?” he cried. She nodded a little weakly.
“I’m all right. It was just that I had to go over those guards that were all frozen.…Terrible!”
“Get these helmets on!” Crain was crying. “There’s a dozen of them, and twelve of us can stop Jandron’s men if we get back in time!”
Kent and Liggett and the nearer of their men were swiftly donning the helmets. Krell grasped one and Crain sought to snatch it.
“Let that go! We’ll not have you with us when we haven’t enough helmets for our own men!”
“You’ll have me or kill me here!” Krell cried, his eyes hate-mad. “I’ve got my own account to settle with
Jandron!”
“Let him have it!” Liggett cried. “We’ve no time now to argue!”
Kent reached toward the girl. “Marta, give one of the men your helmet,” he ordered; but she shook her head.
“I’m going with you!” Before Kent could dispute she had the helmet on again, and Crain was pushing them into the airlock. The nine or ten left inside without helmets hastily thrust steel bars into the men’s hands before the inner door closed. The outer one opened and they leapt forth into space, floating smoothly along the wreck-pack’s border with bars in their grasp, thirteen strong.
Kent found the slowness with which they floated forward torturing. He glimpsed Crain and Liggett ahead, Marta beside him, Krell floating behind him to the left. They reached the projecting freighters, climbed over and around them, braced against them and shot on. They sighted the Pallas ahead now. Suddenly they discerned another group of eleven figures in space-suits approaching it from the wreck-pack’s interior, rolling up the tube-line that led from the Pallas as they did so. Jandron’s party!
* * * *
Jandron and his men had seen them and were suddenly making greater efforts to reach the Pallas. Kent and his companions, propelling themselves frenziedly on from another wreck, reached the ship’s side at the same time as Jandron’s men. The two groups mixed and mingled, twisted and turned in a mad space-combat.
Kent had been grasped by one of Jandron’s men and raised his bar to crack the other’s glassite helmet. His opponent caught the bar, and they struggled, twisting and turning over and over far up in space amid a half-score similar struggles. Kent wrenched his bar free at last from the other’s grasp and brought it down on his helmet. The glassite cracked, and he caught a glimpse of the man’s hate-distorted face frozen instantly in death.
Kent released him and propelled himself toward a struggling trio nearby. As he floated toward them, he saw Jandron beyond them making wild gestures of command and saw Krell approaching Jandron with upraised bar. Kent, on reaching the three combatants, found them to be two of Jandron’s men overcoming Crain. He shattered one’s helmet as he reached them, but saw the other’s bar go up for a blow.
Kent twisted frantically, uselessly, to escape it, but before the blow could descend a bar shattered his opponent’s helmet from behind. As the man froze in instant death Kent saw that it was Marta who had struck him from behind. He jerked her to his side. The struggles in space around them seemed to be ending.
Six of Jandron’s party had been slain, and three of Kent’s companions. Jandron’s four other followers were giving up the combat, floating off into the wreck-pack in clumsy, hasty flight. Someone grasped Kent’s arm, and he turned to find it was Liggett.
“They’re beaten!” Liggett’s voice came to him! “They’re all killed but those four!”
“What about Jandron himself?” Kent cried. Liggett pointed to two space-suited bodies twisting together in space, with bars still in their lifeless grasp.
Kent saw through their shattered helmets the stiffened faces of Jandron and Krell, their helmets having apparently been broken by each other’s simultaneous blows.
Crain had gripped Kent’s arm also. “Kent, it’s over!” he was exclaiming. “Liggett and I will close the Pallas’ exhaust-valves and release new air in it. You take over helmets for the rest of our men in the Martian Queen.”
* * * *
In several minutes Kent was back with the men from the Martian Queen. The Pallas was ready, with Liggett in its pilot-house, the men taking their stations, and Crain and Marta awaiting Kent.
“We’ve enough fuel to take us out of the dead-area and to Neptune without trouble!” Crain declared. “But what about those four of Jandron’s men that got away?”
“The best we can do is leave them here,” Kent told him. “Best for them, too, for at Neptune they’d be executed, while they can live indefinitely in the wreck-pack.”
“I’ve seen so many men killed on the Martian Queen and here,” pleaded Marta. “Please don’t take them to Neptune.”
“All right, we’ll leave them,” Crain agreed, “though the scoundrels ought to meet justice.” He hastened up to the pilot-house after Liggett.
In a moment came the familiar blast of the rocket-tubes, and the Pallas shot out cleanly from the wreck-pack’s edge. A scattered cheer came from the crew. With gathering speed the ship arrowed out, its rocket-tubes blasting now in steady succession.
Kent, with his arm across Marta’s shoulders, watched the wreck-pack grow smaller behind. It lay as when he first had seen it, a strange great mass, floating forever motionless among the brilliant stars. He felt the girl beside him shiver, and swung her quickly around.
“Let’s not look back or remember now, Marta!” he said. “Let’s look ahead.”
She nestled closer inside his arm. “Yes, Rance. Let’s look ahead.”
* * * *
Copyright © 1931 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
(1907–1988)
How you feel about Heinlein’s writing likely depends on how you first encounter him. Much of his earlier writing is astonishing in scope, and his young adult novels are magical, especially if you catch them at the right age. Later in his career he wrote much that was very political, and he liked to take a variety of approaches in different works. Someone whose only exposure to Heinlein was Starship Troopers (1959) might try to argue that he was an authority-loving fascist, without ever reading “The Long Watch” (1949) in which he movingly argued the exact opposite position. The joke about Heinlein was that it was hard to get a fix on his politics, since it was a moving target. At various times he was claimed to be everywhere from hard left to hard right politically, with the main commonality being a belief in the importance of individuals and a certain libertarian skepticism.
Heinlein graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1929 and planned on a military career, but was discharged as permanently disabled after a bout of tuberculosis. He floundered around looking for a new vocation, trying everything from speechwriting to silver mining before finally turning to writing science fiction. He quicly sold his first story (“Life-Line,” 1939) to Astounding. Within a year he was able to retire the mortgage on his house and write only what pleased him. (He was quietly generous to other writers who were less successful, helping to support Philip K. Dick at times, for instance.)
He wrote nothing during World War II; he was unsuccessful in trying to convince the Navy to return him to active duty, but he was able to work a the Philadelphia Navy Yard with L. Sprague de Camp and Isaac Asimov. After the war he began writing novels, producing sixteen between 1947 and 1959, including a series of wildly successful juvenile SF novels like Rocket Ship Galileo (1947) and Have Space Suit, Will Travel (1958)
. When “The Green Hills of Earth” was published in the Saturday Evening Post, Heinlein became the first science fiction writer to break out of the “pulp ghetto.”
Starship Troopers (1959), with its military themes and introduction of powered armor, was both hugely influential and hugely controversial. One of the best responses to it was in Joe Haldeman’s “Hero” (p. 583), which became the novel The Forever War. Both Starship Troopers and The Forever War won Hugos. (Heinlein won four Hugos in all, including the first one awarded.)
Two years later, Heinlein published Stranger in a Strange Land, which became seen as a best-selling counterculture manifesto (as well as achieving notoriety for being mass murderer Charles Manson’s favorite book).
Heinlein experienced increasing health problems from the 1960s on. He continued to write and travel widely with his third wife, Virginia (Ginnie). His newer books were explicity geared to adults, and somehow less magical for it (even to their target audience). After having one of the first heart bypass operations, he had to give up most non-writing activities but he was healthy enough in the early 1980s to visit Antarctica, the only continent he hadn’t been on.
After Heinlein died of emphysema and congestive heart failure, Grumbles from the Grave was released, purportedly with all of the things he’d been too tactful to say while alive. The most controversial parts were edited out, however, leaving a much tamer book than he’d intended.
I’ll always associate this story with the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, when a friend posted the poem that forms the core of the story to an editorial listserv by way of memorium. The title of the story comes from a line in C. L. Moore’s story, “Shambleau” (p. 283). The Rhysling Award, given each year for the best science fiction poetry, is named for Heinlein’s blind poet hero in this story.
THE GREEN HILLS OF EARTH, by Robert A. Heinlein
first published in The Saturday Evening Post, February 1947
This is the story of Rhysling, the Blind Singer of the Space-ways—but not the official version. You sang his words in school:
“I pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave me birth;
Let me rest my eyes on the fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.”
Or perhaps you sang in French, or German. Or it might have been Esperanto, while Terra’s rainbow banner rippled over your head.
The language does not matter—it was certainly an Earth tongue. No one has ever translated “Green Hills” into the lisping Venetian speech; no Martian ever croaked and whispered it in the dry corridors. This is ours. We of Earth have exported everything from Hollywood crawlies to synthetic radioactives, but this belongs solely to Terra, and to her sons and daughters wherever they may be.
We have all heard many stories of Rhysling. You may even be one of the many who have sought degrees, or acclaim, by scholarly evaluations of his published works—Songs of the Space-ways, The Grand Canal, and other Poems, High and Far, and “UP SHIP!”
Nevertheless, although you have sung his songs and read his verses, in school and out your whole life, it is at least an even money bet—unless you are a spaceman yourself—that you have never even heard of most of Rhysling’s unpublished songs, such items as Since the Pusher Met My Cousin, That Red-Headed Venusburg Gal, Keep Your Pants On, Skipper, or A Space Suit Built for Two.
Nor can we quote them in a family magazine.
Rhysling’s reputation was protected by a careful literary executor and by the happy chance that he was never interviewed. Songs of the Spaceways appeared the week he died; when it became a best seller, the publicity stories about him were pieced together from what people remembered about him plus the highly colored handouts from his publishers.
The resulting traditional picture of Rhysling is about as authentic as George Washington’s hatchet or King Alfred’s cakes.
In truth you would not have wanted him in your parlor; he was not socially acceptable. He had a permanent case of sun itch, which he scratched continually, adding nothing to his negligible beauty.
Van der Voort’s portrait of him for the Harriman Centennial edition of his works shows a figure of high tragedy, a solemn mouth, sightless eyes concealed by black silk bandage. He was never solemn! His mouth was always open, singing, grinning, drinking, or eating. The bandage was any rag, usually dirty. After he lost his sight he became less and less neat about his person.
* * * *
“Noisy” Rhysling was a jetman, second class, with eyes as good as yours, when he signed on for a loop trip to the Jovian asteroids in the R.S. Goshawk. The crew signed releases for everything in those days; a Lloyd’s associate would have laughed in your face at the notion of insuring a spaceman. The Space Precautionary Act had never been heard of, and the Company was responsible only for wages, if and when. Half the ships that went further than Luna City never came back. Spacemen did not care; by preference they signed for shares, and any one of them would have bet you that he could jump from the 200th floor of Harriman Tower and ground safely, if you offered him three to two and allowed him rubber heels for the landing.
Jetmen were the most carefree of the lot and the meanest. Compared with them the masters, the radarmen, and the as-trogators (there were no supers nor stewards in those days) were gentle vegetarians. Jetmen knew too much. The others trusted the skill of the captain to get them down safely; jet-men knew that skill was useless against the blind and fitful devils chained inside their rocket motors.
The Goshawk was the first of Harriman’s ships to be converted from chemical fuel to atomic power-piles-—or rather the first that did not blow up. Rhysling knew her well; she was an old tub that had plied the Luna City run. Supra-New York space station to Leyport and back, before she was converted for deep space. He had worked the Luna run in her and had been along on the first deep space trip, Drywater on Mars—and back, to everyone’s surprise.
He should have made chief engineer by the time he signed for the Jovian loop trip, but, after the Drywater pioneer trip, he had been fired, blacklisted, and grounded at Luna City for having spent his time writing a chorus and several verses at a time when he should have been watching his gauges. The song was the infamous The Skipper is a Father to his Crew, with the uproariously unprintable final couplet.
The blacklist did not bother him. He won an accordion from a Chinese barkeep in Luna City by cheating at one-thumb and thereafter kept going by singing to the miners for drinks and tips until the rapid attrition in spacemen caused the Company agent there to give him another chance. He kept his nose clean on the Luna run for a year or two, got back into deep space, helped give Venusburg its original ripe reputation, strolled the banks of the Grand Canal when a second colony was established at the ancient Martian capital, and froze his toes and ears on the second trip to Titan.
Things moved fast in those days. Once the power-pile drive was accepted the number of ships that put out from the Luna-Terra system was limited only by the availability of crews. Jetmen were scarce; the shielding was cut to a minimum to save weight and few married men cared to risk possible exposure to radioactivity. Rhysling did not want to be a father, so jobs were always open to him during the golden days of the claiming boom. He crossed and recrossed the system, singing the doggerel that boiled up in his head and chording it out on his accordion.
The master of the Goshawk knew him; Captain Hicks had been astrogator on Rhysling’s first trip in her. “Welcome home, Noisy,” Hicks had greeted him. “Are you sober, or shall I sign the book for you?”
“You can’t get drunk on the bug juice they sell here, Skipper.” He signed and went below, lugging his accordion.
Ten minutes later he was back. “Captain,” he stated darkly, “that number two jet ain’t fit. The cadmium dampers are warped.”
“Why tell me? Tell the Chief.”
“I did, but he says they will do. He’s wrong.”
The captain gestured at the book. “Scratch out your name and scram. We raise shi
p in thirty minutes.”
Rhysling looked at him, shrugged, and went below again.
It is a long climb to the Jovian planetoids; a Hawk-class clunker had to blast for three watches before going into free flight. Rhysling had the second watch. Damping was done by hand then, with a multiplying vernier and a danger gauge. When the gauge showed red, he tried to correct it—no luck.
Jetmen don’t wait; that’s why they are jetmen. He slapped the emergency discover and fished at the hot stuff with the tongs. The lights went out, he went right ahead. A jetman has to know his power room the way your tongue knows the inside of your mouth.
He sneaked a quick look over the top of the lead baffle when the lights went out. The blue radioactive glow did not help him any; he jerked his head back and went on fishing by touch.
When he was done he called over the tube, “Number two jet out. And for crissake get me some light down here!”
There was light—the emergency circuit—but not for him. The blue radioactive glow was the last thing his optic nerve ever responded to.
2
“As Time and Space come bending back to shape this star-specked scene,
The tranquil tears of tragic joy still spread their silver sheen;
Along the Grand Canal still soar the fragile Towers of Truth;
Their fairy grace defends this place of Beauty, calm and couth.
“Bone-tired the race that raised the Towers, forgotten are their lores;
Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction Page 146