by Bryce Walton
Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Space Science Fiction May 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
TO EACH HIS STAR
_by_ BRYCE WALTON
_"Nothing around those other suns but ashes and dried blood," old Dunbar told the space-wrecked, desperate men. "Only one way to go, where we can float down through the clouds to Paradise. That's straight ahead to the sun with the red rim around it."_
_But Dunbar's eyes were old and uncertain. How could they believe in his choice when every star in this forsaken section of space was surrounded by a beckoning red rim?_
* * * * *
There was just blackness, frosty glimmering terrible blackness, goingout and out forever in all directions. Russell didn't think they couldremain sane in all this blackness much longer. Bitterly he thought ofhow they would die--not knowing within maybe thousands of light yearswhere they were, or where they were going.
After the wreck, the four of them had floated a while, floated anddrifted together, four men in bulbous pressure suits like smallindividual rockets, held together by an awful pressing need for eachother and by the "gravity-rope" beam.
Dunbar, the oldest of the four, an old space-buster with a facewrinkled like a dried prune, burned by cosmic rays and the suns ofworlds so far away they were scarcely credible, had taken command.Suddenly, Old Dunbar had known where they were. Suddenly, Dunbar knewwhere they were going.
They could talk to one another through the etheric transmitters insidetheir helmets. They could live ... if this was living ... a long time,if only a man's brain would hold up, Russell thought. The suits werecomplete units. 700 pounds each, all enclosing shelters, withatmosphere pressure, temperature control, mobility in space, andelectric power. Each suit had its own power-plant, reprocessingcontinuously the precious air breathed by the occupants, putting itback into circulation again after enriching it. Packed with foodconcentrates. Each suit a rocket, each human being part of a rocket,and the special "life-gun" that went with each suit each blast ofwhich sent a man a few hundred thousand miles further on towardwherever he was going.
Four men, thought Russell, held together by an invisible string ofgravity, plunging through a lost pocket of hell's dark where there hadnever been any sound or life, with old Dunbar the first in line,taking the lead because he was older and knew where he was and wherehe was going. Maybe Johnson, second in line, and Alvar who was third,knew too, but were afraid to admit it.
But Russell knew it and he'd admitted it from the first--that oldDunbar was as crazy as a Jovian juke-bird.
A lot of time had rushed past into darkness. Russell had no idea nowhow long the four of them had been plunging toward the red-rimmed sunthat never seemed to get any nearer. When the ultra-drive had gonecrazy the four of them had blanked out and nobody could say now howlong an interim that had been. Nobody knew what happened to a man whosuffered a space-time warping like that. When they had regainedconsciousness, the ship was pretty banged up, and the meteor-repellershields cracked. A meteor ripped the ship down the center like an oldbreakfast cannister.
How long ago that had been, Russell didn't know. All Russell knew wasthat they were millions of light years from any place he had everheard about, where the galactic space lanterns had absolutely norecognizable pattern. But Dunbar knew. And Russell was looking atDunbar's suit up ahead, watching it more and more intently, thinkingabout how Dunbar looked inside that suit--and hating Dunbar more andmore for claiming he knew when he didn't, for his droolingoptimism--because he was taking them on into deeper darkness andcalling their destination Paradise.
Russell wanted to laugh, but the last time he'd given way to thisimpulse, the results inside his helmet had been too unpleasant torepeat.
Sometimes Russell thought of other things besides his growing hatredof the old man. Sometimes he thought about the ship, lost back therein the void, and he wondered if wrecked space ships were ever found.Compared with the universe in which one of them drifted, a wreckedship was a lot smaller than a grain of sand on a nice warm beach backon Earth, or one of those specks of silver dust that floated likestrange seeds down the night winds of Venus.
And a human was smaller still, thought Russell when he was not hatingDunbar. Out here, a human being is the smallest thing of all. Hethought then of what Dunbar would say to such a thought, how Dunbarwould laugh that high piping squawking laugh of his and say that thehuman being was bigger than the Universe itself.
Dunbar had a big answer for every little thing.
When the four of them had escaped from that prison colony on asizzling hot asteroid rock in the Ronlwhyn system, that wasn't enoughfor Dunbar. Hell no--Dunbar had to start talking about a place theycould go where they'd never be apprehended, in a system no one elsehad ever heard of, where they could live like gods on a green softworld like the Earth had been a long time back.
And Dunbar had spouted endlessly about a world of treasure they wouldfind, if they would just follow old Dunbar. That's what all four ofthem had been trying to find all their lives in the big cold grabbagof eternity--a rich star, a rich far fertile star where no one elsehad ever been, loaded with treasure that had no name, that no one hadever heard of before. And was, because of that, the richest treasureof all.
We all look alike out here in these big rocket pressure suits, Russellthought. No one for God only knew how many of millions of light yearsaway could see or care. Still--we might have a chance to live, evennow, Russell thought--if it weren't for old crazy Dunbar.
They might have a chance if Alvar and Johnson weren't so damn lackingin self-confidence as to put all their trust in that crazed oldrum-dum. Russell had known now for some time that they were going inthe wrong direction. No reason for knowing. Just a hunch. And Russellwas sure his hunch was right.
* * * * *
Russell said. "Look--look to your left and to your right and behindus. Four suns. You guys see those other three suns all around you,don't you?"
"Sure," someone said.
"Well, if you'll notice," Russell said, "the one on the left also nowhas a red rim around it. Can't you guys see that?"
"Yeah, I see it," Alvar said.
"So now," Johnson said, "there's two suns with red rims around them."
"We're about in the middle of those four suns aren't we, Dunbar?"Russell said.
"That's right, boys!" yelled old Dunbar in that sickeningly optimisticvoice. Like a hysterical old woman's. "Just about in the sweet darkold middle."
"You're still sure it's the sun up ahead ... that's the only one withlife on it, Dunbar ... the only one we can live on?" Russell asked.
"That's right! That's right," Dunbar yelled. "That's the only one--andit's a paradise. Not just a place to live, boys--but a place you'llhave trouble believing in because it's like a dream!"
"And none of these other three suns have worlds we could live on,Dunbar?" Russell asked. Keep the old duck talking like this and maybeAlvar and Johnson would see that he was cracked.
"Yeah," said Alvar. "You still say that, Dunbar?"
"No life, boys, nothing," Dunbar laughed. "Nothing on these otherworlds but ashes ... just ashes and iron and dried blood, dried amillion years or more."
"When in hell were you ever here?" Johnson said. "You say you werehere before. You never said when, or why or anything!"
"It was a long time back boys
. Don't remember too well, but it waswhen we had an old ship called the DOG STAR that I was here. A pirateship and I was second in command, and we came through this sector.That was--hell, it musta' been fifty years ago. I been too many placesnobody's ever bothered to name or chart, to remember where it is, butI been here. I remember those four suns all spotted to form a perfectcircle from this point, with us squarely in the middle. We exploredall these suns and the worlds that go round 'em. Trust me, boys, andwe'll reach the right one. And that one's just like Paradise."
"Paradise is it," Russell whispered hoarsely.
"Paradise and there we'll be like gods, like Mercuries with wingsflying on nights of sweet song. These other suns, don't let thembother