 The Adventurer by C. M. Cornbluth This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Greg Marguerite The Adventurer by C. M. Cornbluth For every evil under the sun there is an answer. It may be a simple direct answer. It may be one that takes years and seems unrelated to the problem, but there is an answer of a kind. President Folsom, the twenty-fourth, said petulantly to his Secretary of the Treasury, blow me to hell, Bannister, if I understood a single word of that. Why can't I buy the Nicolades collection, and don't start with the re-discount and the Series W business again just tell me why? The Secretary of the Treasury said with an air of apprehension and a thread-like feeling across his throat. It boils down to no money, Mr. President. The President was too engrossed in thoughts of the marvelous collection to fly into a rage. It's such a bargain, he said mournfully. An archaic Henry Moor figure, really too big to finger, but I'm no culture-stob, thank God, and fifteen early Morrison's, and I can't begin to tell you what else. He looked hopefully at the Secretary of Public Opinion. Mightn't I seize it for the public good or something? The Secretary of Public Opinion shook his head. His pose was gruffly professional. Not a chance, Mr. President. We'd never get away with it. The art-lovers would scream to high heaven. I suppose so. Why isn't there any money? He had swiveled dangerously on the Secretary of the Treasury again. Sir, purchases of the new Series W bond issue have lagged badly because potential buyers have been attracted to—Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! You know I can't make head or tail of that stuff. Where's the money going? The Director of the Budget said cautiously, Mr. President, during the biennium, just ending the Department of Defense accounted for seventy-eight percent of expenditures. The Secretary of Defense growled, Now wait a minute, Felder. We were voted. The President interrupted, raging weakly. Oh, you rascals. My father would have known what to do with you, but don't think I can't handle it. Don't think you can hoodwink me. He punched a button ferociously. His silly face was contorted with rage, and there was a certain tension on all the faces around the Cabinet table. Panels slid down abruptly in the walls, revealing grim-faced secret servicemen. Each Cabinet officer was covered by at least two automatic rifles. Take that—that—traitor away! The President yelled. His finger pointed at the Secretary of Defense, who slumped over the table, sobbing. Two secret servicemen half carried him from the room. President Folsom, the twenty-fourth, leaned back, thrusting out his lower lip. He told the Secretary of the Treasury, Get me the money for the Nicolides Collection, do you understand? I don't care how you do it. Get it." He glared at the Secretary of Public Opinion. Have you any comments? No, Mr. President. All right, then. The President unbent and said plaintively, I don't see why you all can't be more reasonable. I'm a very reasonable man. I don't see why I can't have a few pleasures along with my responsibilities. Really, I don't. And I'm sensitive. I don't like these scenes. Very well, that's all. The Cabinet meeting is adjourned. They rose and left silently in the order of their seniority. The President noticed that the panels were still down and pushed the button that raised them again and hid the granite-faced secret servicemen. He took out of his pocket a late Morrison fingering piece and turned it over in his hand—a smile of relaxation and bliss spreading over his face. Such amusing textural contrast! Such unexpected variations on the classic sequences! The Cabinet, lest the Secretary of Defense was holding a rump meeting in an untapped corner of the White House gymnasium. God! the Secretary of State said, white-faced. Poor old Willie. The professionally gruff Secretary of Public Opinion said, We should murder the bastard. I don't care what happens. The director of the budget said dryly, We all know what would happen. President Folsom the twenty-fifth would take office. No. We've got to keep plugging as before. Nothing short of the invincible can topple the Republic. What about a war? The Secretary of Commerce demanded fiercely. We've no proof that our program will work. What about a war? State said wearily. Not while there's a balance of power, my dear man. The low Kalisto question proved that. The Republic and the Soviet fell all over themselves, trying to patch things up as soon as it seemed like there would be real shooting. Folsom the twenty-fourth and his Excellency Premier Yersinsky know at least that much. The Secretary of the Treasury said, What would you all think of Steiner for defense? The director of the budget was astonished. Would he take it? Treasury cleared his throat. As a matter of fact, I asked him to stop by right about now. He hurled a medicine ball into the budgetary gut. Oof! said the director. You bastard! Steiner would be perfect. He runs standards like a watch. He treacherously fired the medicine ball at the Secretary of Raw Materials, who blandly caught it and slammed it back. Here he comes, said the Secretary of Raw Materials. Steiner! Come and sweat some olio off. Steiner ambled over a squat man in his fifties and said, I don't mind if I do. Where's Willie? State said. The President unmasked him as a traitor. He's probably been executed by now. Steiner looked grim, and grimmer yet when the Secretary of the Treasury said deadpan, We want to propose you for defense. I'm happy and standard, Steiner said, safer too. The man's father took an interest in science, but the man never comes around. Things are very quiet. Why don't you invite Winch from the National Art Commission? It wouldn't be much of a change for the worse for him. No brains, the Secretary for Raw Materials said briefly. Heads up! Steiner caught the ball and slugged it back at him. What good are brains, he asked quietly. Close the ranks, gentlemen, State said. These long shots are too hard on my arms. The ranks closed, and the Cabinet told Steiner what good were brains. He ended by accepting. The Moon is all Republic, Mars is all Soviet, Titan is all Republic, Ganymede is all Soviet, but Lowe and Callisto by the Treaty of Greenwich are half and half, Republic and Soviet. Down the main street of the principal settlement on Lowe runs an invisible line. On one side of the line, the principal settlement is known as New Pittsburgh. On the other side, it's known as Nizhny Magnitogorsk. Into a miner's home in New Pittsburgh one day an eight-year-old boy named Grayson staggered, bleeding from the head. His eyes were swollen, almost shut. His father lurched to his feet, knocking over a bottle. He looked stupidly at the bottle, set it upright too late to save much of the alcohol, and then stared fixedly at the boy. See what you made me do, you little bastard! He growled and fetched the boy a cloud on his bleeding head that sent him spinning against the wall of the hut. The boy got up, slowly and silently. There seemed to be something wrong with his left arm, and glowered at his father. He said nothing. Fighting again, the father said, in a would-be-fierce voice. His eyes fell under the peculiar fire in the boy's stare. Damn fool! A woman came in from the kitchen. She was tall and thin. In a flat voice, she said to the man, Get out of here! The man hiccuped and said, Your brat spilled my bottle! Give me a dollar! In the same flat voice, I have to buy food. I said, Give me a dollar! The man slapped her face. It did not change, and wrenched a small purse from the string that suspended it around her neck. The boy suddenly was a demon flying at his father with fists and teeth. It lasted only a second or two. The father kicked him into a corner where he lay still glaring, wordless and dry-eyed. The mother had not moved. Her husband's hand mark still read on her face when he hulked out clutching the money-bag. Mrs. Grayson at last crouched in the corner with the eight-year-old boy. Little Tommy, she said softly, My little Tommy, did you cross the line again? He was blubbering into her arms hysterically as she caressed him. At last he was able to say, I didn't cross the line, mom. Not this time. It was in school. They said our name was really Krasinski. God damn him! The boy shrieked. They said his grandfather was named Krasinski, and he moved over the line and changed his name to Grayson. God damn him! Doing that to us! Now, darling, his mother said caressing him. Now, darling, his trembling began to ebb. She said, Let's get the spools, Tommy. You mustn't fall behind in school. You owe that to me. Don't you, darling? Yes, mom, he said. He threw his spindly arms around her and kissed her. Get out the spools. We'll show him. I mean them. President Folsom the twenty-fourth lay on his deathbed feeling no pain, mostly because his personal physician had pumped him full of morphine. Dr. Barnes sat by the bed holding the presidential wrist and waiting, occasionally nodding off and recovering with a belligerent stare around the room. The four wire service men didn't care whether he fell asleep or not. They were worriedly discussing the nature and habits of the president's first born, who would shortly succeed to the highest office in the Republic. A firebrand, they tell me. The AP man said unhappily. Firebrands, I don't mind, the UP man said. He can send out all the inflammatory notes he wants just as long as he isn't a fiend for exercise. I'm not as young as I once was. You boys wouldn't remember the old president, Folsom the twenty-second. He used to do point-to-point hiking. He worshipped old FDR. The INS man said, lowering his voice. Then he was worshipping the wrong Roosevelt. Teddy was the athlete. Dr. Barnes started, dropped the presidential wrist, and held a mirror to the mouth for a moment. Gentlemen, he said. The president is dead. Okay, the AP man said. Let's go, boys. I'll send in the flash. UP, you go cover the College of Electors. INS, get on to the president-elect. TRIB, collect some interviews and background. The door opened abruptly. A colonel of infantry was standing there, breathing hard with an automatic rifle at port. Is he dead? He asked. Yes, the AP man said. If you'll let me pass. Nobody leaves the room, the colonel said grimly. I represent General Slocum acting president of the Republic. The College of Electors is acting now to ratify a burst of gunfire caught the colonel in the back. He spun and fell with a single-horse cry. More gunfire sounded through the White House. A secret service man ducked his head through the door. President's dead? You boys, stay put. We'll have this thing cleaned up in an hour. He vanished. The doctor sputtered his alarm and the newsman ignored him with professional poise. The AP man asked. Now, who's Slocum? Defense command? INS said. I remember him. Three stars. He headed up the tactical airborne force out in Kansas four, five years ago. I think he was retired since then. A phosphorus grenade crashed through the window and exploded with a globe of yellow flame the size of a basketball. Dense clouds of phosphorus pentoxide gushed from it, and the sprinkler system switched on, drenching the room. Come on! hacked the AP man, and they scrambled from the room and slammed the door. The doctor's coat was burning in two or three places, and he was retching feebly on the corridor floor. They tore his coat off and flung it back into the room. The UP man, swearing horribly, dug a sizzling bit of phosphorus from the back of his hand with a pen knife and collapsed, sweating when it was out. The INS man passed him a flask and he gurgled down half a pint of liquor. Who flang that brick? he asked faintly. Nobody, the AP man, said gloomily. That's the hell of it. None of this is happening. Just the way that Taft, the pretender, never happened in O3. Just the way the Pentagon mutiny never happened in 67. 68, the UP man said faintly. It didn't happen in 68, not 67. The AP man smashed a fist into the palm of his hand and swore. God damn, he said, some day I'd like to— He broke off and was bitterly silent. The UP man must have been a little dislocated with shock and quite drunk to talk the way he did. Me too, he said. Like to tell the story. Maybe it was 67, not 68. I'm not sure now. Can't write it down, so the details get lost, and then after a while it didn't happen at all. Revolution would be a good deal, but it takes people to make revolution. People with eyes and ears and memories. We make things not happen, and we make people not see and not hear. He slumped back against the corridor wall, nursing his burned hand. The others were watching him, very scared. Then the AP man caught sight of the secretary of defense striding down the corridor flanked by secret servicemen. Mr. Steiner, he called. What's the picture? Steiner stopped, breathing heavily, and said, Slocum's barricaded in the oval study. They don't want to smash in. He's about the only one left. There were only fifty or so. The acting presidents taken charge at the study. You want to come along? They did, and even hauled the UP man after them. The acting president, who would be President Folsom the 25th as soon as the Electoral College got around to it, had his father's face, the petulant lip, the soft jowl on a hard young body. He also had an auto rifle ready to fire from the hip. Most of the cabinet was present. When the secretary of defense arrived, he turned on him. Steiner, he said nastily, can you explain why there should be a rebellion against the Republic in your department? Mr. President Steiner said, Slocum was retired on my recommendation two years ago. It seems to me that my responsibility ended there and security should have taken over. The President, Alex Finger, left the trigger of the auto rifle, and his lip drew in a little. Quite so, he said curtly, and turned to the door. Slocum, he shouted, come out of there. We can use gas if we want. The door opened unexpectedly, and a tired looking man with three stars on each shoulder stood there barehanded. All right, he said drearily. I was fool enough to think something could be done about the regime, but you fat-faced imbeciles are going to go on and on and— The stutter of the auto rifle cut him off. The President, Alex Knuckles, were white as he clutched the pieces forearm and grip. The torrent of slugs continued to hack and plow through the general's body until the magazine was empty. Burn that! he said curtly, turning his back on it. Dr. Barnes, come here. I want to know about my father's passing. The Doctor Horse and Red-Eyed from the whiff of phosphorous smoke spoke with him. The U.P. man had sagged drunkenly into a chair, but the other newsmen noted that Dr. Barnes glanced at them as he spoke in a confidential murmur. Thank you, Doctor. The President, Alex, said at last decisively. He gestured to a secret serviceman. Take those traitors away. They went numbly. The Secretary of State cleared his throat. Mr. President, he said, I take this opportunity to submit the resignations of myself and fellow cabinet members according to custom. That's all right, the President-elect said. You may as well stay on. I intend to run things myself, anyway. He hefted the auto rifle. You, he said to the Secretary of Public Opinion, you have some work to do. Have the memory of my father's artistic preoccupations obliterated as soon as possible. I wish the Republic to assume a war-like posture. Yes, what is it? A trembling messenger said, Mr. President, I have the honor to inform you that the College of Electors has elected you President of the Republic, unanimously. Cadet Fourth Classman Thomas Grayson lay on his bunk and sobbed in an agony of loneliness. The letter from his mother was crumpled in his hand. Prouder than the words can tell of your appointment to the Academy, darling. I hardly knew my grandfather, but I know that you will serve as brilliantly as he did to the eternal credit of the Republic. You must be brave and strong for my sake. He would have given everything he had or ever could hope to have to be back with her and away from the bullying, sneering fellow cadets of the Corps. He kissed the letter and then hastily shoved it under his mattress as he heard footsteps. He popped to a brace, but it was only his roommate, Ferguson. Ferguson was from Earth and rejoiced in the lighter lunar gravity which was punishment to Grayson's low-bred muscles. Rest, Mr. Ferguson Grand. Thought it was night inspection. Any minute now, they're down the hall. Let me tighten your bunker, you'll be in trouble. Tightening the bunk, he pulled out the letter and said cavishly, Aha! Who is she? and opened it. When the Cadet officers reached the room, they found Ferguson on the floor being strangled black in the face by spidery little Grayson. It took all three of them to pull him off. Ferguson went to the infirmary and Grayson went to the Commandant's office. The Commandant glared at the Cadet from under the most spectacular pair of eyebrows in the service. Cadet Grayson, he said, explained what occurred. Sir, Cadet Ferguson began to read a letter from my mother without my permission. That is not accepted by the Corps as grounds for mayhem. Do you have anything further to say? Sir, I lost my temper. All I thought of was it was an act of disrespect to my mother and somehow to the Corps and the Republic, too, that Cadet Ferguson was dishonoring the Corps. Bouchois, the Commander thought, a snow job, an accrued one. He studied the youngster. He had never seen such a brace from a low-bred fourth classman. It must be torture to muscles not yet toughened up to even lunar gravity. Five minutes more and the boy would have to give way and serve him right for showing off. He studied Grayson's folder. It was too early to tell about academic work, but the fourth classman was a bear or a fool for extra duty. He had gone out for half a dozen teams and applied for membership in the exacting math club and writing club. The commandant glanced up. Grayson was still in his extreme brace. The commandant suddenly had the queer idea that Grayson could hold it until it killed him. One hundred hours of pack-drill, he barked, to be completed before quarter-term. Cadet Grayson, if you succeed in walking off your tours, remember that there is a tradition of fellowship in the Corps which its members are expected to observe, dismissed. After Grayson's steel-sharp salute exit, the commander dug deeper into the folder. Apparently there was something wrong with the boy's left arm, but it had been passed by the examining team that visited Lowe. Most unusual, most irregular, but nothing could be done now about it. The President, softer now in body than on his election day and infinitely more cautious, snapped. It's all very well to create an incident, but where's the money to come from? Who wants the rest of Lowe anyway? And what will happen if there's war? Treasury said, the hoarders will supply the money, Mr. President, a system of percentage bounties for persons who report currency hoarders and then enforced purchase of a bond issue. Raw materials said, we need that iron, Mr. President, we need it desperately. State said, all our evaluations indicate that the Soviet Premier would consider nothing less than armed invasion of his continental borders as occasion for all-out war. The consumer goods party in the Soviet has gained immensely during the past five years, and of course their armaments have suffered. Your shrewd directive to put the Republic in a war-like posture has borne fruit, Mr. President. President Folsom the twenty-fifth studied them narrowly. To him the need for a border incident culminating in a forced purchase of Soviet Lowe did not seem as pressing as they thought, but they were, after all, specialists, and there was no conceivable way that they could benefit from it personally. The only alternative was that they were offering their professional advice and that it would be best to heed it. Still, there was a vague nagging something. Nonsense, he decided. The spy dossiers on his cabinet showed nothing but the usual. One had been blackmailed by an actress after an affair and railroaded her off of the earth. Another had a habit of taking bribes to advance-favored sons in civil and military service and so on. The Republic could not suffer at their hands. The Republic and the dynasty were impregnable. You simply spied on everybody, including the spies, and ordered summary executions often enough to show that you meant it, and kept the public ignorant, deaf, dumb, blind, ignorant. The spy system was simplicity itself. You had only to let things get as tangled and confused as possible until nobody knew who was who. The executions were literally no problem for guilt or innocence made no matter, and mind control when there were four newspapers, six magazines, and three radio and television stations was a job for a handful of clerks. No. The cabinet couldn't be getting away with anything. The system was unbeatable. President Folsom the twenty-fifth said, very well, have it done. Mrs. Grayson, widow of New Pittsburgh Low, disappeared one night. It was in all the papers and on all the broadcasts. Sometime later she was found dragging herself back across the line between Nisney Magneto Gorsk and New Pittsburgh in sorry shape. She had a terrible tale to tell about what she had suffered at the hands and so forth of the Nisney Magneto Gorsnicks. A diplomatic note from the Republic to the Soviet was answered by another note, which was answered by the dispatch of the Republic's first fleet to Low, which was answered by the dispatch of the Soviet's first and fifth fleets to Low. The Republic's first fleet blew up the customary deserted target hulk, fulminated over a sneak sabotage attack, and moved in its destroyers. Battle was joined. Ensign Thomas Grayson took over the command of his destroyer when its captain was killed on his bridge. An electrified crew saw the strange, brooding youngster perform prodigies of skill and courage and responded to them. In one week of disultery action the battered destroyer had accounted for seven Soviet destroyers and a cruiser. As soon as this penetrated to the flagship, Grayson was decorated and given a flotilla. His weird magnetism extended to every officer and man aboard the seven craft. They struck like phantoms cutting out cruisers and battle wagons in wild unorthodox actions that couldn't have succeeded but did every time. Grayson was badly wounded twice but his driving nervous energy carried him through. He was decorated again and given the battle wagon of an ailing force striper. Without orders he touched down on the Soviet side of Low, led out a landing party of marines and blue jackets, cut through two regiments of Soviet infantry, and returned to his battle wagon with prisoners, the top civil and military administrators of Soviet Low. They discussed him nervously aboard the flagship. He has a mystical quality, Admiral. His men would follow him into an atomic furnace and I almost believe he could bring them through safely if he wanted to. The laugh was nervous. He doesn't look like much but when he turns on the charm, watch out. He's a winner. Now I wonder what I mean by that. I know what you mean. They turn up every so often. People who can't be stopped, people who have everything. Napoleon's, Alexander's, Stalin's, up from nowhere. Suleiman, Hitler, Folsom I, Genghis Khan. Well, let's get it over with. They tugged at their gold braided jackets and signaled the honor guard. Grayson was piped aboard, received another decoration and another speech. This time, he made a speech in return. President Folsom, the 25th, not knowing what else to do, had summoned his cabinet. Well, he rasped at the Secretary of Defense. Steiner said with a faint shrug, Mr. President, there's nothing to be done. He has the fleet, he has the broadcasting facilities, he has the people. People, snarled the President. His finger stabbed at a button and the wall panels snapped down to show the secret service men standing in their niches. The finger shot tremulously out at Steiner. Kill that traitor, he raved. The Chief of the Detail said uneasily. Mr. President, we were listening to Grayson before we came on duty. He says he's de facto President now. Kill him, kill him! The Chief went doggedly on. And we liked what he had to say about the Republic, and he said citizens of the Republic shouldn't take orders from you, and he'd relieve you. The President fell back. Grayson walked in, wearing his plain Ensign's uniform and smiling faintly. Admirals and four stripers flanked him. The Chief of the Detail said, Mr. Grayson, are you taking over? The man in the Ensign's uniform said gravely, yes, and just call me Grayson, please. The titles come later. You can go now. The Chief gave a pleased grin and collected his detail. The rather slight, youngish man who had something wrong with one arm was in charge. Complete. Charge. Grayson said, Mr. Folsom, you are relieved of the Presidency. Captain, take him out and… He finished with a whimsical shrug. A portly four striper took Folsom by one arm. Like a drugged man the deposed President let himself be led out. Grayson looked around the table. Who are you, gentlemen? They felt his magnetism like the hum when you pass a power station. Steiner was the spokesman. Grayson, he said soberly. We were Folsom's Cabinet. However, there is more that we have to tell you, alone if you will allow it. Very well, gentlemen. Admirals and Captains backed out, looking concerned. Steiner said, Grayson, the story goes back many years. My predecessor William Malvern was determined to overthrow the regime, holding that it was an affront to the human spirit. There have been many such attempts. All have broken up on the rocks of espionage, terrorism, and opinion control. The three weapons which the regime holds firmly in its hands. Malvern tried another approach, then espionage versus espionage, terrorism versus terrorism, and opinion control versus opinion control. He determined to use the basic fact that certain men make history. That there are men born to be mold breakers. They are the Philips of Macedon, the Napoleons, Stalin's and Hitler's, the Suleyman's, the adventurers. Again and again they flash across history, bringing down an ancient empire, turning ordinary soldiers of the line into unkillable demons of battle, uprooting cultures, breathing new life into moribund peoples. There are common denominators among all the adventurers. Intelligence, of course. Other things are more mysterious, but are always present. They are foreigners. Napoleon the Corsican, Hitler the Austrian, Stalin the Georgian, Philip the Macedonian. Always there is an Oedipus complex. Always there is physical deficiency. Napoleon's stature, Stalin's withered arm, and yours. Always there is a minority disability, real or fancied. This is a shock to you, Grayson, but you must face it. You were manufactured. Malvern packed the cabinet with the slyest double-dealers he could find, and they went to work. Eighty-six infants were planted on the outposts of the Republican simulated family environments. Your mother was not your mother, but one of the most brilliant actresses ever to drop out of sight on earth. Your intelligence, heredity, was so good that we couldn't turn you down for lack of a physical deficiency. We withered your arm with gamma radiation. I hope you will forgive us. There was no other way. Of the eighty-six, you are the one that worked. Somehow the combination for you was minutely different from all the other combinations, genetically or environmentally, and it worked. That is all we were after. The mold has been broken. You know now what you are. Let come whatever chaos is to come. The dead hand of the past no longer lies on. Grayson went to the door and beckoned. Two captains came in. Steiner broke off his speech as Grayson said to them, These men deny my godhood. Take them out and—he finished with a whimsical shrug. Yes, your divinity, said the captains, without a trace of humor in their voices. End of The Adventurer by C. M. Cornbluth. Death of a Spaceman by Walter M. Miller, Jr. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Greg Marguerite. Death of a Spaceman by Walter M. Miller, Jr. The manner in which a man has lived is often the key to the way he will die. Take Old Man Donagall, for example. Most of his adult life was spent in digging a hole through space to learn what was on the other side. Would he go out the same way? Old Donagall was dying. They had known it was coming and they watched it come. His haggard wife, his daughter, and now his grandson home on emergency leave from the Pre-Astronautics Academy. Old Donagall knew it too, and had known it from the beginning when he had begun to lose control of his legs and was forced to walk with a cane. But most of the time he pretended to let them keep the secret they shared with the doctors, that the operations had all been failures, and that the cancer that fed at his spine would gnaw its way brainward until the paralysis engulfed vital organs, and then Old Donagall would cease to be. It would be cruel to let them know that he knew. Once weeks ago he had joked about the approaching shadows. By the plot back where people won't walk over it, Martha, he said, get it way back under the cedars next to the fence. There aren't many graves back there yet. I want to be alone. Don't talk that way, Donny, his wife joked. You're not dying. His eyes twinkled maliciously. Listen, Martha, I want to be buried face down. I want to be buried with my back to space. Understand? Don't let them lay me out like a lily. Donny, please! They ought to face a man the way he's headed, Donagall grunted. I've been up, way up. Now I'm going straight down. Martha had fled from the room in tears. He had never done it again except to the interns and nurses who, while they insisted that he was going to get well, didn't mind joking with him about it. Martha can bear my death, he thought. Can bear pre-knowledge of it. But she couldn't bear thinking that he might take it calmly. If he accepted death gracefully it would be like deliberately leaving her, and old Donagall had decided to help her believe whatever would be comforting to her in such a troublesome moment. When'll they let me out of this bed again? he complained. Be patient, Donny, she sighed. It won't be long. You'll be up and around before you know it. Back on the moon-run, maybe, he offered. Listen, Martha, I've been planet bound too long. I'm not too old for the moon-run, am I? Sixty-three's not so old. That had been carrying things too far. She knew he was hoaxing and dabbed at her eyes again. The dead must humor the mourners, he thought, and the sick must comfort the visitors. It was always so. But it was harder now that the end was near. His eyes were hazy and his thoughts unclear. He could move his arms a little, clumsily, but feeling was gone from them. The rest of his body was lost to him. Sometimes he seemed to feel his stomach and his hips, but the sensation was mostly an illusion offered by higher nervous centers, like the ghost arm that an amputee continues to feel. The wires were down, and he was cut off from himself. He lay wheezing on the hospital bed in his own room, in his own rented flat, gaunt and unshaven gray as winter twilight. He lay staring at the white net curtains that billowed gently in the breeze from the open window. There was no sound in the room, but the sound of breathing and the loud ticking of an alarm clock. Occasionally he heard a chair scraping on the stone terrace next door and the low mutter of voices, sometimes laughter as the servants of the Keith mansion arranged the terrace for late afternoon guests. With considerable effort he rolled his head toward Martha, who sat beside the bed, pinch-faced and weary. You ought to get some sleep, he said. I slept yesterday. Don't talk, Donny. It tires you. You ought to get more sleep. You never sleep enough. Are you afraid I'll get up and run away if you go to sleep for a while? She managed a brittle smile. There'll be plenty of time for sleep when—when you're well again. The brittle smile fled, and she swallowed hard like swallowing a fishbone. He glanced down and noticed that she was squeezing his hands spasmonically. There wasn't much left of the hand, he thought, bones and ugly tight-stretched hides spotted with brown, bulging knuckles with yellow cigarette stains. My hand. He tried to tighten it, tried to squeeze Martha's thin one in return. He watched it open and contract a little, but it was like operating a remote control mechanism. Good-bye, hand. You're leaving me the way my legs did, he told it. I'll see you again in hell. How hammy can you get, old Donagull? You maudlin ass! Rick Wea-scut. He muttered over the hand and let it lie in peace. Perhaps she heard him. Donnie, she whispered, leaning closer, won't you let me call the priest now? Please. He rattled a sigh and rolled his head toward the window again. Are the Keith's having a party today, he asked? Sounds like they're moving chairs out there on the terrace. Please, Donnie, the priest! He let his head roll aside and closed his eyes as if asleep. The bed shook slightly as she quickly caught at his wrist a feel for a pulse. If I'm not dying, I don't need a priest, he said sleepily. That's not right, she scolded softly. You know that's not right, Donnie. You know better. Maybe I'm being too rough on her, he wondered. He hadn't minded getting baptized her way and married her way in an occasionally priest-handled the way she wanted him to when he was home from a space front, but when it came to dying, old Donagull wanted to do it his own way. He opened his eyes at the sound of a bench being dragged across the stone terrace. Martha, what kind of party are the Keith's having today? I wouldn't know, she said stiffly. You'd think they'd have a little more respect. You'd think they'd have put it off a few days. Until? Until you feel better. I feel fine, Martha. I like parties. I'm glad they're having one. Pour me a drink, will you? I can't reach the bottle any more. It's empty. No, it isn't, Martha. It's still a quarter full. I know I've been watching it. You shouldn't have it, Donnie. Please don't. But this is a party, Martha. Besides, the doctors say I can have whatever I want. Whatever I want, you hear? That means I'm getting well, doesn't it? Sure, Donnie. Sure. Getting well. The whiskey, Martha. Just a finger and a tumbler. No more. I want to feel like it's a party. Her throat was rigid as she poured it. She helped him get the tumbler to his mouth. The liquor seared his throat and he gagged a little as the fumes clogged his nose. Good whiskey, the best. But he couldn't take it anymore. He eyed the green stamp on the neck of the bottle on the bed table and grinned. He hadn't had whiskey like that since his space days. Couldn't afford it now. Not on a Blastman's pension. He remembered how he and Cade used to smuggle a couple of fifths aboard for the moon run. If they caught you, it meant suspension, but there was no harm in it. Not for the blast room men who had nothing much to do from the time the ship acquired enough velocity for the long coaster ride until they started the rockets again for lunar landing. You could drink a fifth, chettison the bottle through the trash-lock and sober up before you were needed again. It was the only way to pass the time in the cramped cubicle unless you ruined your eyes trying to read by the glow lamps. Old Donegal chuckled. If he and Cade had stayed on the run, Earth would have a ring by now like Saturn, a ring of old granddad bottles. You said it, Donnie Boy, said the misty man by the billowing curtains. Who else knows that Gaggenstein is broken glass? Donegal laughed. Then he wondered what the man was doing there. The man was lounging against the window and his unzipped space rig draped about him in an old familiar way. Loose plug-in connections and hose ends dangled about his lean body. He was freckled and grinning. Cade! Old Donegal breathed softly. What did you say, Donnie? Martha answered. Old Donegal blinked hard and shook his head. Something let go with a soggy snap and the misty man was gone. I'd better take it easy on the whiskey, he thought. You got to wait, Donegal. Old lush! Until Nora and Ken get here. You can't get drunk until they're gone or you might get them mixed up with memories like Cades. Car doors slammed in the street below. Martha glanced toward the window. Think it's them? I wish they'd get here. I wish they'd hurry. Martha arose and tiptoed to the window. She peered down toward the sidewalk, put on a sharp frown. He heard a distant mutter of voices and occasional laughter with group footsteps milling about on the sidewalk. Martha murmured her disapproval and closed the window. Leave it open, he said. But the Keith's guests are starting to come. They'll be such a racket. She looked at him hopefully the way she did when she prompted his manners before company came. Maybe it wasn't decent to listen in on a party when you're dying, he thought. But that wasn't the reason. Donegal, your chamber pressure's dropping off. Your brains are in your butt end, whereas Spacer's brains belong, but your butt end died last month. She wants the window closed for her own sake, not yours. Leave it closed, he grunted. But open it again before the moon run blasts off. I want to listen. She smiled and nodded, glancing at the clock. It'll be an hour and a half yet. I'll watch the time. I hate that clock. I wish you'd throw it out. It's loud. It's your medicine clock, Donnie. She came back to sit down at his bedside again. She sat in silence. The clock filled the room with its clicking pulse. What time are they coming, he asked. Nora and Ken, they'll be here soon. Don't fret. Why should I fret, he chuckled. That boy, he'll be a good Spacer, won't he, Martha? Martha said nothing, fanning at a fly that crawled across his pillow. The fly buzzed up in an angry spiral and alighted on the ceiling. Donegal watched it for a time. The fly had natural-born space legs. I know your tricks, he told it with a smile, and I learned to walk on the bottom side of things before you were a maggot. You stand there with your magnisoles hanging to the hull and the rest of you's in freefall. You jerk a sole loose and your knee flies up to your belly and reaction spins you half around and near throws your other hip out of joint if you don't jam the foot down fast and jerk up the other. It's worse than trying to run through knee-deep mud with snowshoes and a man will go nuts trying to keep his arms and legs from taking off in odd directions. I know your tricks, fly. But the fly was born with his magnisoles and he trotted across the ceiling like Donegal never could. That boy, Ken, he ought to make a damn good Space Engineer, wheezed the old man. Her silence was long and he rolled his head toward her again. Her lips tight, she stared down at the palm of his hand, unfolded his bony fingers, felt the crackled calluses that still welted the shrunken skin. Calluses worn there by the linings of space gauntlets and the handles of fuel valves and the rungs of getabout ladders during freefall. I don't know if I should tell you, she said. Tell me what, Martha? She looked up slowly scrutinizing his face. Ken's changed his mind, Nora says. Ken doesn't like the academy. She says he wants to go to medical school. Old Donegal thought it over, nodded absently. That's fine. Space medics get good pay. He watched her carefully. She lowered her eyes, rubbed at his calluses again. She shook her head slowly. He doesn't want to go to space. The clock clicked loudly in the closed room. I thought I ought to tell you so you won't say anything to him about it. She added. Old Donegal looked grayer than before. After a long silence he rolled his head away and looked toward limp curtains. Open the window, Martha, he said. Her tongue clucked faintly as she started to protest, but she said nothing. After frozen seconds she sighed and went to open it. The curtains billowed and a babble of conversation blew in from the terrace of the Keith mansion. With the sound came the occasional brassy discord of a musician tuning his instrument. She clutched the window sash as if she wanted to slam it closed again. Well, music grunted Old Donegal. That's good. This is some shebang. Good whiskey and good music and you. He chuckled, but it choked off into a fit of coughing. Donegal, about Ken. No matter, Martha, he said hastily. Space medics pay is good. But Donegal, she turned from the window, stared at him briefly then said, Sure, Donnie, sure, and came back to sit down by his bed. He smiled at her affectionately. She was a man's woman, was Martha. Always had been, still was. He had married her the year he had gone to space. A lissom, wistful old-fashioned lass with big violet eyes and gentle hands and gentle thoughts. And she had never complained about the long and lonely weeks between blast-off and glide-down when most spacer's wives listened to the psychiatrists and soap-oppers and soon developed the symptoms that were expected of them. Either because the symptoms were chic or because they felt they should do something to earn the pity that was extended to them. It's not so bad, Martha had assured him. The house keeps me busy till Nora's home from school, and then there's a flock of kids around till dinner. Nights are a little empty, but if there's a moon I can always go out on the porch and look at it and know where you are. And Nora gets out the telescope you built her, and we make a game of it, seeing if Daddy's still at the office, she calls it. Those were the days, he muttered. What, Donnie? Do you remember that Steve Farron song? She paused frowning thoughtfully. There were a lot of Steve Farron songs, but after a moment she picked the right one and sang it softly. Oh, moon, where o'er the clouds fly? Beyond the willow tree? There is a ramblin' space guy. I wish you'd save from me. Mare Tranquilitatis. Oh, dark and tranquillcy. Until he drops from heaven. Rest him there with thee. Her voice cracked and she laughed. All Donniegall chuckled weakly. Fried mush, he said. That one made the cats wilt their ears and wail at the moon. I feel real crazy, he added. Hand me the King Kong fluff-muff. Keep cool, Daddy-O, you've had enough. Martha reddened and patted his arm, looking pleased. Neither of them had talked that way, even in the old days, but the outdated slang brought back memories. School parties, dances at the Rockport Club, the early years of the war when Donniegall had jockied an R-43 fighter in the close space assaults against the Soviet satellite project. The memories were good. A brassy blair of modern slide arose suddenly from the Keith Terrace as the small orchestra launched into its first number. Martha caught an angry breath and started toward the window. Leave it, he said. It's a party. Whiskey, Martha, please. Just a small one. She gave him a hurtful glance. Whiskey, then you can call the priest. Donnie, it's not right. You know it's not right to bargain for such as that. All right, Whiskey, forget the priest. She ported for him and helped him get it down, and then went out to make the phone call. Old Donniegall lay shuddering over the whiskey taste and savoring the burn in his throat. Jesus, but it was good. You all bastard, he thought, you got no right to enjoy life when nine-tenths of you is dead already, and the rest is foggy as a thermal dust rise on the lunar maria it held on. But it wasn't a bad way to die. It ate your consciousness away from the feet up. It gnawed away the present, but it let you keep the past until everything faded and blended. Maybe that's what eternity was, he thought. One man's subjective past all wrapped up in packaged for shipment, a single space-time entity, a one-man microcosm of memories, when nothing else remains. If I've got a soul, I made it myself, he told the gray nun at the foot of his bed. The nun held out a pie-pan, rattled a few coins in it. Contribute to the radiation victim's relief? The nun purred softly. I know you, he said. You're my conscience. You hang around the officer's mess, and when we get back from a sortie, you make us pay for the damage we did. But that was forty years ago. The nun smiled, and her luminous eyes were on him softly. Mother of God, he breathed, and reached for the whiskey. His arm obeyed. The last drink had done him good. He had to watch his hand to see where it was going, and squeezed the neck until his fingers whitened so that he knew that he had it. But he got it off the table and onto his chest, and he got the cork out with his teeth. He had a long pull at the bottle, and it made his eyes water and his hands grow weak. But he got it back to the table without spilling a bit, and he was proud of himself. The room was spinning like the cabin of a gyro-grabbed ship. By the time he wrestled it to a standstill, the nun was gone. The blare of music from the Keith Terrace was louder, and laughing voices blended with it. Chairs scraping and glasses rattling. A fine party, Keith, I'm glad you picked a day. This shebang would be the younger Keith's affair. Ronald Tonweiler, Keith the Third. Scion of Orbital Engineering and Construction Company. Builders of the moon shuttle ships that made the run from the satellite station to Luna and back. It's good to have such important neighbors, he thought. He wished he had been able to meet them while he was still up and about, but the Keith's place was walled in, and when a Keith came out he charged out in a limousine with a chauffeur at the wheel, and the iron gate closed again. The Keith's built the wall when the surrounding neighborhood began to grow shabby with age. It had once been the best of neighborhoods, but that was before all Donegal lived in it. Now it consisted of sooty old houses and rented flats, and the Keith's place was really not a part of it anymore. Nevertheless, it was really something when a pensioned blastman could say, I live out close to the Keith's, you know, the Ronald Keith's. At least that's what Martha always told him. The music was so loud that he never heard the doorbell ring, but when a lull came he heard Nora's voice downstairs and listened hopefully for Ken's. But when they came up the boy was not with them. Hello, skinny britches. He greeted his daughter. Nora grinned and came over to kiss him. Her hair dangled about his face and he noticed that it was blacker than usual, with the gray streaks gone from it again. You smell good, he said. You don't pops, you smell like a sod, naughty. Where's Ken? She moistened her lips nervously and looked away. He couldn't come, he had to take a driver's lesson. He really couldn't help it. If he didn't go, he'd lose his turn and then he wouldn't finish before he goes back to the academy. She looked at him apologetically. It's all right, Nora. If he missed it, he wouldn't get his copter license until summer. It's okay. Copters. Hell, the boy should be in jets by now. Several breaths passed in silence. She gazed absently toward the window and shook her head. No jets, Pop. Not for Ken. He glowered at her. Listen, how will he get into space? He's got to get his jet license first. Can't get in rockets without him. Nora shot a quick glance at her mother. Martha rolled her eyes as if sighing patiently. Nora went to the window to stare down toward the Keith Terrace. She tucked a cigarette between scarlet lips, lit it, blew nervous smoke against the pain. Mom, can't you call them and have that racket stopped? Donnie says he likes it. Nora's eyes flitted over the scene below. Female butterflies and puppy dogs and sport jackets and the cadets, she snorted. Cadets, imagine Ron Keith, the third ever going to space. The old man buys his way into the academy and they throw a brawl as if Ronnie passed the compets. Maybe he did, growled old Donnie Gull. Ha! They live in a different world, I guess, Martha sighed. If it weren't for men like Pop's, they'd never have made their fortune. I like the music, I tell you, grumbled the old man. I'm half a mind to go over there and tell them off, Norma murmured. Let them alone, just so they'll stop the racket for blast away. Look at them, polite little pattern cuts, all alike. They take pre-space because it's the thing to do, then they quit before the payoff comes. How do you know they'll quit? That party, I bet it cost six months' pay, Spacer's pay, she went on ignoring him. And what do real Spacers get? Olly gets killed, and Pop's pension wouldn't feed the Keith's cat. You don't understand, girl. I lost Olly. I understand enough. He watched her silently for a moment, then closed his eyes. It was no good trying to explain. No good trying to tell her the dough didn't mean a damn thing. She'd been a Spacer's wife, and that was bad enough, but now she was a Spacer's widow. And Olly? Olly's tomb revolved around the sun in an eccentric orbit that spun in close to Mercury, then reached out into the asteroid belt once every 725 days. When it came within rocket radius of Earth, it whizzed past that close to fifteen miles a second. You don't rescue a ship like that, skinny britches, my darling daughter, nor do you salvage it after the crew stops screaming for help. If you use enough fuel to catch it, you won't get back. You just leave such a ship there forever, like an asteroid, and it's a damn shame about the men trapped aboard. Heroes all, no doubt. But the smallness of the widow's monthly check failed to confirm the heroism, and Nora was bitter about the price of Olly's memory. Perhaps. Ouch! Old Donegal, you know she's not like that. It's just that she can't understand about space. You ought to make her understand. But did he really understand himself? You ride hot in a roaring blast room, hands tense on the mixer controls and the pumps, eyes glued to instruments, body sucked down in a four-gravity thrust, and wait for the command to choke off. Then you float free and waitless in a long nightmare as the beast coasts moonward, a flung javelin. The romance of space. Drivel, written in the old days. When you're not blasting, you float in a cramped hotbox, crawl through dirty mazes of greasy pipe and cable to tighten a lug, scratch your arms and bark your shins, get sick and choked up because no gravity helps your gullet get the food down. Liquid is worse, but you gag your whiskey down because you have to. Stars? You see stars by squinting through a viewing lens, and it's like a photo transparency. And if you aren't careful, you'll get an eye full of old blinder and back off with a punch drunk retina. Adventure? Unless the skipper calls for course correction, you float around in the blast cubicle with damn little to do between blast away and moon down, except sweat out the omniscient accident statistics. If the beast blows up or gets gutted in space, a statistic had your name on it. That's all. And there's no fighting back. You stay outwardly sane because you're a hog for punishment. If you weren't, you'd never get past the psychologists. Did you like horror movies when you were a kid? Ask the psych. And you damn well better answer yes if you want to go to space. Tell her, old man. You're her pop. Tell her why it's worth it if you know. You jail yourself in a coffin-sized cubicle, and a crazy beast thunders berserk for uncontrollable seconds, and then you soar in ominous silence for the long, long hours. Grow sweaty, filthy, sick, miserable, idle somewhere out in the big empty, where man's got no business except the trouble he's always making for himself wherever he goes. Tell her why it's worth it, for pay less than a good bricklayers. Tell her why Oli would do it again. It's a suckers run, Nora, he said. You go looking for kicks, but the only kicks you get to keep is what Oli got. God knows why, but it's worth it. Nora said nothing. He opened his eyes slowly. Nora was gone. Had she been there at all? He blinked around at the fuzzy room and dissolved the shifting shadows that sometimes emerged as old friendly faces grinning at him. He found Martha. You went to sleep, said Martha. She had to go. Kenny called. He'll be over later if you're not too tired. I'm not tired. I'm all head. There's nothing much to get tired. I love you all, Donegal. Hold my hand again. I'm holding it, old man. Then hold me where I can feel it. She slit a thin arm under his neck and bent over his face to kiss him. She was crying a little, and he was glad she could do it now without fleeing the room. Can I talk about dying now? He wondered aloud. She pinched her lips together and shook her head. I lied to myself, Martha. You know how much I lied to myself? She nodded slowly and stroked his gray temples. I lied to myself about Ken and about dying. If Ken turned spacer, I wouldn't die. That's what I told myself. You know? She shook her head. Don't talk, Donegal, please. A man makes his own soul, Martha. That's not true. You shouldn't say things like that. A man makes his own soul, but it dies with him unless he can pour it into his kids and his grandchildren before he goes. I lied to myself. Ken's a yellow belly. Nora made him one, and the boots won't fit. Don't, Donegal. You'll excite yourself again. I was going to give him the boots, the overboots with magnisols, but they won't fit him. They won't ever fit him. He's a lily-livered lapdog, and he whines. Bring me my boots, woman. Donnie. The boots. They're in my locker in the attic. I want them. What on earth? Bring me my goddamn space boots and put them on my feet. I'm going to wear them. You can't. The priest's coming. Well, get them anyway. What time is it? You didn't let me sleep through the moon-run blast, did you? She shook her head. It's half an hour yet. I'll get the boots if you promise not to make me put them on you. I want them on. You can't until Father Paul's finished. Do I have to get my feet buttered? She sighed. I wish you wouldn't say things like that. I wish you wouldn't, Donnie. It's sacrilege. You know it is. All right. Anointed, he corrected wearily. Yes, you do. The boots, woman. The boots. She went to get them. While she was going, the doorbell rang, and he heard her quick footsteps on the stairs, and then Father Paul's voice asking about the patient. Old Donnie Gull groaned inwardly. After the priest, the doctor would come, at the usual time, to see if he were dead yet. The doctor had let him come home from the hospital to die, and the doctor was getting impatient. Why don't they let me alone, he growled? And why don't they let me handle it in my own way and stop making a fuss over it? I can die and do a good job of it without a lot of outside interference. And I wish they'd stop picking at me with syringes and sacraments and enemas. All he wanted was a chance to listen to the orchestra on the Keith Terrace to drink the rest of the whiskey and to hear the beast blast away for the satellite on the first lap of the run to Luna. It's going to be my last day, he thought. My eyes are going fuzzy, and I can't breathe right, and the throbbing's hurting my head. Whether he lived through the night wouldn't matter, because delirium was coming over him, and then there would be the coma and the symbolic fight to keep him pumping and panting. I'd rather die tonight and get it over with, he thought. But they probably won't let me go. He heard their voices coming up the stairs. Nora tried to get them to stop at Father, but she couldn't get in to see anybody but the butler. He told her he'd tell Mrs. Keith, but nothing happened. It's just as loud as before. Well, as long as Donnie doesn't mind. He just says that. You know how he is. What are they celebrating, Martha? Young Ronald's leaving for a pre-space training. It's a going away affair. They paused in the doorway. The small priest smiled in at Donniegall and nodded. He set his black bag on the floor inside, winked solemnly at the patient. I'll leave you two alone, said Martha. She closed the door and her footsteps wandered off down the hall. Donniegall and the young priest eyed each other wirely. You look like hell, Donniegall. The Padre offered jovially. Feeling nasty? Skip the small talk. Let's get this routine over with. The priest, who romped thoughtfully, sauntered across to the bed, gazed down at the old man, disinterestingly. What's the matter? Don't want the routine? Rather play it tough? What's the difference, he growled. Hurry up and get out. I want to hear the beast blast off. You won't be able to, said the priest, glancing at the window. Now closed again. That's quite a racket next door. They'd better stop for it. They'd better quiet down for it. They'll have to turn it off for five minutes or so. Maybe they won't. It was a new idea, and it frightened him. He liked the music and the party's gaiety, the nearness of youth and good times, but it hadn't occurred to him that it wouldn't stop so he could hear the beast. Don't get upset, Donniegall. You know what a blast-off sounds like. But it's the last one, the last time. I want to hear. How do you know it's the last time? Hell, don't I know when I'm kicking off? Maybe. Maybe not. It's hardly your decision. It's not, eh? Old Donniegall fumed. Well, bigot, you'd think it wasn't. You'd think it was Martha's and yours and that damn fool medics. You'd think I got no say so. Who's doing it anyway? I would guess, Father Paul grunted sourly, that Providence might appreciate his fair share of the credit. Old Donniegall made a surly noise and hunched his head back into the pillow to glower. You want me? The priest asked. Or is this just a case of wifely conscience? What's the difference? Give me the business and scram. No soap. Do you want the sacrament or are you just being kind to your wife? If it's for Martha, I'll go now. Old Donniegall glared at him for a time, then wilted. The priest brought his bag to the bedside. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. Bless you, son. I accuse myself. Tension, anger, helplessness. They had all piled up on him, and now he was feeling the aftereffects, vertigo, nausea, and the black confetti, a bad spell. The whiskey. If he could only reach the whiskey, then he remembered he was receiving a sacrament and struggled to get on with it. Tell him, old man, tell him of your various rottennesses and vile transgressions. If you can remember some. A sin is whatever you're sorry for, maybe, but Old Donniegall, you're sorry for the wrong things and this young Jesuitical Gadget wouldn't like listening to it. I'm sorry I didn't get it instead of Oli, and I'm sorry I fought in the war, and I'm sorry I can't get out of this bed and take a belt to my daughter's backside for making a puny welp out of Ken, and I'm sorry I gave Martha such a rough time all these years and wound up dying in a cheap flat instead of giving her things like the Keith's had. I wish I had been a sharpster, contractor, or thief instead of a common laboring spacer whose species lost its glamour after the war. Listen, old man, you made your soul yourself, and it's yours. This young dispenser of oils, substances, and mysteries wishes only to help you scrape off the rough edges and gouge out the bad spots. He will not steal it, nor distort it with his supernatural chisels, nor make fun of it. He can take nothing away, but only cauterize and neutralize, he says, so why not let him try? Tell him the rotten messes. Are you finished, my son? Old Danigal nodded wearily and said what he was asked to say, and heard the soft mutter of Latin that washed him inside and behind his ghostly ears. I goti absolvo in nomini patras, and he accepted the rest of it lying quietly in the candlelight and the red glow of the sunset through the window, while the priest anointed him and gave him bread and read the words of the soul in greeting its spouse. I was asleep, but my heart waked. It is the voice of my beloved calling. Come to me, my love, my dove, my undefiled. And from the on the closed window came the sarcastic wail of a clarinet painting hot slides against a rhythmic background. It wasn't so bad, old Danigal thought, when the priest was done. He felt like a schoolboy in a starched shirt on Sunday morning and it wasn't a bad feeling, though it left him weak. The priest opened the window for him again and repacked his bag. Ten minutes till blast off, he said, I'll see what I can do about the racket next door. When he was gone Martha came back in and he looked at her face and was glad. She was smiling when she kissed him and she looked less tired. Is it all right for me to die now? He grunted, Donny, don't start that again. Where's the boots? You promised to bring them. They're in the hall, Donny. You don't want them. I want them and I want a drink of whiskey and I want to hear them fire the beast. He said it slow and hard and he left no room for argument. When she had got the huge boots over his shrunken feet the magnisols clanged against the iron bed frame and clung there and she rolled him up so that he could look at them. Old Donigal chuckled inside. He felt warm and clean and pleasantly dizzy. The whiskey, Martha, and for God's sake make them stop the noise till after the firing, please. She went to the window and looked out for a long time. Then she came back and poured him an insignificant drink. Well, I don't know, she said. I saw Father Paul on the terrace talking to somebody. Is it time? She glanced at the clock, looked at him doubtfully and nodded. Nearly time. The orchestra finished a number but the babble of laughing voices continued. Old Donigal sagged. They won't do it. They're the Keith's, Martha. Why should I ruin their party? She turned to stare at him slowly, shook her head. He heard someone shouting, but then a trumpet started softly introducing a new number. Martha sucked in a hurt breath pressing her hands together and hurried from the room. It's too late, he said after her. Her footsteps stopped on the stairs. The trumpet was alone. Donigal listened, and there was no babble of voices, and the rest of the orchestra was silent. Only the trumpet sang, and it puzzled him, hearing the same slow bugle notes of the call played at the lowering of the colors. The trumpet stopped suddenly. Then he knew it had been for him. A brief hush, then thunder came from the blast station two miles to the west. First the low reverberation rattling the windows, then the rising growl as the sleek beast knifed skyward on a column of blue-white hell. It grew and grew until it drowned the distant traffic sounds and dominated the silence outside. Quit crying, you old fool, you maudlin ass. My boots, he whispered, my boots, please. You've got them, Doni. He sank quietly then. He closed his eyes and let his heart go up with the beast, and he sank into the gravity padding of the blast room, and Cade was with him and Oli, and when Ronald Keith III instructed the orchestra to play blast room man after the beast's rumble had waned, old Donigal was on his last moon run, and he was grinning. He'd had a good day. Martha went to the window to stare out at the thin black trail that curled starward above the blast station through the twilight sky. Guests on the terrace were watching it too. The doorbell rang. That would be Ken. Too late. She closed the window against the chill breeze and went back to the bed. The boots, the heavy, clumsy boots, they clung to the bed frame with his feet half out of them. She took them off gently and set them out of company sight. Then she went to answer the door. End of Death of a Spaceman by Walter M. Miller Jr. EARTHMEN BEARING GIFTS This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Jody Bly. EARTHMEN BEARING GIFTS by Frederick Brown Har-Ree sat alone in his room meditating. From outside the door he caught a thought wave equivalent to a knock, and glancing at the door he willed it to slide open. It opened. Enter, my friend, he said. He could have projected the idea telepathically, but with only two persons present, speech was more polite. E. John Key entered. You are up late tonight, my leader, he said. Yes, Key, within an hour the earth rocket is due to land and I wish to see it. Yes, I know it will land a thousand miles away, if their calculations are correct, beyond the horizon. But if it lands even twice that far, the flash of the atomic explosion should be visible, and I have waited long for first contact. For even though no earth man will be on that rocket, it will still be first contact for them. Of course our telepath teams have been reading their thoughts for many centuries, but this will be the first physical contact between Mars and Earth. Key made himself comfortable in one of the low chairs. True, he said. I have not followed recent reports too closely though. Why are they using an atomic warhead? I know they suppose our planet is uninhabited, but still. They will watch the flash through their lunar telescopes and get a, what do they call it, a spectroscopic analysis. That will tell them more than they know now, or think they know. Much of it is erroneous, about the atmosphere of our planet and the composition of its surface. It is, call it a sighting shot, Key. They'll be here in person within a few oppositions, and then… Mars was holding out, waiting for Earth to come. What was left of Mars, that is, this one small city of about nine hundred beings. The civilization of Mars was older than that of Earth, but it was a dying one. This was what remained of it. One city, nine hundred people. They were waiting for Earth to make contact, for a selfish reason, and for an unselfish one. Martian civilization had developed in a quite different direction from that of Earth. It had developed no important knowledge of the physical sciences, no technology, but it had developed social sciences to the point where there had not been a single crime, let alone a war, on Mars for fifty thousand years, and it had developed fully the parapsychological sciences of the mind, which Earth was just beginning to discover. Mars could teach Earth much. How to avoid crime and war to begin with? Beyond those simple things lay telepathy, telekinesis, empathy, and Earth would, Mars hoped, teach them something even more valuable to Mars. How, by science and technology, which it was too late for Mars to develop now, even if they had the type of minds, which would enable them to develop these things, to restore and rehabilitate a dying planet, so that an otherwise dying race might live and multiply again. Each planet would gain greatly, and neither would lose. And tonight was the night when Earth would make its first sighting shot. Its next shot, a rocket containing Earthmen, or at least an Earthman, would be at the next opposition, two Earth years, or roughly four Martian years hence. The Martians knew this because their teams of telepaths were able to catch at least some of the thoughts of Earthmen, enough to know their plans. Unfortunately, at that distance, the connection was one way. Mars could not ask Earth to hurry its program, or tell Earth scientists the facts about Mars' composition and atmosphere, which would have made this preliminary shot unnecessary. Tonight, Rhee, the leader, as nearly as the Martian word could be translated, and Key, his administrative assistant and closest friend, sat and meditated together until the time was near. Then they drank a toast to the future, in a beverage based on menthol which had the same effect on Martians as alcohol on Earthmen, and climbed to the roof of the building in which they had been sitting. They watched toward the north where the rocket should land. The stars shone brilliantly and unwinkingly through the atmosphere. In Observatory No. 1 on Earth's moon, Raj Everett, his eye at the eyepiece of the spotterscope, said triumphantly, Thar she blew, Willie! And now, as soon as the films are developed, we'll know the score on that old planet Mars. He straightened up. There be no more to see now, and he and Willie Sanger shook hands solemnly. It was an historical occasion. Hope it didn't kill anybody, any Martians that is. Raj, did it hit dead center in Circus Major? Near as matters, I'd say it was maybe a thousand miles off to the south, and that's damn close on a 50 million mile shot. Willie, do you really think there are any Martians? Willie thought for a second, and then said, No. And he was right. This is the end of Earthmen Bearing Gifts by Frederick Brown, recording by Jody Bly on a laptop .com, summer 2009.