Donald A. Wollheim (ed) (9 page)

The Old Man began to talk again, his voice
far away and lonely. "I've covered my tracks," he whispered,
"but not too well. When the new world comes out of space, the people of
Earth will check back . . . check back—"

The voice trailed away.

"Yes, Van?" Keith
urged.

The Old Man sighed.
"The people will check back. They'll find my name, find the records.
They'll know I did it. They'll know, they'll know—"

Again,
the thin voice faded.

The Old Man began to cry, softly. Keith leaned closer to hear him.
Suddenly the Old Man tried to straighten in his chair and the faded blue eyes
opened.

"Keith, Keith," he whispered
desperately, "will they remember me after I'm gone? I gave them the
stars. Keith, will they remember my name?
Will they remember my name?"

The deep shadows of the vast, crammed room
rustled around the walls, sliding in toward the firelight. Keith and Carrie and
Ralph stood
in
the unnatural heat and stared at the tiny,
dying man in the huge, swallowing chair.

"They'll remember you, Van," Keith said. "They'll remember
you long after the rest of us are
a
million
years forgotten."

James Murray Vandervort smiled. The blue eyes
closed again. "Remember me," he mumbled. "Remember my name.
Remember my name—"

A
doctor came in from the back door.

"You'd better go
now," he said. "Mr. Vandervort needs to rest."

They walked out of the chamber, down the
hallway, down the marble stairs.

"All
that," Ralph
Nostrand
said.
"All
that, just to keep a part of him alive."

"He had no son,"
Carrie said quietly.

They
walked toward the copter in the patio. Keith was thinking of
Halaja
,
and the dark log buildings in the gray-green jungles of another world.

All that because
a
rich old man was afraid of the eternal dark.

"All that," he said, "
because
he was just a man." Very late that night the
three of them walked singing past the bright lights of Wilshire Walk.

A man and his wife, who had
carried out an Old Man's plan.

A captain in a forgotten service, who had
falsified a report to make a dream come
true
.

The violet government
airsign
hung in the air: DON'T ROCK THE BOAT.

They
walked through the sign.

They walked on, arm in arm, singing under the
frost of stars. They walked
on
and all who saw them
that night on Earth wondered at the smiles they smiled and the strange, strange
song they sang—

A
song that whispered beyond the clouds—

Beyond the rains that cool our skies.

Beyond . . . beyond . . .

VENUS MISSION

by
J.
T.
McIntosh
i

The crippled ship screamed
down toward Venus, upright, in a slow axial
spin, riding silent jets. Grey cloud curved sleekly past the fins, streamed up
in trembling ribbons along the shining sides. At the
noseport
,
Warren Blackwell strained his eyes in an effort to pierce that boiling
greyness
, but he knew the
Venusian
atmosphere, knew he was wasting his time. He would see the ground when the ship
was fifty feet above it, and that would be far too late.

The door of the control room clicked, and the
girl who sat at the other end of the table from him at meal-times entered and
came up to him.

"The
captain sent me, in case I could help," she said.

"And to get you out of the way."

She grinned without humor.
"No doubt."

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Virginia Stuart. You might as well call
me Virginia. There's not much time left for formality, is there. . . . You're
Blackwell, aren't you—
the
Blackwell?"

"If you mean the one who won all the
medals, yes. How many are there left?"

"Of the crew?
The captain and his second
officer.
And the captain's weaving about a bit. It won't be long before
the radiation gets him too."

Warren surveyed her and decided she could take the truth. "Go back
and get one of them out," he told her. "It'll only need one to jam on
all the power there is left when I ring for it. But there must be one. It isn't
much of a chance, but it's the only one we've got."

"Check," she said. "Isn't the phone working?"

"No.
Only the alarm."

She nodded, and left him. Warren strained
again to pierce the grey cloud. He was a passenger on the
Merkland
,
but he had been co-opted when the
powerleak
developed.
He knew more than any of the crew about Venus. Not that that made much
difference. All that he could do was stay where he was and
sound
the alarm when he saw the ground. Then, down below, whoever was left would
touch off the braking jets, and with luck the ship would come down hard but in
one piece. But it would need a lot of luck.

There wouldn't be much hope for
any one
who
was below. Warren, right in the nose, probably stood the best chance, after the
rest of the passengers, who were locked in a storeroom amidships. None of the
other passengers would have been much help, and apparently the captain had
picked out him and the girl as the only ones who might be useful in the
emergency. He seemed a brave and able officer, that captain. He could have
stayed in the nose himself, safe, if anyone was, and left the problem of the
leaking radiation to someone else. But he knew that only he or some other member
of his crew could handle the jets, and that it was vital that they should fire
exactly when needed.

The girl came back, and Captain Morris was with her. "I make it
twenty thousand feet up, Blackwell," said Morris. "Do you think that
would be about right?"

Virginia hadn't exaggerated when she said the captain was weaving about
a bit. He was in the last stages of plutonium poisoning. Warren thought, a
trifle cynically, that the captain might as well go on being a hero now, for
he was a dead man already. But Warren was used to death. The rows of ribbons
somewhere in his luggage proclaimed that.

"I never flew much over Venus," he
admitted. "Nobody does. I'd say we were well up yet, on a long slant. But
don't quote me."

The
captain sank heavily into one of the control seats. He

could
never stop his shaking now, but he could limit it by trying to relax. "We
can blast for five seconds, I make it," he said. "That means at our
speed we should start
a
hundred and twenty feet up."

Warren shook his head. "You might see a
hundred and twenty feet on the surface.
But not straight
down.
It's thickest about sixty feet up."

"That's why I came to see you. We're in
your hands, Blackwell. You know more about these currents than anyone else on
board. You'll have to guess, that's all. The instruments aren't anywhere near
that precise, and if you wait till you see solid ground it'll be too late.
Someone has to guess. It might as well be you."

Warren nodded. Morris hoisted himself to his
feet. He paused at the door. "Goodbye," he said.

Warren was left with the girl. "Now
you've got a chance to win another medal," she said.

"I could live without it. When the
Venusian
war was over I thought I'd finished with
danger."

"You're never finished with danger. It
follows a brave man around."

"Maybe," murmured Warren, "but
I'm not a brave man. Never was."

Her
eyes widened, but she said nothing. She had never met Warren Blackwell before
this trip. In fact, she hadn't officially met him
on
the trip, until she introduced herself
a
few minutes before. But like everyone else, she had read of him while
the war was on. A man who treated
bis
life as a
millionaire might treat a dime he found in his shoe. It wasn't that he was
lucky, or so clever that the dangers were always less real than they seemed. He
had been wounded scores of times and captured twice. And no one else had
escaped from the
Greys
even once. He would drop out
of the news for a couple of months while he was recovering from injury. Then he
would be back with some new exploit that made it seem he was determined to get
himself killed.

Was that it?
she
wondered, looking at him as he peered through the big quartz windows.
Had he cared so little for life that his courage had really been
resignation?
She had read that he had come from an orphanage, even a
hint that he had been in a reform school. But details like that weren't
publicized about a hero.

It wasn't that, she decided. The man beside
her was passionately fond of life. She could see it in the way his whole body
concentrated on the job in hand. He wasn't trying to save her and the others.
If that had been the case he would have been cold and steady. He was trying to
save himself— and the rest of them as a sort of afterthought.

He shook himself suddenly and turned from the
window. "It'll be a few minutes yet," he said, "and if I watch
much longer I'll get jumpy and ring for the jets too soon. You wouldn't like to
do a strip act to pass the time?"

"That's not at all funny," she said
coolly. He watched her broodingly and saw she thought less of him than she had a
moment before. It was that easy to lose admiration and respect.

She
was a tough-looking girl, workmanlike rather than pretty. But she was
sufficiently versatile to make herself attractive too, for no more reason,
perhaps, than that of the man who doesn't intend to go out or see anyone, but
still shaves and brushes his hair. She wore dark slacks and a heavy blue shirt,
and though her outfit didn't suggest any particular beauty of figure, it
didn't absolutely deny it. She had light brown hair and a strong, young face.
The features were good, and if they were too full of character for beauty, they
were just right for a certain subtle elegance. It was a pity to see a woman
like that die. There weren't too many of them.

"What do you do?"
he asked.

"I've done a lot of things. At the
moment I'm on Government work."

"Which
government?"

"UNO.
There's nothing secret about it. I'm . . ."

She broke off as Warren turned back to the
-window. "I'm beginning to get a feeling about this," he murmured.
"We should be somewhere over the Norman Forest. But we were slanting a
long time. I think we almost hit an orbit. Maybe we overshot to the Norman Hills.
In which case—" his voice sank to nothing—"I should sound the alarm
nowl
"

Virginia wasn't prepared. Her eyes darted to
Warren's hand, pressing hard down on the button, then flashed to the window,
where there was a sudden break in the grey mist, a blinding flash, and a
glimpse of a whirling black mass outside as the floor kicked up at her. She
realized that by luck or divination Warren had picked on the right
split-second.

The crash dazed her, but she never lost
consciousness. Warren did. She saw him shoot forward toward the window and
caught him by one ankle. She didn't stop him, but he crashed against the quartz
with less force. Virginia heard a scream of metal on stone that mounted until
her ears refused to take it, and told her nothing more.

Then gradually she realized that the ship was
down, probably as safely as it could have been. She looked out, but there was
nothing but grey mist and black soil. She had been on Venus before, but never
out in the open, only in the domed cities. Nevertheless, she knew it was full
day. There was about as much light as on a misty moonlit night on Earth, and
visibility was about forty yards, which was as light as it ever was on Venus.

Warren was stirring. He wakened as she
expected him to waken, quietly, doing nothing until he had had a look around.

"You stopped me crashing through the window," he said.
"I'll do something for you sometime."

"You've
done it. You got us down."

He rose unsteadily. "We'd better let the
others out," he said.

By tacit agreement they looked for the
captain first. But he, the second officer, and any other members of the crew
who hadn't actually been dead before the landing were crushed in a flat
envelope of steel which had once been the drive room. They couldn't get near
them, which was perhaps just as well. They made their way to the store-room and
unlocked the door.

It hadn't been a bad landing, in the
circumstances. There had been fifteen people in the room, and seven of them
were still alive, though two would never recover consciousness. As it happened,
they would have been safer in the nose with Warren and Virginia, but no one
could have known that.

Warren took stock of them, ignoring the moans
and screams. He ignored the dead too. If they were dead, it didn't
matter
whether they were unmarked or a disgusting pulp. It
was the living who mattered. Waters, the actor, was bleeding from mouth and
ears in a way that showed he was still alive. His wife was breathing, which was
rather horrible, for her neck was obviously broken.

The other five were almost unhurt.
Fortunately the doctor, Williamson, was on his feet and looked sane and well.
Standing beside him, apparently only dazed, was old Martin, who was ninety and
had come through the crash as well as anyone. Three others were stirring on
the floor, and Smith, with a broken wrist, seemed to be the most seriously
injured, though it was the women who were doing most of the screaming and
moaning.

Mrs. Martin could hardly be blamed, for like
most of those in the room she had lost some of her clothes in a blast of air
which must have swept the room, and was probably screaming more at finding
herself half-naked in company at the age of seventy-five than anything else.
But the Glamour Girl, whose name Warren didn't know, was screaming only because
she always screamed when anything happened. Warren had met girls like her
before, and had not been impressed.

At
the evidence of a blast of air Warren looked round quickly and sniffed. But the
ship was airtight. There was no hiss of escaping air, and the pressure was
high—
tpo
high, if anything. Perhaps there had been a
rift which had immediately been sealed by the weight and momentum of the ship.
There were cracks and holes in the inner walls, but they were not as strong as
the hull.

"All right,
doctor?" he asked. "You take over."

"Doesn't
look as if there's much I can do," said Williamson wryly.

"Don't
be modest," Warren said. The doctor stared blankly, and Virginia shot a
quick glance at Warren. He had gone down in her estimation again, he decided.

Glamour
was tugging at his lapel and screaming: "Get me out of here! Get me
out!"

"Into
the open?" he asked coolly. "You'd die in eight hours. But long
before that the
Greys
would have got you."

She
hadn't heard him. She was still screaming, "Get me out of here!" Her
dress had a spectacular plunging neckline as if rent open by the blast, but it
was natural. Her hair wasn't even disheveled. She was completely unmarked and
very beautiful, which was a pity, Warren thought, for she didn't deserve to be.
Better people had died in the crash.

Virginia
pulled her gently away from him. "You said something about the Norman
Hills. Do you know where we are?"

"It's
only a guess," he admitted, "but I think I do. Almost exactly, if I'm
anywhere near right at all."

"How's that?"

"We're
lying up a bare slope, on soft soil. But we hit rock first, and if we came down
roughly straight we just missed the forest. That puts us somewhere on a narrow
belt twenty to thirty miles from City Four—
Cefor
for
short." "And how are our chances?"

He looked round at the others, now silent and
hanging on his words, even Glamour and Mrs. Martin, whose husband had wrapped
her in his jacket. There was no point in letting it out slowly.
Might as well get it over with.

"Our chances must be better now than
they were when we were coming down," he said deliberately. "But you'd
need a slide-rule and a lot of figures to prove it."

There was a moment's silence while they
worked out his meaning. Then Glamour threw herself at him, screaming and
scratching at his face, as though he personally were responsible for their
plight.

Virginia seized his arm as he was fending Glamour off, none too
gendy
, and pulled him away. "Let's go and check
up," she said. He grinned. Her opinion of him might be dropping, and would
probably drop more very soon, but after all he was the only one with whom she
could talk seriously. The safety of them all depended on him and her.

She led him back to the observation room.

"It
can't be as bad as you made out," she said.

"Why
not?"

"Surely they must have seen us come
down. There's bound
to be a search. Or at worst, surely one of us can get through
if it's only twenty miles."
                                              
*

"I'm
not just deliberately being pessimistic," he said. "I want to live
too. But let's take it from the beginning. The captain would corroborate if he
were here. One, they couldn't see us in
Cefor
. We
didn't come over it, we were pointing roughly toward it. And they couldn't see
a flaming meteor at five miles, let alone us at twenty. Radar doesn't work in
this soup any more than in water. And a seismograph wouldn't help because
there are so many quakes on

Venus
no one will be even interested in the shock we made on landing.

"Two, we were bound for New Paris in the
other hemisphere of Venus, and when a search starts in about twenty-four hours
from now they'll concentrate around there first. At a rough guess it will be
six months before they find this ship. Remember, they've got to explore almost
every inch of ground. A helicopter has to be within a
stonesthrow
before it can see us."

The girl stared. "But any time there's a
forced landing the passengers are picked up before there's any real danger-even
if the ship is breached and they have to breathe that poison outside. I always
thought the only danger was getting down safely."

"Yes," said Warren
gendy
, "usually. But usually the radio doesn't crack
up first—before the ship. Ours did. So no one knows where we are."

"Oh. I see. But we can't wait six
months. We'll all be dead in a week. They don't carry much in the way of stores
on these ships."