Spacemen Die at Home 1

Spacemen Die at Home 1

Spacemen Die at Home

Author: Edward W. Ludwig

One man's retreat is another's prison ... and

it takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home!

 

 

Forty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it's

been, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell you

what it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching the

stars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawing

fear--a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like an

evil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura.

 

Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning....

 

It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos,

were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms and

laboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep after

spawning its first-born.

 

For it was June in this year of 1995, and we were the graduating class

of the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight.

 

The _first_ graduating class, Laura. That's why it was so important,

because we were the _first_.

 

We sat on a little platform, twenty-five of us. Below us was a beach

of faces, most of them strange, shining like pebbles in the warm New

Mexican sunlight. They were the faces of mothers and fathers and

grandparents and kid brothers and sisters--the people who a short time

ago had been only scrawled names on letters from home or words spoken

wistfully at Christmas. They were the memory-people who, to me, had

never really existed.

 

But today they had become real, and they were here and looking at us

with pride in their eyes.

 

A voice was speaking, deep, sure, resonant. "... these boys have worked

hard for six years, and now they're going to do a lot of big things.

They're going to bring us the metals and minerals that we desperately

need. They're going to find new land for our colonists, good rich land

that will bear food and be a home for our children. And perhaps most

important of all, they'll make other men think of the stars and look up

at them and feel humility--for mankind needs humility."

 

The speaker was Robert Chandler, who'd brought the first rocket down on

Mars just five years ago, who'd established the first colony there, and

who had just returned from his second hop to Venus.

 

Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shoulders

and his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smooth

and skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,

for I was thinking:

 

_He's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and the

others alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be the

first!_

 

* * * * *

 

Mickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. "I don't

see 'em, Ben," he whispered. "Where do you suppose they are?"

 

I blinked. "Who?"

 

"My folks."

 

That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died in

a strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those

"You are cordially invited" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to Charlie

Taggart.

 

Stardust Charlie, we called him, although I never knew why. He was a

veteran of Everson's first trip to the Moon nearly twenty-five years

ago, and he was still at it. He was Chief Jetman now on the _Lunar

Lady_, a commercial ore ship on a shuttle between Luna City and White

Sands.

 

I remembered how, as a kid, I'd pestered him in the Long Island

Spaceport, tagging after him like a puppy, and how he'd grown to like

me until he became father, mother, and buddy all in one to me. And I

remembered, too, how his recommendation had finally made me a cadet.

 

My gaze wandered over the faces, but I couldn't find Charlie's. It

wasn't surprising. The _Lunar Lady_ was in White Sands now, but

liberties, as Charlie said, were as scarce as water on Mars.

 

_It doesn't matter_, I told myself.

 

Then Mickey stiffened. "I see 'em, Ben! There in the fifth row!"

 

Usually Mickey was the same whether in a furnace-hot engine room or a

garden party, smiling, accepting whatever the world offered. But now a

tenseness and an excitement had gripped even him. I was grateful that

he was beside me; we'd been a good team during those final months at

the Academy and I knew we'd be a good team in space. The Universe was

mighty big, but with two of us to face it together, it would be only

half as big.

 

And then it seemed that all the proud faces were looking at us as if we

were gods. A shiver went through my body. Though it was daytime, I saw

the stars in my mind's vision, the great shining balls of silver, each

like a voice crying out and pleading to be explored, to be touched by

the sons of Earth.

 

_They expect a lot from us. They expect us to make a new kind of

civilization and a better place out of Earth. They expect all this and

a hell of a lot more. They think there's nothing we can't do._

 

I felt very small and very humble. I was scared. Damned scared.

 

* * * * *

 

At last it was over, and the proud faces descended upon us in a huge,

babbling wave.

 

Then I saw him. Good old Stardust Charlie.

 

His wizened little body was shuffling down an aisle, his eyes shining

like a child's. He'd been sandwiched, evidently, in one of the rear

rows.

 

But he wasn't the Charlie I'd seen a year ago. He'd become gaunt and

old, and he walked with an unnatural stiffness. He looked so old that

it was hard to believe he'd once been young.

 

He scratched his mop of steel-gray hair and grinned.

 

"You made it, boy," he chortled, "and by Jupiter, we'll celebrate

tonight. Yes, siree, I got twenty-four hours, and we'll celebrate as

good spacemen should!"

 

Then Mickey strode up to us. He was his normal, boyish self again,

walking lightly, his blond, curly-haired skull swaying as if in rhythm

with some silent melody.

 

And you, Laura, were with him.

 

"Meet the Brat," he said. "My sister Laura."

 

I stared almost rudely. You were like a doll lost in the immensity

of your fluffy pink dress. Your hair was long and transformed into a

golden froth where sunlight touched it. But your eyes were the eyes

of a woman, glowing like dark stars and reflecting a softness, a

gentleness that I'd never seen in eyes before.

 

"I'm happy to meet you, Ben," you said. "I've heard of no one else for

the past year."

 

A tide of heat crept up from my collar. I stuttered through an

introduction of Charlie.

 

You and Mickey looked strangely at Charlie, and I realized that old

Stardust was not a cadet's notion of the ideal spaceman. Charlie

scorned the skin-tight uniforms of the government service and wore a

shiny black suit that was a relic of Everson's early-day Moon Patrol.

His tie was clumsily knotted, and a button on his coat was missing.

 

And the left side of his face was streaked with dark scar tissue, the

result of an atomic blowup on one of the old Moon ships. I was so

accustomed to the scars, I was seldom aware of them; but others, I

knew, would find them ugly.

 

You were kind. You shook hands and said, softly: "It's a privilege to

meet you, Charlie. Just think--one of Everson's men, one of the first

to reach the Moon!"

 

Charlie gulped helplessly, and Mickey said: "Still going to spend the

weekend with us, aren't you, Ben?"

 

I shook my head. "Charlie has only twenty-four hours liberty. We're

planning to see the town tonight."

 

"Why don't you both come with us?" you asked. "Our folks have their

own plane, so it would be no problem. And we've got a big guest room.

Charlie, wouldn't you like a home-cooked meal before going back to the

Moon?"

 

Charlie's answer was obscured by a sudden burst of coughing. I knew

that he'd infinitely prefer to spend his liberty sampling Martian

fizzes and Plutonian zombies.But this night seemed too sacred for Charlie's kind of celebration.

      "We'd really like to come," I said.