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Read Ebook: To Save Earth by Ludwig Edward W Finlay Virgil Illustrator Van Dongen H R Illustrator
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Ebook has 457 lines and 13711 words, and 10 pages
Illustrator: Virgil Finlay Van Dogen
TO SAVE EARTH
BY EDWARD W. LUDWIG
ILLUSTRATED BY VAN DOGEN
The life of everyone on Earth depended on their sanity ... which they had long ago lost!
For more than six years the silver rocket was like a tomb buried at the Earth's center. It wore the blackness of interstellar space for a shroud, and ten thousand gleaming stars were as the eyes of hungry, waiting worms.
Five of the inhabitants of the rocket moved like zombies, stone-faced and dull-eyed, numb even to their loneliness.
The sixth inhabitant did not move at all. He sat silent and unseeing. The sixth inhabitant was mad.
There had been times when all of them--mad and near-mad--had forgotten that they hurtled through space, that they were men and that they were growing old. Occasionally they had even forgotten that the destiny of mankind might lie in their hands like a fragile flower to be preserved or crushed.
But now came a moment six years one month and five days after their departure from Earth. The sole planet of Sirius loomed green and blue in the ship's magni-screen. The sight of the shining planet was like a heavenly trumpet call, a signal for resurrection.
The inhabitants stirred, rubbed their eyes, and tried to exhume forgotten hopes and memories from the lethargy of their minds....
"What do you think?" asked Lieutenant Washington.
Captain Jeffrey Torkel, gaunt-faced and gray, stiffened his lean body. At this moment all memory had left him, like a wind-tossed balloon leaping out of his skull.
"Tell me what you think, Captain," said a balding, dark-skinned man clad in khakis.
Captain Torkel stared at the blue-green, cloud-mottled image in the screen. Where was he? Certainly not in South Dakota. Certainly not on a field of golden, bristling wheat. No, he had the feeling that much time had passed since those boyhood days on the Dakota farm.
He glanced at the strange man who had spoken to him. The balloon snapped back into his skull. Memory returned.
The captain rubbed his gray stubble of beard. "I guess I'm thinking that we're afraid and bewildered. We're not as full of strength and hope as saviors of the race should be. Sure, what we find here today will mean either life or death for the race. But the concept has been with us for too long. It's already made us half-mad. And the same part of our minds is afraid to hope lest it be disappointed. After all, the planet might be radioactive or uninhabitable, or--"
Captain Torkel nodded. "Whether it's good or bad, we still can't win, really. If it's bad, humanity dies and we stay on the ship for the rest of our lives. If it's good, we'll still be on it for twelve more years--six years back to Earth and another six to return here."
Lieutenant Washington began to shake. "I don't know if I could take twelve more years in space. Twelve years of eating and sleeping and playing chess in the silence and nothing but darkness outside, and trying to find a micro-movie we haven't seen a hundred times--all that, over and over--" He closed his eyes. "I don't think the others could take it either. They'd probably become like Kelly."
Kelly was the mad one.
"We have no other choice, Lieutenant. If the planet's habitable, we have to take the news back."
The lieutenant shuddered. "I--I need a drink," he faltered. "I know. I said I wasn't going to drink today. I'm not either. Not much. I want to be on my feet when we hit that planet. But--excuse me, Captain."
The lieutenant returned a few seconds later, calmer now, reeking with the stench of laboratory alcohol spilled on his jacket.
Captain Torkel, as always, pretended not to notice the stench.
"Captain," said Lieutenant Washington deeply.
"Yes?"
Captain Torkel swallowed hard. "We have to allow a margin for error, of course. But I don't think those predictions will be off by more than a day or two. After all, they've been corroborated in all the broadcasts we've been able to pick up."
He smiled grimly. "So if the planet's habitable, we have to start back to Earth almost at once. We can't allow ourselves more than a day to rest and try to get the madness out of our systems."
"Oh, God," murmured Lieutenant Washington, closing his eyes.
"If we only had our transmitter," Captain Torkel mused, "we could stay here. We wouldn't have to--"
"Kelly?"
"Kelly. Why did he do it, Captain? Why did he throw every piece of transmitting equipment over-board?"
"Maybe a part of his mind hated Earth. Maybe unconsciously he didn't want to save humanity. Kelly's crazy. You can't account for the actions of a crazy man."
Lieutenant Washington was shaking again. "And so we can't radio Earth about what we find. If the planet's good, we have to tell Earth the hard way--by traveling through space for six more years. Captain, I--I think I'm going to have to get a dr--"
Footsteps sounded on the deck behind them. Van Gundy, the lean, hawk-nosed jetman, rushed up to them. He was breathing heavily and trembling.
"Captain, Fox stole my harmonica!"
Captain Torkel scowled. For a moment he forgot Van Gundy's name and who the lean man was. Then he remembered.
"Stole your harmonica. Why?"
"He won't tell me. He's a thief, Captain. He's always stealing things. You ought to--"
"Tell him I said for him to give it back to you. Tell him I said that."
"Yes, sir." Van Gundy clasped his trembling hands. "But that isn't all, Captain. Garcia said if I got my harmonica back and kept playing it, he'd kill me."
"Oh, God. Tell Garcia I said he couldn't."
Lieutenant Washington said, with a hiccough, "Too bad we didn't insist on having a psychiatrist in the crew. Fox probably thinks he's been cheated out of his youth, and unconsciously he's trying to steal it back. Van Gundy has been knocked around so much that everything in the universe is a source of terror to him. Garcia breaks things."
He laughed sourly, blowing hot alcoholic breath into the captain's face. "And me, I'm a dipso who's no good to himself or anyone. You, Captain ... sometimes I suspect that your memory isn't quite what it use to be."
Captain Torkel scratched his stubbled chin. "Six psycho-specimens trying to save humanity. How did we become so detestable? Are all Earthmen like us?"
"Don't you remember?"
"Remember?"
He straightened. He pressed the warning buzzer and flicked on the rocket's intercom.
"All hands to their crash-chairs," he intoned.
The crewmen appeared in the rear of the control room. Hesitantly, they approached the massive, semicircular control panel with its hundred flashing red and blue lights.
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