Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: To Save Earth by Ludwig Edward W Finlay Virgil Illustrator Van Dongen H R Illustrator
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page
Ebook has 457 lines and 13711 words, and 10 pages
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.
Fox was in the lead.
"Captain," the small-boned, brown-bearded radarman said solemnly, "can we take a look before we belt down?"
"A short one."
The men looked.
Fox seemed ready to kiss the image of the planet. Van Gundy, wide-eyed, trembled before it as if at any instant it might destroy him. Garcia, the swarthy engineer, glowered at it as though threatening to crush it like an eggshell.
"I want Kelly to see this," said Fox. He hurried aft, nervously stroking his beard.
An instant later he returned, leading the former radioman by the hand. Kelly's soft blue eyes stared vacantly out of a pink, cherubic face. He was as plump as a dumpling, and his hair was as red as prairie fire. His short body moved woodenly.
"Come on, Kelly," said Fox. "You got to see this. Nobody's going to stop you from seeing this, by God."
The fire-haired man stood before the magni-screen.
Fox pointed. "See it?"
Kelly stared.
"He can't see it," rumbled Garcia. "He's crazy."
"Not too crazy to see this," Fox retorted.
Kelly's head bent forward. His lip quivered. "Home," he mumbled.
Fox jerked, eyes widening. "Hey, Kelly spoke! Did you hear that? He spoke! First time in two years!"
"Home," Kelly mumbled again.
"No, not home," Fox explained. "It's the only planet of Sirius."
"Hell," said Garcia, "if it'll make him happier, let him think it's Earth."
"No, it's the only planet of--"
"We can't be saying 'the only planet of Sirius' all the time. We got to give it a name."
"Home," mumbled the madman.
Captain Torkel said, patiently, "Kelly didn't mean that for a name. He was just saying the word."
Fox cried, "Let's name it after Kelly. Kelly's Planet!"
Van Gundy stepped forward. He was trembling. His trembling seemed as much a part of him as sight in his eyes. "No," he said.
"Why not?" snapped Fox.
"Because of what he did. He took the transmitter and--"
"We know all that. He couldn't help it. He's a schizophrenic. That doesn't mean we can't name a world after him, does it?"
Garcia balled his hands into fists. "Fox is right. I say we call it Kelly's Planet. How about it, Captain?"
"It's all right with me," said the captain.
"Then Kelly's Planet it is!" cried Fox.
"Strap down," Captain Torkel said. "This is it. We're going to land."
Captain Torkel switched on the second layer of bow jets, braced himself in his crash-chair. Despite the effects of the deceleration compensator, his face was swollen and distorted. It was as if the soul was bubbling out of his body.
He realized that he should have commenced deceleration some ninety minutes ago. But he had forgotten.
The image of the planet broadened in the magni-screen. It filled the screen, then seemed to spill out of it. Captain Torkel beheld an expanse of blue which, in a silent explosion, was transformed into the cerulean calm of a sea. The blue was swept away. The brownish gold of mountains stabbed briefly upward, faded into the shadowy green of rushing forest. Then came the glassy green of a meadow.
They looked out.
They stared for a long moment. "I don't believe it," said Fox at last. "It's a mirage. We're still in space."
"It--it frightens me," stuttered Van Gundy. "There's death out there. The air is poisonous. I feel it."
"We're crazy," Garcia spat. "As crazy as Kelly." His eyes widened. "Or maybe we're dead. Could that be?"
"E--excuse me, Captain," said Lieutenant Washington. "I think I'll go aft for a minute."
Captain Torkel said nothing. He had forgotten where he was. He was nameless and lost, among strangers in a strange place.
But at this moment he somehow did not care. He was content to let his hungry gaze absorb the rainbow beauty beyond the ports.
The meadow was like molten emerald stirring lazily in a slight breeze. The meadow was spotted with flowers as large as a man's head, shaped like teardrops, and shining purple and yellow and blue and crimson in the light from a swollen, blood-red sun.
Some five hundred yards away on the rocket's starboard side rose a towering green forest. In its shadow was a dark jungle of colossal fern and twisted vines and more flowers. Beyond that, far away, snow-cloaked mountains stretched their ponderous bulk into sea-blue sky.
Captain Torkel returned his slow gaze to the interior of the strange place in which he stood. He beheld a group of strange men doing strange things.
A stern-looking man with tight lips and menacing eyes was looking up from a litter of glass flasks and electronic devices. "Air twenty-nine per cent oxygen--a bit higher than on Earth. Sixty-five per cent nitrogen. Rest is a mixture of water vapor, CO2 and inert gases."
A small-boned man with a brown beard was saying, "Mass point-eight-three. That and the increased oxygen should make us feel like kids again."
A hawk-nosed man with trembling hands and a forehead glistening with perspiration said, "Temperature sixty-four Fahrenheit. No harmful radiation, pathogenic tests negative. Air pressure, eleven-point-three."
He pointed to an odd-looking flower and a tuft of grass in the window of a metal, box-like chamber. "Flora shows the same oxygen-CO2 cycle as on Earth. Only the flowers here seem edible."
The men looked at one another.
"Captain, is everything all right?" the brown-bearded man asked anxiously.
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page