Read Ebook: Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries: Their Age and Uses by Fergusson James

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 107 lines and 6954 words, and 3 pages

Illustrator: Ed Emsh

FLY by NIGHT

Illustrated by Ed Emsh

The general introduced them in the ship's shadow, a trim lieutenant, a clean-cut major. "You probably already think of each other as Carol and Ken. At any rate, there are no two people in the world who have heard as much about each other without previously meeting."

She offered her hand and he took it, held it for a long moment while their eyes locked. "Hello, Carol," he said warmly. "I'd have known you from your pictures." And he realized as never before what a poor substitute were the hoarded scraps of paper.

"Hello--Ken." A smile made her face radiant. "I've sort of studied your pictures too."

Suddenly Ken was angry at the knowing looks from the throng's nearest ranks. While the general continued his prepared speech into the mike, focus of the hollow, hungry eyes of the video cameras, Ken pulled Carol to his side and held her with an arm about her waist, glaring when the crowd murmured and the cameras swung their way again. He had not questioned the actions of the military, of the world, before. But now--a public spectacle--

During the years of rigorous, specialized training almost from childhood they had kept him away from Carol, teasing him--it was the only word that now occurred to his mind--with the dangled promise of her presence on the flight. They had let him see her pictures--intimate, almost-nude photos harvested by the gossip columnists, snaps of her glory in bathing attire as she lounged by a swimming pool.

Swimming. Since he had been selected as a boy, every free afternoon he had been made to swim, swim, swim--developing the long, smooth muscles they wanted him to have. It had been, he knew, the same with Carol.

Had they taunted her with his pictures too? Had she responded by wanting him, loving him, longing for him? How did she feel about their first moment together being shared by the greedy eyes of continents?

The President was speaking now, rolling sonorous sentences into the mike, words which would officially sanction this unorthodox act of the military, which would justify the morally unprecedented dispensing of maid to man without benefit of--anything. Because the psychologists had wanted it that way. Ken leaned down to whisper in her ear, "I wish I could get you inside the ship."

She looked at him with sudden coolness. "Impatient, Major?" She turned away quickly and he could feel her body stiffen.

Abruptly, ignoring the mike, he swung Carol up the ramp and crawled in through the port behind her.

In the narrow confines she slipped out of her uniform. She glanced at him once, quickly, then cast down her eyes. "You don't have to look, you know."

There was a hurt in his throat. "I want to look, Carol. I don't ever want to stop looking at you. I--" He choked off, tore his eyes from her and hurriedly began to get out of his uniform.

Hidden from the spectators outside, they divested themselves of all but filmy, clinging, chemically inert garb. Carol's body was sheathed in a kind of sarong. Ken wore a short, kilt-like affair. They pulled on soft, tough-soled sandals. The medics had insisted on this specific attire, but the psychologists had planned it that way. Their discarded clothing was dropped into a basket. Ken shoved it out the port, down the ramp, slammed and bolted the hatch. Then he stared at it. Clamped to the inner side were two knives: one was about the length of a bayonet, shaped like a saber; the other was half that length, and straight. Both were sheathed, with belts wrapped around checkered handles.

All his official instructions flashed through his head in an instant. All the technical data, instrument operation, procedures, emergency measures. There had never been mention of knives. Except--of course. Survival training. If he were unable to bring the ship to its proper destination, was forced down in uninhabited territory, a knife would be essential equipment. But so would a gun, fishing tackle, matches, clothing....

The ship's radio said, "Fourteen minutes to take-off."

Ken flung himself on the couch. Carol moved in quietly beside him.

"You understand, Carol," he said, "you're to touch no controls unless I'm unable to."

"Yes."

"You'll handle the cameras only, but you'll keep reminding me of every step to be taken, as though I'd forgotten, and make sure I answer sensibly each time."

"Yes, Ken."

They watched the crowd on the screen--scattered now, far from that area below and behind the ship which would be washed in radiation. They listened to the radio calling off the minutes before departure. Ken kept his thoughts on the structure of the space vessel, similar in many ways to vastly cheaper atmosphere models he and Carol had flown--separately--for hundreds of training hours. Behind them, and lining the inner hull, was a light, spongy wall protecting them from the atomic converters aft. The surrounding couch could be regulated to form a resilient cocoon during high-G acceleration and deceleration, or during periods of weightlessness. Forward were the controls, instruments and hooded viewport.

Escape velocity was not needed to pull away from gravity. With atomic engines and the new, low-mass shielding, fuel quantity was a problem of dollars only--and none had been spared for this voyage. The psychologists had seen to that.

"Eight minutes to take-off."

He started the atomic reactors, a mighty purring here in the sealed cabin. Gently, watching the instruments, he tested bow and stern rockets, matching fore and aft forces delicately, tentatively increasing stern thrust until the craft barely stirred in its silicone-greased, magnetized launching rack.

"Two minutes to take-off."

They placed their faces against soft masks in the couch, down through which they could watch the instruments, in a mirror, the video screen and bow viewport. The couch encompassed them, their arms in padded slots reaching to the controls.

"... thirty-four, thirty-three, thirty-two, thirty-one...."

Ken unhooded the viewport, leaving covered only that section which blocked a tiny blinding sun. They stared into an utter, absolute ebony that suddenly seemed to be straining against the thick canopy, mocking the dim lights of the compartment. For many hours now, nothing to do but wait and watch, make occasional control corrections.

He caused the couch to relax, offered Carol a water sausage. They had eaten nothing, and drunk but sparingly, since twenty-four hours before take-off. Her hand touched his as she took the container. It was like an electric shock, and his heart thudded. Deliberately, he brushed his fingers over hers, clasped her wrist, looking at her.

She became motionless. Then she looked up at him, lingeringly. Her lips parted.

The pressure within him mounted. Almost reverently he reached for her--then stopped when tears formed in her eyes. He drew back, uncomprehending. Could desire be coupled with sorrow? Or was he merely reading desire into some emotion not remotely connected with passion? She had been given to him without reservation, but he could not bring himself to take her unwillingly. The difference, he realized, between love and lust--damn the psychologists. He let out his breath, fumbled in a small plastic box near the controls, dug out several nutriment bars. He handed a couple to Carol without looking at her and munched unhappily at the chocolate-flavored ration.

They watched the blackness of space for hours. The stars appeared as bright glowing blobs sunk dismally far into the heavy depths of some Stygian jelly. It was a time to be savoring the first experience of man beyond his mortal sphere, but Ken stared unseeingly, his mind dulled, vacant with indecision and disillusion that was almost a physical hurt. The zest of adventure, in the midst of adventure, was throttled before it saw life. The sustaining dreams of training and preparation were dusty misery. Robotically, he watched the instruments, occasionally made microscopic adjustments. Carol's hands, close to his, infrequently changed camera settings.

Unexpectedly the radio sounded. Ken tuned to maximum volume, strained to hear the muted words. It was a moment before he realized they were drawling, abnormally slow, like one of the old spring-wound phonographs running down. When he caught it, the message stunned him.

He listened to it twice more before silencing the radio. Turn back? Now? He looked at Carol. She returned his stare, drawing her arms up out of the slots and leaning on her elbows, frowning in puzzlement. Her breasts were pendent promises of--further disappointment? Were both love and life to be reduced, in a day, to twin voids of defeat? Love was Carol and life was a successful flight around the moon.

Discipline kept his act just short of viciousness as he slapped the controls back to manual. Grimly he silenced the stern rockets, cut in the bow units slowly. The flight was to have been a loop "over" the moon, almost intersecting its orbit at the precise time it swung ponderously by. What possible emergency could have arisen?

Ken couldn't remember just when the fear had started--maybe on the way outward, now that he thought of it: the feeling of deep depression. They were in free fall, weightless, the couch adjusted to keep them floating within a few inches of its confines. The brilliant, abandoned moon had just swung behind its big-sister world, the glaring furnace of Sol was still thwarted by a section of bow hood.

He felt the fear mount--little tugging fingers frantically at work within his chest. The blue sphere of Earth seemed to recede in the black muck, although he knew it was only an optical effect of space--of the vast, scornful emptiness in which the stars were but helpless, hopelessly enmeshed droplets of dross.

He shivered involuntarily. With the movement he touched the side of the couch and rebounded against Carol.

She screamed.

He stared at her, his fear mounting swiftly through panic to abject, uncaring terror. Carol had drawn herself up into a knot, the fetal position of infantile regression; her eyes were wide, unseeing, her mouth open in the scream that was now soundless.

Ken felt his mind brinking on madness. He continued to stare in a terrified frenzy until, from some tiny nook of sanity deep inside him, came the realization that this was Carol beside him--Carol, who was his, who needed him....

He fought. He staggered up from depths of bleak despair, aided by that deep-rooted male instinct which rouses raging fury at danger to his beloved. The innate protective impulse was heightened, strengthened by that emotional desire which is strongest at first contact, undiluted by familiarity and the consequent dissolution of ideals. The prime strength of manhood blasted in a coruscating mental flare against the forces of darkness and the unknown. Tenderly, he encircled her floating body with his arms and drew her close. He soothed her as one might a baby.

Slowly her eyes came back from horrific infinity. Slowly they focused on his. And then, comprehension returned, she pressed tightly against him, clung to him, sobbing with the remnant fear of fear remembered.

He talked to her for an hour, caressing, reassuring, until her responses were normal beyond any doubt. Then he told her he loved her.

He blinked in astonishment. "Of course I love you. It seems like I've always loved you. I tried to tell you. I--"

But she was crying again, shaking her head a little, saying, "Ken, Ken," over and over.

This time he continued to hold her intimately close. "What's the matter? Anything wrong with love?"

"But Ken--you could have any girl in the world!"

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet