The Early Pohl Read Online Free PDF Page B

can see things and hear them, but you can't move or speak. I tried to answer you, Beatta, when you were calling me—but I couldn't! I was dead !" Her voice trailed off in a whimper.
    Hysteria, only hysteria, Kye's rational mind was telling him over and over again. You can't die and then come to life again. The girl was hysterical. You can't die and. . . .
    But Kye couldn't believe his rational mind, for his rational mind had no explanation for the creature out there in the cavern.
    "What is that thing?" he asked. "How did it come here?"
    The question seemed to restore Christine to normalcy. "It came from the comet. It lived there, Kye, and when the comet broke up in Earth's gravitational field, it was on a section that was drawn to the Earth. It is an incredible creature. It fell, Kye, fell all the way to the surface of the Earth. And it's still alive—though it is dying. It told me that. It read my mind, and it spoke to me. And it made me a promise, too. A promise—that it would kill itself! Because it's a highly rational creature, and it found in my mind that it was interfering with us. It's going to die soon, anyhow,—it just won't fight death off any more."
    "That explains the apathy of the camp," said Kye slowly, trying to comprehend an immense thing. "This vast mind, right by us, in horrible pain, dying. And worst of all—cut off from its home—because its home is eternally gone, part of the flaming gases of the sun!"
    "But why didn't Christine or I get that feeling?" Beatta asked.
    "I don't know," Kye said helplessly. "I can't understand any of this—I don't think any human being can, really. But I have an idea . . . which is probably wrong. But it might do till we find a better explanation. This—emotion that that creature has been spreading is a longing for the homeland. That's a basic feeling of every human being. But—women are not as subject to it as men. A woman is trained to cling to a man; a man, to support his country. And. . . ."
    Kye never finished that speech. There was a sudden bright sweep of motion in the cavern, as though some shining thing had swooped, comet-like, up and away, through the walls of ice. In the same moment, the dull phosphorescence of the figure paled away; the huge red eye opened as the figure stirred in soundless agony, then dimmed to extinction.
    It had kept its promise. Obviously it was dead.
    But a few seconds later, before the three awed witnesses had dared to break the spell with words, there came a sudden new motion in the cable; a quick jerk, then a steady rise.
    The power was on!
    Silently, still gripped by the drama of the strange creature's death, the three forced their rebellious limbs to clutch the cable, and slowly were drawn to the surface, where was waiting a settlement, bright with returned power, and brighter with the lifting of the dismal cloud of despair.

 
     
     
     
    Milt Rothman was not my only client as agent-cum-collaborator. Milt needed me badly, of course, because his home was too remote and out of touch for him to deal with the New York editors. (He lived in Philadelphia.) But there were others. I trotted the rounds of Wonder Stories, Astounding Stories, Weird Tales et al., offering my wares. Real agents don't usually do this, I found out later. They either employ messengers or use the mails. I couldn't afford either. Two-way postage on a story was as much as thirty cents or thereabouts. Subway fare to the editor's office was only a nickel. Sometimes I saved the nickel and walked. All this took a lot of time, but I had the time. As soon as I was legally old enough I had quit high school, having concluded there was nothing I was learning in the classrooms that interested me as much as what I was learning outside. All this running around to editorial offices didn't earn me much in the way of cash, but it taught me that editors were, after all, human beings. Not only that, most of them didn't seem to know any more about science fiction than I