World without Stars Read Online Free PDF Page A

its brain, put this into another animal, and the second
     beast will exhibit behavior characteristic of that same training.
    The clock showed Minute One. I cut the drive. We ran free, weight departed, silence clamped down on me like a hand.
    I stared out at the chaotic beauty which flamed to starboard.
So long, galaxy
, I thought.
I’ll be seeing you again, in your entirety; only what I’ll see is you as you were a quarter of a million years ago
.
    The time reeled toward Minute Two. I unfastened the safety lock and laid my gloved finger on the red button.
    Nothing came over the comsystem into my earplugs. We were each without words.
    Time.
    The shock was too horrible. I couldn’t react.
    No blackness, with the great spiral for background and a wan red star, glowing before us. A planet filled the screen.
    I saw the vision grow, kilometers per second; hurtling upon us or we upon it. Half was dark, half was mottled with landscape,
     agleam with waters, under a blood-colored day. No chance to reset the jump unit and escape, no chance to do anything but gape
     into the face of Death. A roaring filled my helmet. It was my own voice.
    Then Hugh Valland’s tone cut through, sword-like with what I should have cried. “Pilots! For God’s sake, reverse us and
blast!
”
    That jarred me loose from my stupor. I looked at the degree scale etched in the screen and the numbers on the radar meters,
     I made an estimate of vectors and ripped out my commands. The engine boomed. The planet swept around my head. Acceleration
     stuffed me down into my harness and sat on my chest. Unconsciousness passed in rags before my eyes.
    We had too much velocity to kill in what time remained. But we got rid of some of it, in those few minutes before we struck
     atmosphere; and we didn’t flash directly down, we entered at a low angle.
    With such speed, we skipped, as a stone is skipped across a river. Shock after shock slammed into us. Metal shrieked. The
     viewscreens filled with incandescence. This ungainly I hulk of a vessel was never meant to land. She was supposed to lie in
     orbit while our two ferries served her. But now she had to come down!
    Somehow, Bren and Galmer operated the pilot board. Somehow they kept the drive going, resisting our plunge, bringing us groundward
     in a fury that only sufficed to boilaway our outer plates. When the main drive was ruined and quit, they used the steering units. When those went out, one by
     one, they used what was left. Finally nothing remained and we fell. But then we were so low, our speed so checked, that a
     man had some chance.
    I heard the bellowings, the protest and the breaking of steel. I felt the furnace heat from the inner bulkheads, through and
     through my spacesuit until lips cracked open and nasal passages were tubes of anguish. I saw the water below, and braced myself,
     and remembered I must not. Relax, float free, let harness and suit and flesh absorb the shock.
    We hit.
    I crawled back to awareness. My mouth was full of blood, which had smeared my faceplate so that it was hard to see out. One
     eye being swollen shut didn’t help. Hammers beat on every cell of me, and my left arm wouldn’t respond. I thought in a dull,
     vague way,
My skull can’t really be split open …
.
    The men!
    Nothing sounded except my own rattling breath. But surely, I cried, this was because the comsystem had been knocked out.
Got to go see. Got to unstrap and find my men
.
    I didn’t set my teeth against the pain of movement. That would have taken more control than I had, in my present state. I
     whimpered through the many minutes of fumbling. At last I slid free, onto the canted, buckled deck. I lay there a while before
     being able to get up and feel my way aft.
    The ship was dead. No screens functioned, no ventilators whispered, no lights glowed except the evershine panels spotted along
     the corridors. By their dim greenishness I stumbled and slipped, calling out names.
    After some part of eternity a