World without Stars Read Online Free PDF Page B

tellin’ us how to find a nice, safe, convenient
     point way off from the sun, and cranked the wrong stuff into our computer.”
    He spread his hands. “I could be wrong,” he said. “Maybe the factor’s to blame. Maybe some curdbrain in the home office is.
     Fact remains, though, doesn’t it, that you don’t blindly jump toward a point in space—because you have to allow for your target
     star movin’. You use a formula. We got the wrong one.”
    “What do we do about it?” Rorn snapped.
    “We survive,” Valland said.
    “Oh? When we don’t even know if the air is breathable? We could light a fire, sure, and test for oxygen. But how about other
     gases? Or spores or—Argh!” Rorn turned his back.
    “There is that,” Valland admitted.
    He swung about and stared down at Smeth. “We have to unsuit him anyway, to see if we’ve got a chance to help him,” he said
     finally. “And we haven’t got time—he hasn’t—for riggin’ an Earth-atmosphere compartment. So—”
    He bent onto one knee, his faceplate close to the boy’s. “Enver,” he said gently. “You hear me?”
    “Yes … yes … oh, it hurts—” I could scarcely endure listening.
    Valland took Smeth’s hand. “Can I remove your suit?” he asked.
    “I’ve only had thirty years,” Smeth shrieked. “Thirty miserable years! You’ve had three thousand!”
    “Shut up.” Valland’s tone stayed soft, but I’ve heard less crack in a bullwhip. “You’re a man, aren’t you?”
    Smeth gasped for seconds before he replied, “Go ahead, Hugh.”
    Valland got Urduga to help. They took the broken body out of its suit, with as much care as its mother would havegiven. They fetched cloths and sponged off the blood and bandaged the holes. Smeth did not die till three hours later.
    At home, anywhere in civilization—perhaps aboard this ship, if the ship had not been a ruin—we might have saved him. We didn’t
     have a tissue regenerator, but we did have surgical and chemical apparatus. With what we could find in the wreckage, we tried.
     The memory of our trying is one that I plan to wipe out.
    Finally Smeth asked Valland to sing to him. By then we were all unsuited. The air was thin, hot and damp, full of strange
     odors, and you could hear the lake chuckle in the submerged compartments. Valland got his omnisonor, which had come through
     unscathed while our biogenic stimulator shattered. “What would you like to hear?” he asked.
    “I like … that tune … about your girl at home.”
    Valland hesitated barely long enough for me to notice. Then: “Sure,” he said. “Such as it is.”
    I crouched in the crazily tilted and twisted chamber, in shadows, and listened.
“
The song shall ride home on the surf of the starlight and leap to the shores of the sky
,
    Take wing on the wind and the odor of lilies and Mary O’Meara-ward fly
.
    And whisper your name where you lie
.”
    He got no further than that stanza before Smeth’s eyes rolled back and went blind.
    We sank the body and prepared to leave. During the past hours, men who were not otherwise occupied had taken inventory and
     busied themselves. We still had many tools, some weapons, clothes, medicines, abundant freeze-dried rations, a knockdown shelter,
     any number of useful oddments. Most important, our food unit was intact. That was no coincidence. Not expecting to use it
     at once on Yonder, nor at allif our stay wasn’t prolonged, we had stowed it in the recoil-mounted midsection. With the help of torches run off the capacitors,
     as long as they lasted, the work gang assembled a pontoon raft. We could ferry our things ashore.
    “We’ll live,” Hugh Valland said.
    I gazed out of the lock, across the waters. The sun was low but rising, a huge red ember, one degree and nineteen minutes
     across, so dull that you could look straight into it. The sky was deep purple. The land lay in eternal twilight, barely visible
     to human eyes at this distance, an upward-humping blackness