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Happy Ending By: Mack Reynolds (1917-1983) |
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happy
ending by MACK REYNOLDS
and FREDRIC BROWN
Sometimes the queerly shaped Venusian trees seemed to talk
to him, but their voices were soft. They were loyal people.
There were four men in the lifeboat that came down from the
space cruiser. Three of them were still in the uniform of the Galactic
Guards. The fourth sat in the prow of the small craft looking down at their
goal, hunched and silent, bundled up in a greatcoat against the coolness
of space a greatcoat which he would never need again after this
morning. The brim of his hat was pulled down far over his forehead, and
he studied the nearing shore through dark lensed glasses. Bandages, as
though for a broken jaw, covered most of the lower part of his face. He realized suddenly that the dark glasses, now that they had left the
cruiser, were unnecessary. He slipped them off. After the
cinematographic grays his eyes had seen through these lenses for so
long, the brilliance of the color below him was almost like a blow. He
blinked, and looked again. They were rapidly settling toward a shoreline, a beach. The sand was a
dazzling, unbelievable white such as had never been on his home planet.
Blue the sky and water, and green the edge of the fantastic jungle.
There was a flash of red in the green, as they came still closer, and he
realized suddenly that it must be a marigee , the semi intelligent
Venusian parrot once so popular as pets throughout the solar system. Throughout the system blood and steel had fallen from the sky and
ravished the planets, but now it fell no more. And now this. Here in this forgotten portion of an almost completely
destroyed world it had not fallen at all. Only in some place like this, alone, was safety for him.
Elsewhere anywhere imprisonment or, more likely, death. There was
danger, even here. Three of the crew of the space cruiser knew. Perhaps,
someday, one of them would talk. Then they would come for him, even
here. But that was a chance he could not avoid. Nor were the odds bad, for
three people out of a whole solar system knew where he was. And those
three were loyal fools. The lifeboat came gently to rest. The hatch swung open and he stepped
out and walked a few paces up the beach. He turned and waited while the
two spacemen who had guided the craft brought his chest out and carried
it across the beach and to the corrugated tin shack just at the edge of
the trees. That shack had once been a space radar relay station. Now the
equipment it had held was long gone, the antenna mast taken down. But
the shack still stood. It would be his home for a while. A long while.
The two men returned to the lifeboat preparatory to leaving. And now the captain stood facing him, and the captain's face was a rigid
mask. It seemed with an effort that the captain's right arm remained at
his side, but that effort had been ordered. No salute. The captain's voice, too, was rigid with unemotion. "Number One ..." "Silence!" And then, less bitterly. "Come further from the boat before
you again let your tongue run loose. Here." They had reached the shack. "You are right, Number ..." "No. I am no longer Number One. You must continue to think of me as
Mister Smith, your cousin, whom you brought here for the reasons you
explained to the under officers, before you surrender your ship. If you
think of me so, you will be less likely to slip in your speech." "There is nothing further I can do Mister Smith?" "Nothing. Go now." "And I am ordered to surrender the " "There are no orders. The war is over, lost. I would suggest thought as
to what spaceport you put into. In some you may receive humane
treatment. In others " The captain nodded... Continue reading book >>
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Literature |
Science |
Short stories |
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