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The Long Voyage By: Carl Richard Jacobi (1908-1997) |
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the
long
voyage by ... Carl Jacobi
The secret lay hidden at the end of nine landings,
and Medusa dark was one man's search for it in
the strangest journey ever made.
A soft gentle rain began to fall as we emerged from the dark woods and
came out onto the shore. There it was, the sea, stretching as far as the
eye could reach, gray and sullen, and flecked with green white froth.
The blue hensorr trees, crowding close to the water's edge, were bent
backward as if frightened by the bleakness before them. The sand,
visible under the clear patches of water, was a bleached white like the
exposed surface of a huge bone. We stood there a moment in silence. Then Mason cleared his throat
huskily. "Well, here goes," he said. "We'll soon see if we have any friends
about." He unslung the packsack from his shoulders, removed its protective outer
shield and began to assemble the organic surveyor, an egg shaped ball of
white carponium secured to a segmented forty foot rod. While Brandt and
I raised the rod with the aid of an electric fulcrum, Mason carefully
placed his control cabinet on a piece of outcropping rock and made a
last adjustment. The moment had come. Even above the sound of the sea, you could hear
the strained breathing of the men. Only Navigator Norris appeared
unconcerned. He stood there calmly smoking his pipe, his keen blue eyes
squinting against the biting wind. Mason switched on the speaker. Its high frequency scream rose
deafeningly above us and was torn away in unsteady gusts. He began to
turn its center dial, at first a quarter circle, and then all the way to
the final backstop of the calibration. All that resulted was a
continuation of that mournful ululation like a wail out of eternity. Mason tried again. With stiff wrists he tuned while perspiration stood
out on his forehead, and the rest of us crowded close. "It's no use," he said. "This pickup failure proves there isn't a
vestige of animal life on Stragella on this hemisphere of the planet,
at least." Navigator Norris took his pipe from his mouth and nodded. His face was
expressionless. There was no indication in the man's voice that he had
suffered another great disappointment, his sixth in less than a year. "We'll go back now," he said, "and we'll try again. There must be some
planet in this system that's inhabited. But it's going to be hard to
tell the women." Mason let the surveyor rod down with a crash. I could see the anger and
resentment that was gathering in his eyes. Mason was the youngest of our
party and the leader of the antagonistic group that was slowly but
steadily undermining the authority of the Navigator. This was our seventh exploratory trip after our sixth landing since
entering the field of the sun Ponthis. Ponthis with its sixteen
equal sized planets, each with a single satellite. First there had been
Coulora; then in swift succession, Jama, Tenethon, Mokrell, and R 9. And
now Stragella. Strange names of strange worlds, revolving about a
strange star. It was Navigator Norris who told us the names of these planets and
traced their positions on a chart for us. He alone of our group was
familiar with astrogation and cosmography. He alone had sailed the
spaceways in the days before the automatic pilots were installed and
locked and sealed on every ship. A handsome man in his fortieth year, he stood six feet three with broad
shoulders and a powerful frame. His eyes were the eyes of a scholar,
dreamy yet alive with depth and penetration. I had never seen him lose
his temper, and he governed our company with an iron hand... Continue reading book >>
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Literature |
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