Exit Life

by John Russell Fearn, Volsted Gridban

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

"Hello Earth! Hello London!" But no reply was forthcoming to the message sent out by the spaceship in which the four pioneers had been exploring all the planets en route to Pluto, and which was now on its way back to London after two long years. Even the silence failed to dismay the voyagers; it could well be explained by a major fault of the airport's wireless transmitter. It was only when they touched down that they realised some terrible catastrophe had hit Earth in their absence...

Release date: September 30, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 100

Sample

In complete silence the four space travellers stood looking through the main observation port. It was the silence born of the realization of conquest, and partly of the inevitable fascination of viewing a world other than Earth.

Before them loomed a coal-black valley, its sides composed of some kind of gleaming rock which caught and held the eternal reflection of the icy stars. In the near distance the valley rose sharply until it became part of a high cliff which saw-toothed against the backdrop of space. Space, with its far-distant stars, its great oceans of nebulae, its everlasting mystery.

“Quite a conquest when you come to think of it! Nothing else now but Proxima Centauri, and I’m certain we’re not going to attempt that just yet!”

It was Sheldon Mortimer who was talking; the big, raw-boned genial astrophysicist who had been put in charge of this, the first experimental manned flight into space. It had been a gigantic undertaking, for nothing so trivial as a flight to the moon had been made. No—the journey had led straight to the outermost planet of Pluto, where the spaceship now reposed, with calls at every planet on the route, barring scorched and useless Mercury.

“Not much in Pluto now we have got here,” commented Paula Mortimer, Sheldon’s wife and the official “loggist” of the expedition. “Just rock, and more rock. Nothing more than you’d see in a coalmine back home.”

“Interesting stuff, though,” Nat Peters reminded her, with a glance at his analysis chart. “This stuff isn’t just plain rock. It’s heavily loaded with pure carbon amongst other things. Experts could break it up to find a fortune in diamonds, I imagine.”

“Which we, as good little citizens of planet Earth, must not touch.” Dorothy Peters observed sadly.

The others glanced at her but did not pass any comment. It was always difficult to know how to take Dorothy Peters. Even Nat, her husband, had never grown thoroughly to understand her queer outlook on life. She had courage, loads of it, but seemed to go through everything with an eyebrow upraised and her mouth smiling cynically. That she was a law unto herself was beyond cavil.

Such were these four people, two married couples, the first human beings to venture into space and verify or confound the theories of astronomers. Sheldon Mortimer, the leader, with his untidy sandy hair, beefy neck, and ready smile. Paula, his dark haired wife, serious-minded, trim-figured, always concerned with the business side of the voyage. Nat Peters, the official analyst, keen-eyed, curly-haired, and tubby; and his wife Dorothy entrusted with the 3-d and still photography, at both of which she was an expert.

“Well,” Sheldon Mortimer said at length, turning from his final survey of the barren Plutonian plain, “there doesn’t seem to be much else to do but go back home and listen to the plaudits of the crowd.”

“If any,” Dorothy Peters murmured, her shock of tumbled red hair drooping over the photographic print she was examining.

“If any?” Nat looked up from his analysis chart. “What kind of a remark is that? Or have you overlooked the trifling fact that we’re not only the first people to leap into space, but also the first to dare such a vast trip. If there isn’t some kind of public acclaim for that there’ll be a row. And I’ll make it.”

“Acclaim at first, without doubt,” Dorothy admitted. “We’ll be praised, eulogized, stuffed with dinners we don’t want, given medals and honours … Then we’ll be dropped. Just pioneers, that’s all. A year from the day we land nobody will even remember us, I don’t suppose.”

“Would that matter?” Paula enquired. “Novelty soon wears off, anyhow. Can’t expect anything else.”

Dorothy shrugged. “Doesn’t matter really, I suppose, but having once been in the spotlight of fame I dislike having to step out of it … Maybe the way I’m made, or something.”

“I think,” Mortimer remarked, clearing his throat with unnecessary noise, “that we’d better check up on our facts to date and make sure we’ve done everything possible for this first trip. How are the records, Paula?”

He crossed to where she sat at the central table, the big loose-leafed logging chart in front of her. Upon it was entered every important detail of the journey, together with a complete list of all the specimens discovered on each planet.

“Mmmm, so we’ve been away two years, have we?” Mortimer looked vaguely surprised. “Doesn’t seem like it.”

“Nevertheless it is,” Dorothy Peters confirmed. “We left on that summer morning of June ninth, nineteen eighty-two, and now it’s June twenty-third, nineteen eighty-four. Two years of wandering … I’ve nearly forgotten what Earth looks like.”

“I haven’t,” Paula mused. “Despite what we have seen and experienced of Mars, Venus, and the outer planets, I still don’t think there is anything to compare with some of the unforgettable moments of Earth.”

“We have a dreamer amongst us,” Dorothy observed. “Such as?”

“Oh, I can hardly be specific—but I get a kick out of thinking of wet roofs at sunset after a stormy day. Or imagine the smell of the breeze across the meadows at six on a summer morning, or——”

“I was never up at six,” Dorothy said. “And stop making us homesick, can’t you!”

“One thing strikes me as peculiar,” Sheldon Mortimer said, thinking. “And that is the complete absence of life anywhere in the Solar System excepting Earth. It was either Jeans or Eddington who said that Earth had been especially favoured by producing the ‘happy accident’ of life, and that it was possible there was no other life anywhere in the Universe. At least we have proved that no other life exists in the System, but as regards the rest of the Universe, we don’t know.”

“And probably never shall,” Nat Peters commented. “The Universe is a mighty big place.”

Sheldon Mortimer nodded slowly, a faraway look in his blue eyes. He was a man who always liked to know the why and wherefores of everything, and to him it was a ceaseless puzzle that there should be life on Earth and yet nowhere else. It set him wondering why the favour—if favour it was—had been conferred on one solitary planet.

“I wonder what that bang was——”

Mortimer started as his wife spoke. He found she was still pondering the reports of the voyage, her hand now on the sheet relating to June 9th, 1982, the day of departure.

“What bang?” Nat asked, and Paula looked up with a smile.

“Since it happened two years ago at the start of the voyage I wouldn’t blame you for forgetting, Nat. I would have myself but for noticing I have it logged here. It happened when we were three hundred miles from Earth at the last impetus of take-off. There was a bang of some kind and we heard it in this very control room. It must have been a pretty violent explosion of some kind because it was the vibrations we heard, and not the explosion itself. No sounds in space, of course.”

“And some kind of violet flash, too,” Mortimer added, looking at the record. “Yes, I remember it now. Maybe something as intricate as the bang which followed the first breaking of the supersonic barrier by aircraft. When we’ve time we’ll perhaps get around to solving it——” He picked up the complete file of records and looked through it carefully, finally satisfying himself that nothing further was needed in the way of exploration on this first trip. All possible specimens had been obtained and full chemical analyses made. There could be little more the World Interplanetary Association—sponsors of the expedition—could require.

“Everything okay?” Paula asked, as her husband nodded to himself.

“Yes, everything. Might as well start for home … To the bunks, everybody.”

Mortimer took his place at the switchboard and made a brief check over his instruments as Paula, Nat, and Dorothy each lay down full length in their respective air-bed “bunks”, preparing themselves for the strain of the take-off.

When it came it did not prove too severe. Pluto’s size not being very great, his gravity did not present a problem. It had been Jupiter and his three mighty neighbours which had proved such hell to overcome. This, in the words of one time Earth airmen, was simply “a piece of cake”.

In a matter of thirty minutes the spaceship was well away from Pluto’s desolate surface and gathering speed steadily. When it had finally achieved a velocity nearly a quarter that of light Mortimer cut out the acceleration and set the course so a wide detour of the giant worlds could be made, thus avoiding any swinging aside by reason of their gravity fields.

“All in order,” he announced, switching in the compensators which gave the party enough weight for comfort. “Nothing to do now but take it easy until we get home … And that will be some considerable time yet.”

“Better advise them that we’re arriving, hadn’t we?” Dorothy asked, getting up from her bunk.

“We’ll do that all right, when we’re nearer Earth. Our equipment isn’t powerful enough to send a message from here. Which reminds me,” Mortimer broke off, “it seems the devil of a time since we spoke to anybody at home. When was the last radio contact, Paula?”

She too got to her feet and went over to the records file. After a brief scrutiny she answered.

“September seventh, Shel, nineteen eighty-two. It was when we were nearing Mars, if you remember? The communication failed in mid-sentence and we put it down to solar static, or else our forty million mile distance from home.”

“Mmmm. Yes, I remember.” Sheldon Mortimer sat for a while with his brows drawn down. He remembered also that attempts to re-establish communication with Earth had also failed. In the time which had gone over since then so many things had happened, and there had been so many perils to combat, he had never given much thought to the mother world.

“I’ll be sort of glad when we get in contact again, Shel,” Paula said, coming over and putting an arm about his broad shoulders. “Be nice to hear voices other than just ours. I don’t mean that nastily, but—Well, it does get monotonous.”

“Monotonous is right,” Dorothy sighed, returning to her photographic work. “To think, Paula, that you and I have been dressed like a couple of men for two whole years and neither of us have the vaguest idea what the present Earth fashions are.”

“We soon will,” Paula smiled, her natural femininity rising over the scientific calling she had chosen for herself. “We’ll have the time of our lives when we get home, Dotty.”

Dorothy’s red head nodded briefly as she worked. Mortimer got up from the switchboard and put his extinguished pipe between his teeth. He considered for a moment and then grinned.

“As for me, I’m going to smoke like hell when I’m back home. Of all the ghastly privations, this ban on smoking in the space machine is the worst. I’ve only had about three drags from this pipe in two years, and only then when we ventured outside the machine … And you, Nat: what do you propose doing to celebrate?”

Nat reflected. “Oh, I dunno. Just take in some of the sights and smells which Paula mentioned, I imagine. When all the lionising and fetes are over, that is——”

So they talked and speculated to kill the weary hours. At intervals they slept. At other intervals they ate, or lounged at the portholes watching the endless parade of the hosts of heaven and marvelling, despite their accustomedness to it, at the depthless majesty of the void. Until, at long last, they had crossed the orbit of Mars and were some 36-million miles from home.

“We might as well make contact,” Mortimer decided, switching on the power to the radio equipment. “We’ll easily be able to reach London from this distance.”

He began the careful task of tuning, the others grouped around him and waiting anxiously for the loudspeaker to come to life. They could never have believed that a voice from their home world could present so fascinating a prospect.

At length the di. . .