Alex was a pioneer. Like all pioneers he had problems. He had more problems than most; when things start to go wrong in space they go wrong in a big way. One by one the perils of the void took their toll of his companions. Alex was alone, alone with a vision, the vision of a town, home.
Only thoughts of home kept him alive. He remembered trees, houses, shops, churches, peoples...above all people. At last he reached earth...or perhaps it wasn't earth? Things had changed unbelievably. Perhaps he had changed. How long had he been away? How far had he drifted? There was a sinister possibility that this wasn't home at all. If the things that looked like people weren't people but aliens, what was he to do?
Alex was a realist. He knew what space could do to a man's mind. He was disinclined to trust the evidence of his own senses. A mine that has had far more than it can take can produce from very peculiar perceptions...
Release date:
August 28, 2014
Publisher:
Orion Publishing Group
Print pages:
320
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ALEX BRAID, captain of the Leibniz, glanced swiftly down the passenger list and saw to his surprise that it was empty. He turned the sheet over and scanned the familiar crew names: Danes, Fenn, Hilton, Jackson, Lewis, Neville, Price, Romain and Thompson, with himself that made ten in all; the Leibniz would be travelling light this trip. He re-checked his blast orders. Galaxy 701 star system 256 planet 4. It was way beyond the Magellanic clouds. The cargo consisted of the usual, highly complicated electronic equipment. It was the kind of stuff that only Earth could produce. Earth still had the monopoly of brain, he thought. The colonists had nearly everything else. The out-worlds had space, had clean air and abundant food, but Earth still had technologists. The colonists were catching up, that was only to be expected. We couldn’t hope to keep our lead forever. But for the time being Earth was an enormous planetary factory; in the same way that in the old days of nation states, before the world government had come, Switzerland had been famed for her beautiful, precision watches, so now, Earth was famed for the beauty, the precision and the design of her electronic equipment. A terrestrial robot was vastly superior to any of the native products, on the out-worlds.
Braid smiled and nodded as his co-pilot came aboard. Danes was followed by Fenn, the doctor, Hilton, the hydroponics expert, Jackson, the engineer, Lewis, the big fleshy extrovert astrogator, and Neville, the chemist and physicist, a tiny, big-headed, tadpole of a man, with a brain that worked like a computer. Orlande Price, the flame-haired psychologist, stepped gracefully, but with a certain angry movement on to the flight of steps that had been wheeled up against the side of the Leibniz. Our psychologist, thought Braid, has quite a temper. Miss Price was a tremendous contrast to Queenie Romain, the dark, sensuous computer girl, who wriggled her way up the steps in a tunic that was obviously deliberately a size too small. Braid grinned as he watched her disappearing into the ship. At least, he thought, Queenie was some consolation for a lengthy voyage in deep space.
Sally Thompson, whom one never thought of as Sally, but whose name appeared now in bold black and white on the crew sheet in front of Alex Braid, was a grey, prim, matronly woman. She was the ship’s general organiser, communications and liaison officer, and it was, reflected Braid, just what she was cut out for. Sally Thompson could have been cast adrift on a desert island, and within a week she would have had the coconuts and the shell fish organised!
So that was that, thought Braid, they were all aboard. Everybody was there now except him. He had an odd feeling about this voyage. He looked at the Leibniz, a sturdy, dependable, reliable ship, it had stood them in good stead, and yet, somehow, he didn’t feel as happy as usual as he climbed up the steps and gave the signal to the ground staff to haul them clear.
He paused for a moment with his back to the interior of the ship. Below him he could see the town. It was about a mile and a half from the blasting pad. A nice town, small and friendly and old fashioned, but a good sincere place. A town like that must have been that way, for over a thousand years. They weren’t the same buildings, but with rare insight the planning authorities had decided that those which decayed were going to be replaced with what they called 19th/20th century style.
There was real red brick in that town; it was warm and friendly. It made him think of Christmas cards he had seen in museums with coaches and horses. He felt the beryllium of the rocket beneath his hand. Coaches and horses, he thought. By the stars, we’ve come a long way since then. ‘By the stars’? He chuckled to himself; literally and metaphorically! Alex Braid turned around, and forcing his gaze away from the town he stepped through the lock and slid the door to behind him. He walked across to the other side of the lock. The door opened automatically as he cut through the photo-electric beam. He was in the ship proper now. Danes had already taken his place in the co-pilot’s chair. Fenn was lowering himself on to an antigrav take-off bunk. Hilton, the hydroponics expert, was making a final check of the hydroponic tank valves, making sure that everything was secure prior to blast off. Jackson the engineer had disappeared into his own section of the ship. Keith Lewis, the astrogator, was making a final check of the course co-ordinates. Mike Neville, the incongruous little figure with the enormous head and the diminutive body, was amusing himself staring at a microfilm of some frighteningly complex-looking advanced maths. Symbols which Alex Braid had never seen before were flashing on the screen immediately above Mike’s bunk. Neville was nodding that enormous head of his. His lips were working a little as though he was working out some peculiar calculation of his own. At that moment Alex Braid would have liked to have had an electro-encephalogram attached to Mike Neville’s gargantuan cranium. He reckoned that the readings would have been interesting. Orlande Price was already on her bunk, and looking around with those flashing green eyes that went so well with her flaming red hair. She was making little notes of people’s attitudes. Alex Braid felt that he would have liked to have made a few notes about the psychologist’s fiendish temper. Queenie Romain had fitted snugly into her bunk. A figure like Queenie’s fitted snugly into anything and everything that she sat on! Sally Thompson never seemed to relax. Even on an antigrav bunk she managed to look grey, prim and matronly. She glanced swiftly to right and left, rather disapprovingly, as though wondering whether everybody was organised as well as they ought to be. Braid guessed that if he could have seen into her mind she was already deciding when, where and how they should eat, as soon as the blast-off was over.
Alex Braid took his own place carefully. He looked across at Conrad Danes, the co-pilot. There was something solemn about the tall, dark, thin young spaceman, who carried the joint responsibility immediately with Alex Braid.
“All set, Captain,” said Danes. He spoke in a prim, almost ‘precious’ voice. Braid nodded.
“Initiate procedure,” he said quietly. Conrad’s thin, sensitive fingers played over the control buttons. The beryllium responded like a living thing. There was a soft, gentle humming of mechanisms and check circuits coming into operation. Eric Fenn glanced round to make sure that everyone was sitting in a safe position. This was not because the short, fat, jovial, fair-haired doctor was ever troubled by anxiety. His interest in his fellow passengers was, if anything, an enlightened self-interest. Eric Fenn didn’t want any broken necks because firstly he would have to carry the can back to the appropriate authorities and secondly, he would have the job of patching up the said necks.
Jerry Hilton was looking lovingly, like a hen with a lame chick, at his hydroponics tanks. He was a withdrawn, thoughtful man.
Of Isaac Jackson, the engineer, there was no sign but the smoothness of the humming which the others could hear told them that Isaac was at his place. There was nothing much you could say about Isaac Jackson, thought Alex Braid. Isaac was a very normal, very pleasant, very ordinary, and very reliable sort of man. He had no peculiar idiosyncrasies; he was not a man who would have stood o. . .
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