The Resurrected Man

by E.C. Tubb

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

Synopsis

Captain Baron, space pilot, is forced to abandon his ship, waiting for a rescue that does not come. Eventually he dies in space, his body frozen and perfectly preserved. Five years later, he is found, and two doctors, Le Maitre and Whitney, restore him to life using an experimental surgical technique. Returning to Earth, Baron finds that he has been declared legally dead, his commission rescinded, and all his possessions reverted to the State. His only asset is the novelty and notoriety of being a Resurrected Man, and when this is ruthlessly exploited by others, he commits murder and becomes a fugitive from the police. Inspector McMillan enlists the help of Dr. Whitney to track him down, but their task is complicated by the fact that Baron is no longer quite human . . .

Release date: December 30, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 216

Sample

DEATH was a tin can drifting in the void five million miles from Mars. A sleek hull studded with venturis and stuffed with torpedoes, filled with instruments and heavy multiple cannon. A man-made wasp of space, able to jerk into tremendous velocity, to strike and destroy, to run, to strike again. A tiny patrol ship of the Terran Fleet, its hull darkened against reflection, unarmoured, depending on speed and manoeuvrability for safety. It drifted in a silent orbit around the red planet, ready to smash any vessel attempting to run the blockade, and around it the invisible fingers of radar detectors swept space for a million miles.

The control room was a coffin. A tiny area in which two men lived and slept, breathed and ate, waited and watched. They were as much part of the ship as the instruments were, strapped in high acceleration padding and chafed by the harsh fabric and metal of spacesuits. Their food was capsules from a box, essential vitamins and drugs, for little energy food was needed during the long periods of free fall, and glucose provided all the energy they needed. Their water was rationed in ounces, reclaimed from waste and the humidity of the air, and they breathed almost pure oxygen at eight pounds pressure.

Two of them. Carlos the gunner, a Latin-American with liquid brown eyes, swarthy skin, and a palate for heavily spiced foods. His mind was a computer, his fingers part of his guns, his eyes blank from watching destruction. To him death was an abstract, ripped metal and blossoming flame, tiny scraps of raw humanity spinning in the void, the whine and throb of multiple cannon and the hissing discharge of homing torpedoes. A slight man with muscles of whipcord and rubber, steel and high-tension wire. A calm man who had long ago locked his private life in a rear compartment of his mind.

Baron was the captain. Tall and with cropped black hair hugging his skull. Hard eyes of slate grey stared from either side of a hooked nose and his mouth was a tight gash over a jutting chin. A scar writhed over his left cheek, a jagged tracery of a time when searing metal had caressed him with a torrid kiss, and his brows rested like a thick bar over the cold bleakness of his eyes.

For a month now they had been cooped up in the too-small control room. For two more weeks they would have to live within the confines of their protective clothing. Then they would be relieved and return to the mother ship. They would be cleaned and their ship serviced and for a week they would relax, eating as men should eat, enjoy the tug of synthetic gravity and move free of the padding and pressure. Six weeks and a week off. Time after time until it had grown to be a routine, a habit pattem. Six weeks of high tension, of watching and waiting, ready to strike and run, to dodge and veer, to kill or be killed. Six weeks of hell and a week of life.

The glory of interplanetary war.

Baron thought about it as he sat, eyes automatically staring at the blank face of the radar screen. Below him, within arm’s length, Carlos grunted as he jerked from a light doze, and yawned with a flash of white teeth.

“Time to eat?”

“Eat what, pills?” Baron shrugged, the movement hardly noticeable beneath his suit. “Wait until we get relieved before you talk of eating.”

“Then I will eat,” promised Carlos. He reached for the inevitable gum and chewed silently for a moment, trying to fool his stomach with the released saliva. “Tortillas,” he murmured. “Chili and tamales, curries, so hot they skin the mouth—and wine. Ah, the wine!” He kissed the tips of his fingers. “Chianti I think, and perhaps some of that sherry from Spain, the good sherry with the taste of almonds and the body of a saint. Tequilla, of course, lots of tequilla, and a steak, seared on the outside and raw within.” He grinned at the captain. “Yes?”

“Stop teasing yourself.” Baron slumped back in the padded acceleration chair that served both as control seat and bed.

“You’ve two more weeks to go before you can stuff yourself and thinking about it only makes it harder.”

“A man can dream,” said Carlos with simple dignity. “Even in space a man can dream.”

“Dream?” Baron gave a snort, half-laugh, half-contempt

“I don’t dream.”

“You should, my friend. This,” Carlos gestured with a gloved hand, “this is but a part of life, the hard, cold reality, but in dreams a man can escape. He can eat and taste the tang of wine, the soft velvet of good liquor and even listen to the guitars at fiesta time. It is not good for a man not to dream.”

“No? Then why are you here, Carlos? Why do what you do if your heart isn’t in it?”

“Did I say that?” White teeth flashed in a smile and liquid brown eyes glittered in merriment. “I do what I have to do, the same as any other man, but that is not all my life. I shoot and kill and blast men to shatters but there is no emotion in it for me. No. I save that for the real things, the enjoyment of the body and the mind. I save the thrill for the wind in the evening and the song of birds, the thrum of guitars and the smiles of the dancing girls. They are the real things, my friend. They are the only things.”

“You’re a fool,” said Baron, but he said it without heat. “This is the reality.” He struck the edge of the control panel “This.”

“And yet, when the war is over and we are back on Earth, when we can eat three times a day and walk without suits. Will this then not seem like a dream? Is it then more real than the other things? For then we will enjoy what we now dream of, and I do not think that I shall ever dream of what we do now.”

“The war will never end,” said Baron. He said it as if repeating a lesson, without emotion or conviction, mouthing the words as if they were a cold statement of fact. Carlos laughed.

“All things end, my friend, and this war will end as other wars have ended.” He hunched himself higher from the low-slung gunner’s seat. “I heard a whisper the last time we rested in the mother ship. A truce has been arranged and an armistice is a certainty. The Martian colonists are beaten, they know it, and we would be glad to end the war.” He smacked his lips. “This may be the very last time we share this vigil together.”

“No.”

“Why not? We have won the war.”

“No!” Baron glared at the smiling face of the gunner. “It will never end.”

“That is foolish,” said Carlos gently. “Could it be that you don’t want it to end?”

“I don’t know.” The captain shook his head as if trying to clear it of cobwebs. “I want peace, I suppose, but…”

“But you don’t know what peace is.” Carlos nodded and his eyes held a surprising gentleness. “You were trained for space, were you not? A pilot?”

“Yes.” Baron clenched his gloved hands and stared bleakly at the ranked instrument dials. “I entered the Space Academy when I was fifteen, a ward of the State. Both my parents died in the Luna crash and they found me a place as compensation. I did five years’ preliminary training before war was declared against Mars, and since then I’ve piloted a patrol ship.” He swallowed. “That was ten years ago.”

Carlos nodded. He knew of the spartan discipline of the Space Academy, the rigorous training and deliberate crushing of softness and gentleness in those who were chosen to pilot the vessels of the space lanes. The Terran Fleet had room only for the best, and their standards were high. As a gunner Carlos was lucky. He was trained, of course, but a gunner’s training was nothing as severe as that of a pilot. He could remember the ease of a world at peace and he had carefully kept the stringency of war divorced from his normal self. His soul was free from iron and he could shake off the past ten years as a dog shakes itself free of water.

Baron couldn’t.

He had no other standards. He had only known war and the exigencies of war, the hair-trigger tension and harsh rigour of active service. Incredible as it seemed the captain was almost afraid of peace! Afraid of it as he could never be afraid of war. Carlos sighed and reached for a fresh pack of gum.

“You will learn,” he said quietly. “You will forget the steel and the guns, the night of space lit by distant stars and the gushing blood from strained capillaries. You will move more freely out of uniform, unhampered by metal and plastic, letting your limbs swing free and filling your lungs with God’s sweet air. You will learn.”

“They will still need pilots,” said Baron grimly. “With the war over trade will increase and men will be needed to steer the ships.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.” The captain sounded desperately hopeful. “Space is my life, I know nothing else, and they will still need men.”

“So they will, my friend, but have they not men?” Carlos stared sombrely at the cold metal of the guns, winking in the soft illumination. “Young men.”

“I am not old.”

“You are thirty, battle-scarred and overstrained, a man of war, a machine. There are others, younger men, higher officers, more suitable perhaps to civilian life.”

“I am trained.”

“So are a thousand others, ten thousand others, maybe more. Will there be ships for all those men?”

“I don’t know.” Sweat shone on the captain’s harsh features. “I’ve given my life to the Fleet, they will look after their own.”

“A comforting philosophy,” said the gunner quietly. “I admire your faith.”

He yawned and stretched and hummed a snatch of some Latin rhythm, quick and blood-stirring, warm with the southern sun and redolent of lovers and wine, of gaiety and carefree indifference. Baron stared before him, not listening, his mind a cold mass of tissue, emotionless, calculating, indifferent to the lilt of tunes he had never heard and hearing could not understand.

A buzzer jarred the air with its harsh warning and a flood of ruby light replaced the soft glow. Again the grating warning, stilling the lilting song on the gunner’s lips and turning the captain’s mouth to a down-curved gash.

“Where?” Carlos strained forward as he tried to see the radar screen, his back-swung helmet cla. . .