Chapter I: Front Matter

TO SAVE EARTH

BY EDWARD W. LUDWIG

ILLUSTRATED BY VAN DOGEN

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow October 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The life of everyone on Earth depended on
their sanity ... which they had long ago lost!

For more than six years the silver rocket was like a tomb buried at the Earth's center. It wore the blackness of interstellar space for a shroud, and ten thousand gleaming stars were as the eyes of hungry, waiting worms.

Five of the inhabitants of the rocket moved like zombies, stone-faced and dull-eyed, numb even to their loneliness.

The sixth inhabitant did not move at all. He sat silent and unseeing. The sixth inhabitant was mad.

There had been times when all of them--mad and near-mad--had forgotten that they hurtled through space, that they were men and that they were growing old. Occasionally they had even forgotten that the destiny of mankind might lie in their hands like a fragile flower to be preserved or crushed.

But now came a moment six years one month and five days after their departure from Earth. The sole planet of Sirius loomed green and blue in the ship's magni-screen. The sight of the shining planet was like a heavenly trumpet call, a signal for resurrection.

The inhabitants stirred, rubbed their eyes, and tried to exhume forgotten hopes and memories from the lethargy of their minds....

* * * * *

"What do you think?" asked Lieutenant Washington.

Captain Jeffrey Torkel, gaunt-faced and gray, stiffened his lean body. At this moment all memory had left him, like a wind-tossed balloon leaping out of his skull.

_It's happened again_, he thought. _I've forgotten. Oh God, why must I keep forgetting?_

"Tell me what you think, Captain," said a balding, dark-skinned man clad in khakis.

Captain Torkel stared at the blue-green, cloud-mottled image in the screen. Where was he? Certainly not in South Dakota. Certainly not on a field of golden, bristling wheat. No, he had the feeling that much time had passed since those boyhood days on the Dakota farm.

He glanced at the strange man who had spoken to him. The balloon snapped back into his skull. Memory returned.

_At least it wasn't gone for a week this time_, he thought. _Thank you, God._

"You must be thinking _something_," persisted the man who had become Lieutenant Washington.

The captain rubbed his gray stubble of beard. "I guess I'm thinking that we're afraid and bewildered. We're not as full of strength and hope as saviors of the race should be. Sure, what we find here today will mean either life or death for the race. But the concept has been with us for too long. It's already made us half-mad. And the same part of our minds is afraid to hope lest it be disappointed. After all, the planet might be radioactive or uninhabitable, or--"

"But, Lord, Captain! Even with the sub-spatial drive it's taken us six years to get here. If there's a God who answers prayers, it's _got_ to be a good planet. Sirius has only one planet. This is the last chance left for the race. And look at it, Captain! The blue places must be water and the green must be land. It's bigger than Earth, but it looks almost like it!"

Captain Torkel nodded. "Whether it's good or bad, we still can't win, really. If it's bad, humanity dies and we stay on the ship for the rest of our lives. If it's good, we'll still be on it for twelve more years--six years back to Earth and another six to return here."

Lieutenant Washington began to shake. "I don't know if I could take twelve more years in space. Twelve years of eating and sleeping and playing chess in the silence and nothing but darkness outside, and trying to find a micro-movie we haven't seen a hundred times--all that, over and over--" He closed his eyes. "I don't think the others could take it either. They'd probably become like Kelly."

Kelly was the mad one.

"We have no other choice, Lieutenant. If the planet's habitable, we have to take the news back."

The lieutenant shuddered. "I--I need a drink," he faltered. "I know. I said I wasn't going to drink today. I'm not either. Not much. I want to be on my feet when we hit that planet. But--excuse me, Captain."

Captain Torkel watched the gaunt officer stride to the aft compartment. He suddenly realized that the lieutenant was bald. The top of his Negroid skull shone like a dark egg. When had _that_ happened? Only a short time ago, it seemed, the lieutenant had been a young man with soft thick hair. _Those six years did it_, thought Captain Torkel, _those six dark, silent, crazy years._

* * * * *

The lieutenant returned a few seconds later, calmer now, reeking with the stench of laboratory alcohol spilled on his jacket.

Captain Torkel, as always, pretended not to notice the stench.

"Captain," said Lieutenant Washington deeply.

"Yes?"

"Suppose the astrophysicists back on Earth were wrong. They said the sun would blow up in exactly twelve years, two months and fifteen days. How could they get it that close? Suppose this planet _is_ habitable, suppose it _could_ be a new home for humanity. And suppose we start back home with the news, and then the sun turns into a nova ahead of schedule--say, in twelve years, two months and _three_ days, when we're still a week away."

Captain Torkel swallowed hard. "We have to allow a margin for error, of course. But I don't think those predictions will be off by more than a day or two. After all, they've been corroborated in all the broadcasts we've been able to pick up."

He smiled grimly. "So if the planet's habitable, we have to start back to Earth almost at once. We can't allow ourselves more than a day to rest and try to get the madness out of our systems."

"Oh, God," murmured Lieutenant Washington, closing his eyes.

"If we only had our transmitter," Captain Torkel mused, "we could stay here. We wouldn't have to--"

"Damn him," interrupted the lieutenant, opening his eyes and clenching his fists. "_Damn_ him!"

"Kelly?"

"Kelly. Why did he do it, Captain? Why did he throw every piece of transmitting equipment over-board?"

"Maybe a part of his mind hated Earth. Maybe unconsciously he didn't want to save humanity. Kelly's crazy. You can't account for the actions of a crazy man."

Lieutenant Washington was shaking again. "And so we can't radio Earth about what we find. If the planet's good, we have to tell Earth the hard way--by traveling through space for six more years. Captain, I--I think I'm going to have to get a dr--"

Footsteps sounded on the deck behind them. Van Gundy, the lean, hawk-nosed jetman, rushed up to them. He was breathing heavily and trembling.

"Captain, Fox stole my harmonica!"

Captain Torkel scowled. For a moment he forgot Van Gundy's name and who the lean man was. Then he remembered.

"Stole your harmonica. Why?"

"He won't tell me. He's a thief, Captain. He's always stealing things. You ought to--"

"Tell him I said for him to give it back to you. Tell him I said that."

"Yes, sir." Van Gundy clasped his trembling hands. "But that isn't all, Captain. Garcia said if I got my harmonica back and kept playing it, he'd kill me."

"Oh, God. Tell Garcia I said he couldn't."

"Yes, sir." Van Gundy turned toward the aft compartment, then spun back, eyes blazing. "I won't let 'em scare me, Captain. If they don't leave me alone. I'll kill _them_."

* * * * *

"The men are like rotting trees," said Captain Torkel a few moments later, "and you can't tell which way they'll fall. Fox steals. Van Gundy is afraid of everything and everybody. Garcia keeps breaking things and threatening violence. Someday he'll break a port, and that'll be _it_. Finis."

Lieutenant Washington said, with a hiccough, "Too bad we didn't insist on having a psychiatrist in the crew. Fox probably thinks he's been cheated out of his youth, and unconsciously he's trying to steal it back. Van Gundy has been knocked around so much that everything in the universe is a source of terror to him. Garcia breaks things."

He laughed sourly, blowing hot alcoholic breath into the captain's face. "And me, I'm a dipso who's no good to himself or anyone. You, Captain ... sometimes I suspect that your memory isn't quite what it use to be."

Captain Torkel scratched his stubbled chin. "Six psycho-specimens trying to save humanity. How did we become so detestable? Are all Earthmen like us?"

"Don't you remember?"

"Remember?"

"Yes. How when the U. N. announced about the blowup every interstellar rocket and spaceman in the System was commissioned to discover new worlds. Each ship was given a destination and an interstellar ether-radio to send back its findings. Mechanics and technicians still on Earth were put to work building new rockets to carry the race to its future home--if one were found. We and the _Star Queen_ were at the bottom of the barrel. The oldest ship; the crew that ordinarily would have been grounded."

Captain Torkel murmured, "I remember. There were fourteen interstellar ships then. Six cracked up smashing through the Einstein Barrier, according to what we picked up on the ether receiver. The others reached their destinations and not one found a habitable world. And newer ships sent out later had no better luck. Now, all the nearest star systems have been reached, and there isn't time for the ships to go on to other systems. By an ugly little prank of Fate, we're Earth's last chance."

He straightened. He pressed the warning buzzer and flicked on the rocket's intercom.

"All hands to their crash-chairs," he intoned.