Being immortal, the Bryd was a very wise and
resourceful Thing--but even so, the problem of
saving Dale Stevenson was a dilly. So _much_
had to be done in one-fourth of a second!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Bryd was awakened with a rude jolt. It didn't even have time for
a mental yawn. Something terrible was going on in Dale Stevenson's
mind, and the turmoil there made the Bryd most uncomfortable. It shook
off the lethargy of its long sleep. It knew instinctively that Dale
Stevenson was about to get in trouble and make his mind unsuitable for
the Bryd's occupancy.
The Bryd sighed. These humans were so unstable, so impulsive. The Bryd
took a look around.
They--Dale Stevenson and he--were not on Earth. They seemed to be in
space somewhere, 5,100 miles from Earth. Well, well, so men finally
were breaking the shackles of gravitation. The Bryd became a little
more interested.
But Dale Stevenson was reaching for a button that would fire a rocket
to position the mirror and burn a path across the biggest city in
Europe. Hey! what was going on here, anyway?
The Bryd had about a quarter of a second to do a lot of research. What
was Dale Stevenson doing up here? What had he done with himself in
the twenty-four years since the Bryd had curled up in the boy's cozy
four-year-old mind and settled down for a long nap?
The Bryd could have stayed Dale's hand for a while, but the Bryd very
much believed in minding its own business. It didn't like to interfere
with humans; that was policy. So it decided to get busy. It had a
quarter of a second to find out things and decide what, if anything, to
do about them. Certainly it couldn't expect to stay comfortably in a
mind as upset as Dale Stevenson's ... so it got busy.
* * * * *
The first thing to do was get oriented. The Bryd took a quick look
around. Dale Stevenson, doctor of physics, was in charge of this
sun-station, which was a man-made island in space, some three miles
in diameter. The rim of the island was composed mainly of a steel
framework like the rim of a wheel, with little cabins at various
intervals to house a power plant, various controls, rocket berths,
repair shops, and living quarters for the sun-station's crew.
The center area of the sun-station was a giant mirror, three miles
across, made up of thin sheets of metallic sodium fastened to a
skeleton of wire nets. The sodium was very light in weight, and being
in airless and heatless space, was inert. Also it was highly reflective.
The whole business was kept at a point approximately 5,100 miles from
Earth, where Earth's gravitational attraction approached neutrality and
where the entire space-station could be maintained in a given position
or moved at will with a minimum expenditure of energy.
Technically the station was owned by Night Sun, Inc., along with nearly
a hundred others around Earth, and this particular station, No. 18, was
under contract to furnish illumination at night over Paris, France, by
staying out of Earth's shadow and reflecting sunlight on Paris during
the night.
Management of such a station involved many mathematical factors in
distance, triangulation with Paris, velocity and angulation, and
control of the curve of the mirror. Normally this was a parabolic
curve, but it was constantly varied with other factors to produce the
desired degree of illumination.
No. 18 was under the sole control of Dale Stevenson, who had been
psych-tested and certified by the United Nations licensing board.
That made the Bryd feel a little better. It looked as if he had made a
mistake twenty-four years ago, but it also looked as if the licensing
board had been fooled within the last year, for Dale certainly was
getting ready to cause a lot of trouble in Paris. He could actuate the
controls to expand or contract the rim of the station and thus vary the
focal length of the sodium lens, and if he should actually concentrate
the sun's rays in a small area, he could draw a flaming path of ruin
through the center of Paris.
Reluctantly the Bryd checked again, and found that that was exactly
what Dale Stevenson was about to do. The Bryd wondered why. It groaned.
Humans were always up to something. Why couldn't they relax so the Bryd
could rest?
The Bryd had been so happy back in 2250--or let's see, was it _up_ in
2250? (This was 2045.) That was when Bob What's-his-name and that cute
girl had landed on Pluto and given him a chance to get away. The long,
lonely eons in Pluto's absolute zero had been quite monotonous to the
Bryd, which was nothing but pure energy but which certainly had its
feelings. After almost a third of a billion years marooned on Pluto it
had sometimes almost wished it had not been so adventurous in its youth
and hopped that stray comet as it had swept by its home on Arcturus.
For it had tired of the comet and jumped off on Pluto, and then had
discovered it didn't have enough range of its own to get from Pluto to
another planet. Then it was that Bob and Alys had come along on their
'round-the-system honeymoon, and the Bryd had hitched a ride to Earth
(unknown to them), for it was pretty darned lonesome by that time.
It lived very happily with them until they got old, and then it decided
to go back in time to 1950. There it found a nice friendly mind in Joe
Talbott, and after it saved Joe from blowing up the Lithium Mountain
and half the earth with it, it had settled down to snooze in Joe's mind
and hadn't awakened until Joe died of old age. Then the Bryd had hunted
a nice, stable mind and had finally picked Dale Stevenson, who was four
years old, and had curled up for another long, quiet snooze. But now it
was only twenty-four years later and Dale was in a bother.
* * * * *
The Bryd went deeper into Dale's mind to see what was going on. Dale
was worried about something. In fact, he had worried so much it had
upset his normal mental balance. It seemed to have started back about
twenty years ago, a few years after the Bryd had entered Dale's mind.
It seemed that Dale's parents had been killed in an atomic blowup, and
Dale, eight years old, had been taken care of by his older sister.
"Don't you worry, Dale," she had told him stoutly. "I'll take good care
of you. And I'll buy your clothes and your school-books and everything.
You won't have to go to a home. I won't let them take you."
That's what Dale had been scared of--going to a home. He was happy
with Marillyn. She took good care of him, and somehow managed to keep
the authorities from finding out that a thirteen-year-old girl was
supporting a small boy.
Dale had understood all those things later, when he started to the
university and they became curious about his background. He realized
then what she had done.
"I'll remember all those things," he told her in the first fullness
of young maturity and his sudden realization of her loyalty. "You've
practically devoted your life to me. I appreciate it. You'll see," he
said, embarrassed in this new knowledge, but humbly grateful.
He got a chance to show her; for six months after his graduation, while
he was being trained at Station No. 18, he insisted that she should
come to visit his new post. Marillyn never had ridden a rocket because
she was afraid of them, but she recognized the honor he was conferring
on her, for very few persons but employees had ever set foot on a
sun-station. She agreed to go. Dale arranged passage. Then she was
severely injured in the take-off.
Dale was devastated. He called in specialists, consultants,
diagnosticians.
"Don't worry about it," he said. "I'll take care of everything. You'll
be all right in no time."
But she wasn't. She was badly crippled, paralyzed from the waist down,
and she became pitifully thin.
Dale spent most of his salary on her. Doctors told him it was useless,
nothing could help, that a part of her brain cells had been destroyed
and could not be rebuilt, that she might live fifty years but she would
always be helpless.
Dale refused to believe it. "She's got to get well," he said. "It isn't
right--after all the things she did for me. When she was just a kid
and should have been skating and dancing and going with boys, she was
working to keep me from going to a home. She's entitled to some fun
now."
But she didn't have a chance. Her recovery would have been contrary to
all medical experience.
* * * * *
Dale's salary grew until he was getting twenty-five hundred a month,
but most of it he spent on Marillyn--largely against her wishes.
"Dale, I wish you wouldn't insist on trying every new-fangled cure
that comes along. I know what the situation is. I can read. I know I
won't get well. I can't. When that brain-tissue is destroyed, it's gone
forever. You go out and have some fun. Please."
But Dale, worried but stubborn, said, "Do you remember that winter you
sold papers on the street so I could have skates and a sled? Do you
think I can forget that?"
"I didn't mean it to become a burden to you," she said softly.
He smiled. "It isn't a burden. I'm doing these things because I want
to--because I want to see you active and pretty again. I'll do it, too.
You'll see. Next month you're going to the spa at Carlsbad."
She tried to dissuade him, but next month she was bundled up and
carried to the train to go to Prague.
It was in Prague that Dale met Ann Wondra, last daughter of a long line
of Polish nobility. Ann was dark-haired, quick-eyed, and she could
laugh in a way that warmed a man's blood. At any rate, she warmed Dale
Stevenson's.
They went hunting together. They ate dinner together. They rode
together. They visited Marillyn together, and after they came away
from Marillyn in her wheelchair, Ann said, when he stopped the car on
the top of a high hill in the moonlight from where they could see her
ancestral castle, "You're determined that she shall get well, aren't
you, Dale?"
"Of course," he said.
"What will you do if she doesn't?"
He refused to consider that. "She will," he said confidently.
By that time Dale's arms were tightly around her. So, for that matter,
were Ann's around Dale.
"You are quite sure," Ann said cautiously.
"I suppose," he said, in an abrupt humbleness, "it's a fixation by now.
It's something I recognize as a problem, and the best way to cure it is
to cure Marillyn. When I go out on a party, or when I am extravagant,
it nicks my conscience, because Marillyn made all these things possible
for me in the first place."
"It isn't your fault that she's an invalid, is it?"
"Not directly, no, although she didn't want to take that trip. However,
I don't think it's that as much as it is the feeling that if I get too
much interested in other things I might neglect her--that is, I might
be somewhere else doing something for fun just at the time when the
opportunity would come to get her cured. Do you see what I mean?"
"I think so," she said gently.
"For instance," he went on, very much concerned with making her
understand, "if I should spend a lot of money on other things--say, for
instance, that I should marry you and we'd build a home and all--that
would take a lot of money and it would make me unconsciously less eager
to find a cure for Marillyn because deep down I'd know I might not be
able to pay for it."
Ann drew back in her arms. Her black eyes reflected the starlight.
"Dale, what did you say? Did you say 'if I should marry you'?"