Who was this bearded castaway of space?
Some said he was Jonah. Others thought
him a long-lost, mad scientist. But
Lieutenant Brait knew him by a name
that was old when the world was young.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1940.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There was an ad in the classified columns of this week's _Spaceways
Weekly_. It asked for information concerning the whereabouts of one
"Paul Moran, last known to have taken off from Long Island Spaceport
for parts unlogged." Captain McNeally drew the notice to my attention.
He said, "Look at this, Brait. Wasn't Moran the chap we picked up in
the asteroids? It seems to me I remember--"
"You should," I told him. "You see his name twice every shuttle,
engraved on cold steel. And you can be thankful for that. But I don't
think he'll answer this ad. I don't think they'll ever hear from him."
"That," scoffed the Shipper, "is nonsense! Do you realize what this
means, Brait? This ad was inserted by the Government Patent Office.
There's a fortune waiting for Mr. Moran back on Earth, when he sees
this--"
"A fortune waiting," I said softly, "when and if he ever sees it. But I
wonder, Skipper. I wonder."
* * * * *
We were about three thousand miles north, west and loft of Ceres
when we first sighted him. I remember that well, because I was on
the Bridge, and our Sparks, Toby Frisch, had just handed me a free
clearance report from the space commander of that planetoid.
I read it and chuckled. I said, "Sparks, this bit of transcription is
a masterpiece. Nobody expects a radioman to be good-looking or have
brains, but blue space above, man, your spelling and grammar--"
"Leave my relatives," said Sparks stiffly, "out of this. Is the message
O.Q. or ain't it?"
"Yes," I told him, "with a light sprinkling of no. Sometimes I wish we
had a good operator aboard the _Antigone_. Like one of those Donovan
brothers, for instance."
"Them guys!" sniffed Sparks. "Too wise for their britches, both of 'em.
I'm a bug-pounder, not a joke-book. If it's smart cracks you want, why
don't you buy an audio?"
It was at this point that Lt. Russ Bartlett, First Mate of our ship,
who had been shooting the azimuth through the perilens, turned and
waved to me excitedly.
"Brait, take a look! Quick! There's a man down below! On one of the
minor asteroids!"
I said, "A joke, Bartlett? You'd better check the alignment of that
perilens. That's the Man in the Moon you see."
Gunner McCoy, Bartlett's staunchest friend and admirer, looked up from
the rotor port, wrinkled his leathery, space-toughed cheeks into a
frown, and squirted mekel-juice at a distant gobboon.
"Mebbe you better look, Mr. Brait," he said. "If Russ says there's a
man there, then there's a man there."
So I looked. And to look was to act. I cut in my intercommunicating
unit and bawled a stop hypo order to Chief Lester in the engine room
below. Bartlett was right. There was a single, bulger-clad figure
sprawled on the craggy rock of a tiny asteroid hurtling beneath us. A
man who lay there quietly, did not rise, did not wave, gave no sign of
noticing our approach even when I dropped the _Antigone_ down toward
the spatial island.
Bartlett, peering through the duplicate lens, said, "Dead, Brait. He
must have cracked up. He's not moving."
But there was no wrecked spaceship anywhere around. I said, "We'll know
in a few minutes." And then the Skipper burst into the bridge, startled
and curious. "Something haywire, boys? Here, I'll take over."
He was a good man, Cap McNeally. A hardened spacehound, canny and wise
to the ways of the void, always on deck in moments of emergency. That's
why the IPS, the Corporation for which we work, had placed him in
command of the _Antigone_, finest and fastest ship in the fleet.
But I calmed his rotors. "Everything O.Q., sir," I told him. "We're
standing by to take on a space-wrecked sailor. I think."
My guess was right. A few minutes later we threw out a grapple,
space-anchored the _Aunty_, and a rescue party landed on the asteroid.
They brought back with them a sad looking specimen of the genus _Homo
sapiens_. His cheeks were drained and sunken beneath a bristling,
unkempt beard; his skin was blistered frightfully from long exposure
to solars and cosmics; his limbs were so feeble that he couldn't walk
unaided. He had to be carried.
Someone unscrewed his face-port for him. He drew a long, deep breath of
the pure _Antigone_ air. His wan eyes lighted dimly and he spoke in a
voice that was a thin husk of sound.
"Thank you, gentlemen. I had hoped that at last I might--But you meant
well, I suppose."
Which was, I thought at the time, a damned strange speech of gratitude.
But I had no time to answer. For his knees suddenly buckled beneath
him, his eyes closed. Had it not been for the friendly hands that
supported him, he would have pitched forward on his face.
Cap McNeally snapped, "Sick-bay! Snap it up, you lubbers! The man's in
bad shape. Out on his feet, cold!"
Sparks whispered, "Gosh, he looks like a corpus!" as the sailors bore
our unexpected passenger away. I stared at him disgustedly.
"Corpse." I said.
"Huh?" said Sparks.
"Corpse!" I repeated. "Corpse!"
"You," suggested Sparks, "oughta take somethin' for that indigestion,
Lootenant. My sister had it. It made her a physical reek."
It's against the rules for a Second Mate to punch a radioman. So I
kicked him. There are limits.
* * * * *
That was our first meeting with the mysterious Paul Moran. We
didn't know his name then, of course. We learned that several days
later. After Doc Jurnegan, our medico, had coaxed, bulldozed and
sulfanilamided him back off the brink of the dark and nasty.
Doc was the first to tag Moran with the adjective we all, eventually,
accepted.
"It's the damnedest thing," he told me, "I've ever seen. Brait, I'll
swear on a pile of prescriptions that he didn't have one chance in a
million of pulling through. But he's still alive!
"By rights, he should have been dead two weeks before we found him.
Do you know he was on that asteroid five solid weeks? Without food.
With only one container of water. With the oxygen reserve in his tank
practically exhausted!
"And his condition--" Jurnegan shook his head uncomprehendingly.
"Deplorable! He was dessicated, undernourished, fouled from weeks in a
bulger. Acute cyanosis alone should have killed him. But--"
I said, "The will-to-live, Doc. It's the determining factor in many a
borderline case. I've heard of men with holes in their heads you could
drive a stratoplane through who simply refused to--"
"That's just it," said Jurnegan. "He _wants_ to die! He refused to take
food. I had to feed him intravenously and force him to drink. But in
spite of his physical and mental condition, he still lives. It--it's
mysterious, Brait!"
So I went in to visit our strange passenger.
He wasn't a bad looking chap, now that his whiskers had been plowed.
Thin, of course; hollow of cheek and eye. His skin was sallow, faintly
olive; the contours of his head long and narrow, short-indexed. He was
a typical Mediterannean, if what my profs taught me is right. Medium
stature, small-boned, thin, tapering fingers. Crisp, oily hair, black
as space.
I said, "Well, you look like a new man!"--which he did, and, "You're
looking fine!" I said--which he wasn't.
He turned his head slowly, studied me with grave, questioning eyes. His
voice was faint, but low and pleasing.
"You are Mr. Brait, the Second Mate? I believe I have you to thank for
having rescued me?"
"That's all right," I told him.
"Why," he interrupted gently, "did you do it?"
I said, "Oh, come now! You've got to perk up! You get a little flesh on
your bones and you'll feel better."
But he went on, as though not hearing my words, "It was a chance. The
best chance I've had for years--a thousand years--and you took it from
me. Out there I might have found peace at last. The power cannot--it
_must_ not--extend into the depths of space."
* * * * *
His voice had risen; there was a light of madness, of strange, savage
intensity in his eyes. I felt the little hairs on the back of my neck
pringling. I knew, now, that the man had not come unscathed through his
experience. He was space crazy. Wildly, desperately so. I said, in what
I hoped was a soothing voice,
"Now, take it easy, Mr.--er--Moran, isn't it?"
The ghost of a smile touched his lips, and his body became less tense.
He said wearily, "Moran--yes. Or Ader. Or Cart--Oh, anything you
choose. It hardly seems important any more. I've had so many, many
names."
That wasn't exactly encouraging. But at least he was quieter now. And I
had to know a few things about him to put in the ship's log. I asked,
"How did you get on that asteroid, Moran? Were you space-wrecked? If
so, what was the name of your craft? The authorities will want to know."