[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Nothing could have seemed pleasanter than that
peaceful planet. Then why was a non-suicidal
man driven to suicide there? Yet it made sense.
_Why do people commit suicide?_
Templin tightened his safety belt and lay back on the acceleration
bunk. The lights in the cabin dimmed to a dull, red glow that meant the
time for takeoff was nearing. He could hear noises from deep within
the ship and the tiny whir of the ventilator fan, filling the air with
the sweetish smell of sleeping gas. To sleep the trip away was better
than to face the dull monotony of the stars for days on end.
_Oh, they kill themselves for lots of reasons. Maybe ill health or
financial messes or family difficulties. An unhappy love affair. Or
more complex ones, if you went into it deeper. The failure to achieve
an ambition, failure to live up to one's own ideals. Weltschmerz,
perhaps._
He could smell the bitter fragrance of tobacco smoke mingling with
the gas. Eckert had lit a cigarette and was calmly blowing the smoke
at the neon "No Smoking" sign, which winked on and off in mechanical
disapproval.
He turned his head slightly so he could just see Eckert in the bank
facing him. Eckert, one of the good gray men in the Service. The old
reliables, the ones who could take almost anything in their stride
because, at one time or another, they had had to.
It was Eckert who had come into his office several days ago and told
him that Don Pendleton had killed himself.
_Only Pendleton wasn't the type. He was the kind who have everything
to live for, the kind you instinctively know will amount to something
someday. And that was a lousy way to remember him. The clich├ęs always
come first. Your memory plays traitor and boils friendship down to the
status of a breakfast food testimonial._
The soft red lights seemed to be dancing in the darkness of the cabin.
Eckert was just a dull, formless blur opposite him. His cigarette was
out.
Eckert had come into his office without saying a word and had watched
his scenery-window. It had been snowing in the window, the white flakes
making a simple pattern drifting past the glass. Eckert had fiddled
with the controls and changed it to sunshine, then to a weird mixture
of hail amid the brassy, golden sunlight.
And then Eckert had told him that Pendleton had taken the short way out.
_He shouldn't get sentimental. But how the hell else should he remember
Pendleton? Try to forget it and drink a toast to him at the next class
reunion? And never, never be so crude as to speculate why Pendleton
should have done it? If, of course, he had...._
The cabin was hazy in the reddish glow, the sleeping gas a heavy
perfume.
Eckert and he had talked it out and gone over the records. Pendleton
had come of good stock. There had been no mental instability in his
family for as far back as the genetic records went. He had been raised
in a middle-class neighborhood and attended a local grammar school
where he had achieved average grades and had given his instructors the
normal amount of trouble. Later, when he had made up his mind to enter
the Diplomatic Service, his grades had improved. He had worked hard at
it, though he wasn't what you would call a grind. In high school and
later in college, he was the well-balanced type, athletic, popular,
hard-working.
_How long would it be before memories faded and all there was left
of Pendleton was a page of statistics? He had been on this team, he
had been elected president of that, he had graduated with such and
such honors. But try getting a picture of him by reading the records,
resurrect him from a page of black print. Would he be human? Would
he be flesh and blood? Hell, no! In the statistics Pendleton was the
All-Around Boy, the cold marble statue with the finely chiseled muscles
and the smooth, blank sockets where the eyes should be. Maybe someday
fate would play a trick on a hero-worshiping public and there would
actually be kids like that. But they wouldn't be human; they wouldn't
be born. Parents would get them by sending in so many box tops._
He was drowsy; the room was filled with the gas now. It would be only a
matter of minutes before he would be asleep.
Pendleton had been in his second year as attache on Tunpesh, a small
planet with a G-type sun. The Service had stumbled across it recently
and decided the system was worth diplomatic recognition of some kind,
so Pendleton had been sent there. He had been the first attache to be
sent and naturally he had gone alone.
There was no need to send more. Tunpesh had been inspected and
certified and approved. The natives were primitive and friendly. Or
maybe the Service had slipped up, as it sometimes did, and Tunpesh had
received something less than a thorough survey.
And then an unscheduled freighter had put in for repairs, one of
the very few ships that ever came by Tunpesh. The captain had tried
to pay his respects to Pendleton. Only Pendleton wasn't there. The
natives said he had killed himself and showed the captain the little
flower-covered plot where they had buried him.
Tunpesh had been Pendleton's second assignment.
_The natives were oh-so-friendly. So friendly that he had made sure
that a certain box was on board, filled with shiny atomic rifles,
needle pistols, and the fat little gas guns. They might be needed.
People like Pendleton didn't kill themselves, did they? No, they
didn't. But sometimes they were murdered._
It was almost black inside the cabin now; only a thin red line around
the ceiling told how close they were to takeoff. His head was thick
with drowsiness, his eyelids a heavy weight that he knew he couldn't
keep open much longer.
Eckert and he had been chosen to go to Tunpesh and investigate. The two
of them, working together, should be able to find out why Pendleton had
killed himself.
_But that wasn't the real reason. Maybe Eckert thought so, but he knew
better. The real reason they were going there was to find out why
Pendleton had been killed and who had killed him. That was it._
_Who had killed Cock Robin?_
The thin red line was practically microscopic now and Templin could
feel his lashes lying gently on his cheeks. But he wasn't asleep--not
quite. There was something buzzing about in the dim recesses of his
mind.
Their information on Tunpesh was limited. They knew that it had no
trading concessions or armed forces and that nobody from neighboring
systems seemed to know much about it or even visited it. But a staff
anthropologist must have been routinely assigned to Tunpesh to furnish
data and reports.
"Ted?" he murmured sleepily.