McClelland was clean-shaven. His uniform, treated against
deterioration, was immaculate, but his body showed frail and bony
through it. His face was long and hollow-cheeked, the eyes deep-set
and bright. The head was like a skull, the nose an eagle's beak.
"I'm Colonel Halter. I'm a psychotherapist."
* * * * *
None of them answered. There was only the faint thrumming of the
rockets lowering the old ship to Earth.
"Let me be sure I have your identities right," went on Colonel Halter.
He then looked at the man on the captain's right. "You, I believe, are
Lieutenant James Brady."
Brady nodded, his pale, eroded face expressionless.
Colonel Halter saw the neat black uniform, identical with the
captain's; saw the cropped gray hair and meticulously trimmed goatee.
"And you," he said to the woman sitting beside the lieutenant, "are
Dr. Anna Mueller."
The same nod and thin, expressionless face. The same paleness. Faded
hazel eyes; hair white and trimmed close to her head; body emaciated.
"Daniel Carlyle, astrogator."
The nod.
Like the doctor's brother, thought Colonel Halter, and yet like the
lieutenant with his cropped hair and with an identical goatee.
"Caroline Gordon, dietician and televisor. John Crowley, rocketman."
Each nodded, expressionless, their faces like white, weathered statues
in a desert.
Colonel Halter turned to the captain. The rocket thrum of the tugs had
become a roar as the gravity pulled against the antique hull.
"We understand," said Colonel Halter, "that you demand repairs for
your ship and fuel enough to take you back into deep space."
"That is right." The voice was low, slightly harsh.
"You're all close to a hundred years old. You'd die out there. Here,
with medical aid, you'd easily live to a hundred and twenty-five."
Dr. Anna Mueller's head moved slightly. "We're aware of that,
Colonel."
"It'd be pointless," said the colonel, "and a shameful waste. You're
still the only crew that ever made it out beyond the Solar System.
You've kept records of your personal experience, how you survived.
They're valuable."
Dr. Mueller caught her breath. "Our adjustment to space is our private
concern. I don't think you could understand."
"Maybe not, but we could try. To _us_, of course, complete adjustment
is a living death."
"To us, it was a matter of staying alive."
Halter turned aside from disagreement, searching for common ground.
"You'd be protected here, you know. You deserve that."
"Who'd protect us from you?" asked the captain. "Life in the Solar
System is destructive."
* * * * *
Brady, the lieutenant, leaned forward. "You've failed--all through the
whole System."
"We haven't finished living in it," said Halter. "Who can pin a label
on us of success or failure?"
Miss Gordon, dietician and televisor, said quietly, "There are some
records I'd like to show you. We compiled them while the _Alpha_ was
drifting back into the System."
Halter watched the frail arm reach out and turn a dial.
A point of light grew on the screen in Colonel Halter's office.
"Pluto," said her quiet voice.
Halter watched the lightspot focus on a mountain of ice. Men in suits
of steel were crawling up its frozen side. Other men on the mountain's
top were sighting guns. The men below were sighting guns. Yellow fire
spurted from the top and the sides of the mountain, blending into a
lake of fire. There was a great hissing and a rushing torrent of
boiling water and rolling, twisting steel-clad bodies. The mountain of
ice melted like a lump of lard in a hot frying pan. Only the steel
bodies glinted, motionless, in the pale wash of sunlight.
Halter watched the brightness die and another lightspot grow one moon.
The focus shifted in close to a fleet of shining silver ships.
Then another fleet dropped from close above, hanging still, and there
were blinding flashes engulfing each ship below, one after the other,
until there were only the shining ships above, climbing into the dusk
glow of the Sun.
The glowing circle of bright-ringed Saturn was already rushing toward
Colonel Halter from far back in the depth of screen. The focus shifted
onto the planet's glaring surface. Men in the uniform of Earth
soldiers were rushing out of transparent shell houses and staring in
panic as the missiles plummeted through the shells and erupted clouds
of steam which spouted up from mile-deep craters and there was nothing
but the steam and the holes and the white cold.
Jupiter made a hole in the blackness, with eleven tiny holes scattered
all around her, like droplets of fire. Ships streaked up, one for each
droplet, circling each, spraying fire, until each droplet flared like
a tiny sun.
Yellow Mars, holding closely its two speedy rocks of moons, spun into
the screen.
A straggling line of men moved across a desert that whipped them with
sheets of yellow dust. A single ship dived from out of the Sun,
swooped along the line, licking it with the tongue of flame that
streaked behind. As the ship flashed beyond the horizon, a line of
smoking rag bundles lay still upon the yellow sand.
* * * * *
Darkness closed in upon the television screen in Colonel Halter's
office. In the long moment of silence that followed, he thought, _Oh,
God, after this awful picture, how can I convince them to come out of
the womb of that ship and live again? What reason can I give?_
Immobilizing his face, he saw the half circle of the six old people
again in the control room of the old, old ship.