Barney Chard came up out of an uneasy sleep to the sudden sharp
awareness that something was wrong. For some seconds he lay staring
about the unlit cabin, mouth dry, heart hammering with apprehension.
Then he discovered it was only that he had left the exit door open and
the window switched on.... Only? This was the first time since they
had left him here that he had gone to sleep without sealing the cabin
first--even when blind drunk, really embalmed.
He thought of climbing out of bed and taking care of it now, but
decided to let the thing ride. After all he knew there was nothing in
the valley--nothing, in fact, on this world--of which he had a
realistic reason to be afraid. And he felt dead tired. Weak and sick.
Feeling like that no longer alarmed him as it had done at first; it
was a simple physical fact. The sheet under him was wet with sweat,
though it was no more than comfortably warm in the room. The cabin
never became more than comfortably warm. Barney lay back again, trying
to figure out how it had happened he had forgotten about the window
and the door.
It had been night for quite a while when he went to sleep, but
regardless of how long he'd slept, it was going to go on being night a
good deal longer. The last time he had bothered to check--which,
Barney decided on reflection, might be several months ago now--the
sunless period had continued for better than fifty-six hours. Not
long before dropping on the bed, he was standing in front of the big
clock while the minute hand on the hour dial slid up to the point
which marked the end of the first year in Earth time he had spent in
the cabin. Watching it happen, he was suddenly overwhelmed again by
the enormity of his solitude, and it looked as if it were going to
turn into another of those periods when he sat with the gun in his
hand, sobbing and swearing in a violent muddle of self-pity and
helpless fury. He decided to knock off the lamenting and get good and
drunk instead. And he would make it a drunk to top all drunks on this
happy anniversary night.
But he hadn't done that either. He had everything set up, downright
festively--glasses, crushed ice, a formidable little squad of fresh
bottles. But when he looked at the array, he suddenly felt sick in
advance. Then there was a wave of leaden heaviness, of complete
fatigue. He hadn't had time to think of sealing the cabin. He had
simply fallen into the bed then and there, and for all practical
purposes passed out on the spot.
Barney Chard lay wondering about that. It had been, one might say, a
rough year. Through the long days in particular, he had been doing his
level best to obliterate his surroundings behind sustained fogs of
alcoholism. The thought of the hellishly brilliant far-off star around
which this world circled, the awareness that only the roof and walls
of the cabin were between himself and that blazing alien watcher,
seemed entirely unbearable. The nights, after a while, were easier to
take. They had their strangeness too, but the difference wasn't so
great. He grew accustomed to the big green moon, and developed almost
an affection for a smaller one, which was butter-yellow and on an
orbit that made it a comparatively infrequent visitor in the sky over
the valley. By night he began to leave the view window in operation
and finally even the door open for hours at a time. But he had never
done it before when he wanted to go to sleep.
Alcoholism, Barney decided, stirring uneasily on the sweat-soiled,
wrinkled sheet, hadn't been much of a success. His body, or perhaps
some resistant factor in his mind, let him go so far and no farther.
When he exceeded the limit, he became suddenly and violently ill. And
remembering the drunk periods wasn't pleasant. Barney Chard, that
steel-tough lad, breaking up, going to pieces, did not make a pretty
picture. It was when he couldn't keep that picture from his mind that
he most frequently had sat there with the gun, turning it slowly
around in his hand. It had been a rather close thing at times.
Perhaps he simply hated McAllen and the association too much to use
the gun. Drunk or sober, he brooded endlessly over methods of
destroying them. He had to be alive when they came back. Some while
ago there had been a space of several days when he was hallucinating
the event, when McAllen and the association seemed to be present, and
he was arguing with them, threatening them, even pleading with them.
He came out of that period deeply frightened by what he was doing.
Since then he hadn't been drinking as heavily.
But this was the first time he'd gone to sleep without drinking at
all.
* * * * *
He sat up on the edge of the bed, found himself shaking a little again
after that minor effort, but climbed to his feet anyway, and walked
unsteadily over to the door. He stood there looking out. The cloud
layers always faded away during the night, gathered again at dawn. By
now the sky was almost clear. A green glow over the desert to the left
meant the larger moon was just below the horizon. The little yellow
moon rode high in the sky above it. If they came up together, this
would be the very bright part of the night during which the birds and
other animal life in the valley went about their pursuits as if it
were daytime. He could hear bird-chirpings now against the restless
mutter of the little stream which came down the center of the valley,
starting at the lake at the right end and running out into stagnant
and drying pools a short distance after it entered the desert.
He discovered suddenly he had brought the gun along from the bed with
him and was holding it without having been in the least aware of the
fact. Grinning twistedly at the old and pointless precaution, he
shoved the gun into his trousers pocket, brought out matches, a
crumpled pack of cigarettes, and began to smoke. Very considerate of
them to see to it he wouldn't run out of minor conveniences ... like
leaving him liquor enough to drink himself to death on any time he
felt like it during these five years.