He began as a hero. Eons later and a
universe away, he became instead a god!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1963.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
_I've come a long, long way to die alone_, David Greaves thought as
_Defiance_ tumbled through the misty shroud of Venus, hopelessly torn
apart by the explosion in her engines. On the console in front of
him, the altimeter was one of the last few meaningful instruments,
and it told him there were only a few tortured miles remaining before
the ship he had brought this far--had spent his fortune in building
when no government would yet consider risking a manned rocket on his
flight--would smash down to its doom on a planet no man had ever walked.
Battered and tossed in his seat by the ship's crazy tumbling, Greaves
tensed the oak-hard muscles of his arms and thrust himself up to his
feet. He wasn't dead yet. He wasn't dead and, if the slim chance paid
off, he'd still be present to laugh in the government's face when the
first, safe, cautious official venture finally made its way across the
emptiness between Earth and the Sun's second planet.
Dragging himself from handhold to handhold, his tendons cracking with
the strain, he levered himself toward the Crash Capsule, forced open
its hatch and pulled himself through, while the winds of Venus tore at
the shattered hull and the scream of _Defiance's_ passage through the
murky sky rose to a savage howl.
Outside the cloud-lashed hull there were no stars. Below, no one knew
what sort of jungle, or sea, or desert of whipping poison sand might
lie in wait. Greaves had not cared when he set out, and did not care
now. If men had always waited to be sure, if all the adventurers of
mankind had waited until the sign-posts had gone up, the cave bears
would still be the dominant form of life on Earth, and races undreamed
of might never know such a thing as man to contest their sway over the
Universe.
_I'll live to see my share of that_, Greaves thought as he pulled
the capsule's hatch shut and dropped into the special padding that,
in theory, would cushion much of the impact. _Or else I'll know
I tried._ He tripped the lever that would flood the capsule with
Doctor Eckstrom's special anesthetic--the experimental compound that
might--just barely, might--offer a chance.
* * * * *
As the hiss of the yellow-tinged, acrid gas became louder and louder
in his ears, David Greaves thought again of the almost obsessive
lengths to which he had gone in making sure that there would be such
a thing as the capsule. The entire project--the decision to build
the ship, to sacrifice for it the personal fortune he had built up
in his meteoric rise from obscurity to being one of the world's most
dynamic and certainly youngest industrialists--had been marked by his
fanatical persistence and dedication. But that dream had come first,
and the fortune second--the sole purpose of his career, from its very
beginnings when he was only another engineer test pilot, had simply
been to accumulate the means so _Defiance_ could be built. But the
ship had been three-quarters complete when he conceived the idea for
the capsule. He could not even now remember exactly when or how he had
decided that he must have some device aboard that would protect him
from a crash and--here was the vital thing he insisted upon--keep him
alive, no matter how injured, no matter how long might be necessary,
until rescuers could reach him.
For him to even think in terms of rescuers--of depending on others--was
totally uncharacteristic. For him to divert a major portion of his
dwindling resources from work on the ship itself, and push toward
the elaborate design of the capsule, was, in some lights, again
uncharacteristically foolish. But he had done it, and now....
... Now the anesthetic created by the man some said was a medical
genius and some said was a quack had flooded over him.
He could feel the first effect--the calm, the drowsy peace. By the time
the _Defiance_ smashed into the ground--very soon now--his metabolism
would have slowed to a carefully metered rate. It would take hours for
his heart to beat once. To him it would seem as if each day was only a
few minutes. The jagged nerve-flashes of pain would be only a faraway
slow tingle; the blink of an eye would encompass hours of actual time,
and he would lie here, safe, asleep, until the hatch was opened and he
was taken out into the air, where slowly the effects would wear off.
Meanwhile, there was more than enough gas compressed into the capsule's
tanks to keep him perfectly relaxed for a hundred years. The valve--a
simple device he had sketched out in five minutes, as if the design had
been part of his mind for years--would continue to meter out the supply
at the optimum rate and pressure.
It was only now--perhaps a hundred feet from impact, perhaps only a
hundred hairs-breadths--that he suddenly saw the flaw in the design.
He struggled to reach the valve, in a useless reflex, for there would
have been nothing he could have done, no matter how much time remained.
Then he fell back, a twisted grin on his face. _I've come a long,
long way to trap myself_, he laughed in his drowsing mind, as the
ship crashed, and the capsule, torn from _Defiance's_ side, rebounded
like a cannon shell from Heaven upon the outraged soil of Venus, and
the overhead clouds sprang into flamed reflection from the blast of
_Defiance's_ end.
In the capsule, the valve controlling the flow from the illogically
copious supply of anesthetic snapped off cleanly. David Greaves' lungs
jolted to the impact as a century's dosage of the high-pressure gas
delivered its one giant hammerblow of sleep.... Of sleep like death....
Of sleep so slow, so majestic, that only the eternally ageless body
might testify to life. Of sleep without end, without motion, until....