Short Fiction - Fritz Leiber (desktop ebook reader .TXT) 📗

two hours. Well, I had suit-oxy and refrigeration for longer than that.

Of course if Jeff decided not to cut the beam on schedule, maybe with the idea of eloping with Joseph to the next solar system⁠—well, I’d discover then whether suit-oxy running out would stimulate me to try the climb again alongside the beam.

(Or I could wait until he got her up near the speed of light, when by the General Theory of Relativity the line ought to be shortened enough so that I could hop aboard if I were sudden enough about it⁠ ⁠… No, Joe Hansen, you quit that, I told myself, you don’t want to die with the gears in your head all stripped.)

Thinking about the beam got me wondering exactly how close I was to it. I unshipped my suit-antenna and pulled it out to full length⁠—about eight feet⁠—and fished around with it in the direction of the beam.

Nothing seemed to happen to it. It didn’t glow or anything; but I suddenly got a little electric shock, and when I drew it back I could see three inches of the tip were gone and the next couple inches were pitted. So much for curiosity.

Next I reattached the antenna to my suit⁠—which turned out to be a lot more troublesome job than unshipping it⁠—and tongued on the radio with the idea of listening in on Jeff.

Right away I heard him say, “Wake up, Joseph! I’m going to tell you your faults again. I got a new way of cataloguing them⁠—chronologically. Begin with childhood. You hitched sled-rides on airplanes. That was bad, Joseph, that was against the law. If the man had caught you doing it, if he’d seen you whizzing along there back of him, he’d have had every right to shoot you down in cold blood. Life is hard, Joseph, life is merciless⁠ ⁠…”

Right then I felt a tickle in my throat.

I tried quick to shut off the radio, but it is remarkably difficult to tongue anything when you have a cough coming. It came out finally in a series of squeaky glubs.

“Snap to, Joseph, and listen hard,” I heard Jeff say. “It’s started again. Animal noises this time. You know if they make spacesuits for black panthers, Joseph?”

I tongued off the radio quick, before the followup cough came.

I didn’t have anything left to do now but think. So I thought about Jeff⁠—how there seemed to be one Jeff who hated my guts and another Jeff who idolized me and another Jeff sneaking around in a jungle of sabertooth tigers and⁠ ⁠… heck, there was probably a good twenty Jeffs sitting around inside his skull, some in light, some in darkness, but all of them watching each other and arguing together all the time. It was an odd way to think of a personality⁠—a sort of perpetual Kaffeeklatsch⁠—but it had its points. Maybe some of the little guys weren’t Jeffs at all, but his father and mother and a caveman ancestor or two and maybe some great-great-grandchild butting in now and then from the future⁠ ⁠…

Well, I saw that speculation was getting out of hand so, taking a tip from Jeff, I began to count my own sins.

It took quite a while. Some of them were pretty interesting reading, almost enough to take my mind off my predicament, but I tired of it finally.

Then I began to count the stars.

It was really the longest two hours plus I ever spent, except maybe the time my first big girl disappeared. But I don’t know. The experiences are hard to compare.

I was about halfway through the stars when I went weightless. For an awful instant I thought the line had parted at last, but then I looked toward the ship and saw the bright little moon was gone.

Right away I gave a couple of tugs on the line and began to close slowly with the tail. No trouble at all⁠—actually my only difficulty was resisting the temptation to build up more momentum, which would have resulted in a crash landing.

I softed-in on Trompled Love okay, except there was a big spark. The beam must have charged me good. Then I worked my way to the true hull. After that there were handholds.

Finally I got to a porthole in the living quarters, and I looked in, and there was Jeff jawing away at my empty seat. I put my helmet against the hull and very faintly I heard him say, “Joseph, I’m still worried about the enemy. I keep thinking I hear him or it. I’m going to make us some coffee, so we’ll stay real alert. You break out the guns.”

I don’t suppose anyone ever moved quite so quietly and so quickly in a spacesuit as I did then. I got in the airlock, I got her up to pressure, I got unsuited⁠—and all in less than five minutes, I’m sure. Maybe less than four.

I swam to the cabin. It was empty. I slid into my seat just as Jeff floated in with the coffee.

He went real pale when he spotted me. I saw there might be some trouble this time with the Joseph-Joe transition. But I knew the only way to play it was real cool. I nested there in my seat as if I hadn’t a worry or urge in the world⁠—though my nerves and throat were just screaming for a squirt of that coffee.

“Joe!” he squeaked at last. “Migod, you gave me an awful scare. I thought you’d done a bunk, I thought, you’d spaced yourself, I kept picturing you outside the ship.”

“Why no, Jeff,” I answered quietly. “One way or another, I’ve been in this seat ever since takeoff.”

His brow wrinkled as he thought about that.

I looked at the board and noticed that our terminal trip-velocity read fifteen miles a second. My, my.

Finally Jeff said, “That’s right, you have.” And then, just a shade unhappily, “I might have known. You always tell the truth, Joe⁠—you’re perfect.”

No Great Magic I