Spacemen, Go Home E-Book

Milton Lesser

• Herausgeber: Thunderchild Publishing
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

When the moonship Tycho III lands at the New Mexico Spaceport, Andy Marlow sees Earth for the first time in over a year. Instead of bustling activity, he finds empty pits and derelict spaceships. Humanity's brief era in space has ended, exiled for breaking inter-galactic law.

Soon after, Andy and his best friend take a mysterious job in the Central American jungle, where ex-space captain Reed Ballinger plots a violent return to the galaxy. Torn between loyalty and the realization that Ballinger's plan means war, Andy joins Project Nobel, a daring attempt to convince the Star Brain that Earth deserves another chance in space.

Milton Lesser masterfully brings the future to life in this gripping tale sure to captivate all science fiction fans.

About the Author

Milton Lesser, born in Brooklyn, attended the College of William and Mary. Writing under his real name and later as Stephen Marlowe, he authored over fifty novels, including the Chester Drum detective series.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

SPACEMEN, GO HOME

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

DEDICATION

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

SPACEMEN, GO HOME

MILTON LESSER

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 1961 by Stephen Marlowe (as Milton Lesser); copyright renewed 1989

Published by arrangement with Ann Marlowe

All rights reserved.

Edited by Dan Thompson

A Thunderchild eBook

First Edition: April 1961

First Thunderchild eBook Edition: December 2013

Cover design by Ed Emshwiller.

DEDICATION

This book is for Clara and Sam Lang

Chapter 1

The Last Spaceship

While the moonship Tycho III was settling slowly toward the landing pit swallowing the fiery exhaust of its braking rockets, Andy Marlow had his first look in more than a year at the planet Earth.

What he saw was a spaceport, the New Mexico Spaceport to be exact. Andy felt a lump in his throat. He couldn’t talk, even though he knew his friend Turk stood by the viewport at his side. It should have been different, Andy thought. It should have been so different.

He could almost conjure in his mind an image of what it might have been like—the proud launching gantries gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight, the doors of a dozen firing pits rolled back to reveal the sleek noses of as many space-bound ships, and far below at the edge of the tarmac a band playing the “Interstellar March” in salute to the space cadets returning from their training at Luna Academy.

Instead, Andy saw the rusting skeletons of the big gantries that hadn’t been used in a year, the tightly shut doors of the firing pits, the broken hulks of a few old spacetubs littering the tarmac like the bones of prehistoric monsters, and a crowd of Earth citizens milling about where the band should have been.

Turk punched his shoulder. “Well, come on,” he said, “snap out of it. At least we’re home. Aren’t you glad to see Earth again?”

“Are you?” Andy asked.

Turk scowled. Like Andy Marlow, he was eighteen years old. He had been born Backy Ayoub in Istanbul, Turkey, and the nickname Turk had stuck with him during the first—and only—year at Luna Academy. Turk was short, dark, stocky, and very wide across the shoulders. His heavy body always seemed on the verge of bursting out of the gray jumper that was the Academy uniform. His dark eyes were intense.

“I guess I’m not so glad to see Earth again,” he said finally. “Not like this.”

By contrast, Andy Marlow was tall, fair-haired, and lean. He had pale, gray-blue eyes which, even now at the age of eighteen, had laugh-wrinkles radiating from their corners. But, as Tycho III settled with hardly a bump in the landing pit, Andy wasn’t laughing. He tried to think of the future, but it was a blank; he found himself wondering if he would ever even smile again.

“Anybody waiting for you?” he asked Turk.

“There’s no one who’d care whether I came back to Earth or shipped out to the Milky Way.”

Andy didn’t answer. No one would ship out again, ever. Tycho III was the last Earth ship to return home. By interstellar edict, space was now forever closed to Earthmen.

“Say,” Turk said, trying to break the gloom of their thoughts, “don’t you have a brother who’s a spaceman waiting for you?”

“He was a spaceman,” Andy corrected. There were no spacemen now, just earthbound exiles. “I don’t know where he is.”

“Maybe they can tell you at the Placement Center in White Sands.”

“Maybe.”

Andy continued to stare out the viewport. He could see nothing but the sheer walls of the landing pit now.

“You like the view or something?” Turk said.

“What? Oh, don’t mind me.”

Andy was delaying until the last possible instant the moment when he would step out of Tycho III’s airlock. Probably, he would never set foot inside a spaceship again; no Earthman would. Earth’s brief two hundred years in space were now history, ancient history.

“Attention!” an amplified voice blared. “Attention! All Cadets assemble at the aft airlock for debarkation! All Cadets to the aft airlock!”

Andy heard the sound of magnet-sheathed boots clomping through Tycho III’s narrow companion-ways. Like all the rest, it would be a sound he would try to remember. Or, he wondered, would he be better off forgetting it, forgetting all of it?

He knew he never could do that.

With Turk alongside, he went to the airlock.

Most of the other Cadets already had gathered there. The executive officer, an ensign named MacReady, made a brief speech:

“Men, I don’t have to tell you we’re returning to Earth for good. I don’t have to tell you that though you’ve all been trained as spacemen, that’s something you’ll never be. But all your ex-officers at the Academy, from Superintendent Archer on down, expect you to behave like spacemen. You’ll see a lot of unpleasantness and ugliness; people will blame you for what happened. Though most of them never would have gone to space anyway, there isn’t a man on Earth who wanted the space lanes closed to us. And they’ll hold you responsible.” MacReady’s eyes shifted from one Cadet face to another. “That’s all. Good luck to all of you.”

MacReady’s voice broke. Andy wondered how many times the exec had had to make that same speech to returning Cadets.

With Turk, Andy followed the other Cadets through the airlock and up the pit stairs to ground level. The first thing he saw at the top, at the edge of the tarmac, was a cordon of police. Their faces were set grimly. They stood in close ranks, shoulder to shoulder. They looked as if they expected trouble.

A crowd of civilians pressed them from behind.

Andy saw heads bobbing, faces appearing over the police cordon.

“Go back to the moon!” a man shouted. “We don’t want you here.”

“Traitors!” someone else cried.

“Cadets they call themselves. Troublemakers….”

Someone threw a stone. A Cadet in front of Andy cried out and stumbled. The police formed two lines at the edge of the tarmac, and the Cadets ran for it.

Andy felt too numb to be dismayed by their homecoming.

Chapter 2

The Edict

“Name?” asked the machine.

“Ayoub, Backy.”

“Age?” asked the machine.

“Eighteen…and a half,” Turk replied.

“Year at the Academy?”

“First year,” Turk said, a little truculently.

“You wish to remain in the United States of North America?”

Turk looked at Andy, who shrugged.

“I don’t know yet,” Turk said.

“Any family?”

“No.”

“Place of birth?”

Turk told the machine, “Istanbul, Turkey.”

Andy hardly heard the questions as the reception-mech rattled them off from its voice box. His turn would come next, he knew, and he was impatient to get the formalities over with here at the Placement Center.

He felt, suddenly, better than he had at any time since leaving the moon. He didn’t know why, but somewhere between the spaceport and White Sands City itself the mood of hopelessness which he had carried like a heavy weight on his shoulders had left him. For the first time he felt curiosity about the future. There was a future for him somewhere on Earth, there had to be. And his brother Frank, whose recommendation had sent Andy to Luna Academy and who had returned home a few months ago with the other Space Captains from one of Earth’s far-flung interstellar bases, his brother Frank would help him find it.

Wouldn’t they know, here at the Placement Center, where Frank was?

Andy became aware that the reception-mech was questioning him. He answered the name-rank-and-serial-number questions automatically. Then the machine asked:

“Do you want work or further schooling?”

“Schooling?” Andy echoed the word. “In spacemanship?”

“Not in spacemanship. At one of Earth’s universities.”

“I don’t know, I haven’t given it much thought,” Andy admitted. “I’d like to contact my brother. He was a spaceman. Would you have his records here somewhere?”

“Name?”

“Frank Marlow.”

“Marlow, Frank,” the machine said, and then there was silence. Andy stared at the faceless box of the machine, at the grid from which its mechanical voice issued. He could almost picture the electronic tape inside the box that filed data for the machine.

Finally words came from the voice box: “Cadet Marlow, Captain Strayer will see you personally.”

Andy was surprised. Captain Strayer, he knew, was in charge of the Placement Center. “I just wanted to find out where my brother was,” he said.

“Captain Strayer will see you.”

Turk, who had seemed on the verge of inheriting the bad mood Andy had abandoned, brightened. “Hey now,” he said. “We get to see the big boss himself. How about that?”

The machine said, “Captain Strayer will see Cadet Marlow only.”

“We’re together,” Andy said simply.

Another pause. Then, “Very well. Both of you.”

Moments later the two Cadets were walking down a wide hall where other new arrivals were entering the little cubbies of the placement specialists.

“Do you know who Captain Strayer is?” Turk asked.

“Sure. He opened up the star trail to Fomalhaut. He’s one of the most famous spacemen around.”

“Ex-spacemen,” Turk said glumly, and Andy had the feeling that somehow they had switched attitudes.

They reached the end of the hall.

Turk was staring down at his boots. Andy took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. He could still act like a Cadet, he decided.

“Here it is,” Andy said, and he knocked on the door that bore Captain Lambert Strayer’s name.

“Come in!”

In a bare, functional office, Lambert Strayer sat behind a large uniplast desk. He looked younger than Andy had expected. He was tall and ramrod straight, with a shock of white hair and piercing china-blue eyes. His skin was darkly bronzed by long years of exposure to the radiation that had seeped through the hulls of ships under his command. His smile was warm.

“Did they give you a rough time at the ’port?”

“Not too bad, sir,” Andy said. “Our exec told us to expect it. The police herded us on a bus and…here we are.”

Strayer stood up and shook hands with both of them. “You’ll be Marlow,” he told Andy. It wasn’t a question. “You look like your brother, son. We shipped out together to…let me see…Deneb and Arcturus. Frank was my exec on the Arcturan expedition. I never served with a better man.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Well, sit down, boys. Tell me, what are your plans?”

“We don’t exactly have any, sir,” Turk admitted.

Captain Strayer shook his head philosophically. “It’s usually that way,” he said. “You boys have been trained for space. All your lives you’ve been, well, pointing in one direction…outbound. And then along came the Edict.”

“Isn’t there a chance, any kind of chance at all,” Andy asked, “that Earth will be allowed into space again?”

Captain Strayer shook his head, this time not philosophically but decisively. “Not after the Edict. Not in our lifetime. Not if the Star Brain has its way.” He shrugged. “And of course it will. It always has. Who are we to complain? We’re just men of flesh and blood. We’re not infallible and sacrosanct, like the Star Brain.”

Andy wondered if he detected any sarcasm in Captain Strayer’s tone. He couldn’t be sure.

Turk protested, “Captain Reed Ballinger didn’t take the Star Brain’s decision lying down. He complained.”

Captain Strayer scowled. When the expression of warm welcome on his face changed so suddenly, something of the man’s power was revealed to Andy. Captain Strayer would make you proud if you were his friend, he decided, but he’d make you quake if you were his enemy.

“Don’t tell me you expect me to defend Ballinger?” Strayer said tonelessly.

“Well,” Turk said, shuffling his feet, “the way we heard it on Luna….”

Strayer leaned forward. His intense eyes shifted from Andy’s face to Turk’s and back again. “If it wasn’t for Reed Ballinger, we’d still be in space. Make no mistake about that.”

“But he….” Turk protested.

“As you know, Earth and Capella were contesting for the mineral rights to an uninhabited planet in the Cygni System. The dispute was brought before the Star Brain, and it decided in favor of Capella. Make no mistakes about that, either. The Star Brain’s decision is objective. It has to be.”

“A machine…telling men what to do,” Turk said.

“A machine,” Strayer shot back at him, “developed with all the scientific skills of humanity and the other intelligent races in the Galaxy. A machine developed for one purpose only: to keep the peace in the Galaxy. Reed Ballinger chose to ignore that.”

“And bombed the Star Brain,” Andy said.

“Yes, and bombed the Star Brain.”

“He did it for Earth,” Turk grumbled. “He didn’t think the Star Brain’s decision was fair to Earth.”

Strayer shook his head. “It had to be fair, by objective standards. That was the way it had been built. And Ballinger didn’t do what he did for Earth. Ballinger was working for a group of business enterprises that was going to develop the Cygni planet. If they’d been allowed to, Reed Ballinger would have been a rich man. That was why he bombed the Star Brain.”

“With an Earth ship,” Andy said. Turk didn’t say anything.

“Right. With an Earth ship under his command. Fortunately, the Star Brain was damaged but not destroyed.”

“Fortunately?” Turk asked.

“Of course fortunately. The Star Brain’s one function is to keep the peace. What if Ballinger had decided, after bombing the Brain, to bomb Capella as well? The point is, boys, you can’t take the law into your own hands. Ballinger tried. When the Star Brain was repaired, it passed the Edict. Thanks to Reed Ballinger, we’re outlawed from space. Thanks to Ballinger, Earth is ringed by monitoring satellites which would detect by infrared sensitivity any attempt on our part to send up a spaceship. Thanks to Ballinger, any ship that does make the attempt would be destroyed by the satellites before it cleared Luna’s orbit. You have Reed Ballinger to thank for all of that.”

Strayer settled back in his chair. His face was pale, his expression bleak. Then, quite suddenly, he smiled. Once again, the change was disconcerting. “But that’s history, boys, and you didn’t come here to ask about it. What are your plans?” He turned to Turk first.

“I guess I’d like to work around the intercontinental ramjets,” Turk said. “It’s the nearest thing to spaceships we have left.”

“You and just about every ex-spaceman and ex-Cadet,” Captain Strayer said.

Respectful but still truculent, Turk said, “Begging your pardon, sir, but if the Placement Center can’t get us the jobs we want, what’s it for?”

Strayer didn’t answer immediately. He stood and gazed out the window over the low rooftops of White Sands’ buildings to where the tarmac of the spaceport could be seen. The sun was setting, the big skeletal gantries silhouetted against its ball of flame.

“Reorientation, first of all,” Strayer said, his back turned. “And orientation to a world without space travel. You’ll be interviewed again outside. We have your aptitude records here, naturally. We’ll find work for you somewhere, Cadet Ayoub. But I can’t guarantee the ramjets. Earth is a crowded planet, and over the centuries we’ve squandered our mineral wealth. May I suggest something?”

“Yes, sir,” Turk said.

“I’d like to suggest schooling. Any boy qualified as a Cadet, as you were, would qualify for just about any university on Earth, and the appropriations that used to go for the Academy would pay your tuition.”

“I don’t know whether I want to go back to school.”

“Well, there’s no hurry. We want you to make up your own mind. Why don’t you take some time to think it over? While you do, you’ll have passes good for ramjet travel anywhere on Earth for six months—a chance to familiarize yourself with your native world again. You can pick them up on the way out.” Strayer added, more slowly, “I hope you make the right decision, Cadet. With training, there are plenty of good jobs open to you on Earth, in engineering, in the pure sciences, in oceanographic farming….”

He turned to Andy. “What about you, Cadet Marlow? Made up your mind yet?”

“I think my brother would like me to go back to school. I’d want to see him first and talk it over with him.”

Strayer was looking out the window again. The silence grew. Andy finally had to say, “That’s why the machine sent us in here, wasn’t it? Because you knew where I could find Frank?”

“When did you hear from him last?” Lambert Strayer asked.

“A few months ago. Frank isn’t much of a letter writer.”

Strayer turned back from the window. “Your brother was a top spaceman,” he said. “He qualified as a ramjet pilot on his return to Earth. He flew the New York-Scandinavian run.” Strayer breathed in deeply. “Brace yourself, lad. Two weeks ago there was an accident. His ramjet crashed. Your brother Frank is dead.”

Chapter 3

Secret Spacemen

The Sun had gone down by the time they reached the street again.

Andy had only been vaguely aware of the words of sympathy from Captain Strayer, of the pressure of Turks hand squeezing his arm, of the papers Turk had picked up for both of them in the reception-mech’s room. He couldn’t think. He wasn’t even aware of going down the escalator with Turk or, when they reached the street, of the cool night wind blowing in off the desert. He was walking, placing one foot down in front of the other mechanically, with the same mechanical inevitability of the reception-mech’s questions or, scores of light years away, of the Star Brain’s decisions.

Frank was dead.

His brother was dead.

He didn’t even feel grief yet, just numb disbelief.

Like Turk, Andy was an orphan. They had had that in common from their first days at the Academy—both their fathers had died heroically in space, seeking Earth’s destiny among the distant stars.

And now Frank, too. But Frank hadn’t been killed in space. He had died earthbound, on a ramjet shuttling passengers in two hours from New York across the Atlantic to Scandinavia.

If Reed Ballinger hadn’t acted rashly in the name of Earth, Frank would still be alive.