No Life of Their Own: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 5) (25 page)

Mary Kay, with her talk of a place that would still persist after the universe was gone, quite naturally was crazy. Jay, with his talk of using eternity as a constant factor, was insane as well. But crazy and insane, of course, only by human standards. And these people, these telepaths of his (perhaps, almost certainly, undeniably) had gone far beyond humanity.

A special people, a new breed, their humanity cross pollinated by the subtle intricacies of alien contact, the hope of humankind?

Ambassadors to the universe? Industrial spies? Snoopers into places where man had little right to go? Explorers of the infinite?

Dammit, he thought, it made a man proud to be a member of the human race. Even if this special breed should finally become a race apart, they still stemmed from the same origins as all the other humans.

Might it be, he wondered, that in time some of the specialness would rub off on others such as he?

And, suddenly, without any thinking on it, without due consideration, without mulling it over, without using the slow, intricate, involved process of human thought, he arrived at faith. And was convinced, as well, that his faith was justified.

Time to go for broke, he told himself.

He reached over and punched the button for Evelyn.

“Get me Senator Brown,” he told her. “No, I don’t know where he is. Track him down, wherever he may be. I want to tell the old bastard that we’re finally on the track for FTL.”

A Hero Must Not Die

This story of World War II air combat appeared in the June 1943 issue of
Sky Raiders
. It features members of Great Britain’s Royal Air Force, probably because it was written before the United States entered that war. The story was sent out to
American Eagle
in November 1941, and while I find the name of that magazine somewhat incongruous, I have concluded that the magazine may have tried to feature stories of Americans who joined the English or Canadian forces even before the United States entered the war. The protagonist of Cliff’s story seems to be such an American, although the story does not say so. At any rate,
American Eagle
and two other magazines had previously rejected the story.
Sky Raiders
took it, but they did not, however, send Cliff the twenty-five dollars he was promised until he wrote to complain. Perhaps that was to be expected from a magazine that cost just ten cents per issue.

—dww

Even as he started his dive, Flying Officer Fred Douglas felt no apprehension. Everything, he was sure, was in control. But just to be sure he shoved the Spit’s nose down and rammed the throttle up the rack.

Less than two thousand feet below, his brother, Bob Douglas, was screaming down toward the Dover cliffs, with a Messerschmitt howling on his tail.

But climbing up the sky, straight toward the diving pair, his guns hammering steel into the underside of a second Messerschmitt, was Flight Lieutenant Richard Grant.

Fred Douglas watched his air speed indicator crowd the pin as the plane settled into the downward plunge, but even then he knew there’d be no need of hm. All Grant had to do was to kick right rudder and blast the diving Jerry with his guns.

The three of them worked like a team, the two brothers and the flight lieutenant. One of them occasionally got into a jam, as Bob had now, but whenever that happened one of the others was always there with flaming guns.

Bob had saved Grant’s life twice, once at Dunkerque when a Jerry got on his tail, again at Calais when three M.E.’s ganged him. Today Grant would get Bob out of a jam. And probably tomorrow Grant himself would be in a tight spot, with one of the others hurtling in to help him.

Only once had any of them failed the other. That had been the time Grant was shot down in France. But it had worked out all right, after all, for a week later a destroyer picked the flight leader up, out in the channel, trying to row a stolen boat to England.

The Merlin was a shriek of whistling sound and Fred Douglas saw he was gaining on the Messerschmitt, but knew he’d be too late to get in on the kill. It was just that he wanted to be sure … wanted to be there if anything went wrong, if he might be needed.

Within split seconds Grant would kick the rudder and the diving Nazi would slam head-on into a spate of steel.

Bob’s ship flashed past Grant’s plane and now the way was clear for the flight lieutenant.

“Take him, Grant!” Fred shrieked into the flap mike, but the flight leader’s ship did not deviate from course. The Brownings spat, but not at the diving Nazi. They still were trained on the second Messerschmitt which even then was beginning to wobble.

Cold terror gripped Fred Douglas’ throat as he realized Grant was not going to intervene, that he was more intent upon making sure of that second M.E. than he was of aiding Bob.

And in that second of terror, the diving Jerry was past the flight leader’s ship and Fred Douglas knew the job was up to him, knew there was little chance of his getting there in time.

His hand leaped to the emergency boost and jerked out the knob. Responding, the Merlin’s howl rose to a piercing scream and the bottom seemed to drop out of the sky as the British fighter literally hurled itself upon the Messerschmitt.

Finger hovering over the electric firing button, Douglas bent to the ring sight, had the Nazi centered in it … but the range was still too long, although the Spitfire was eating up the sky.

The blue smoke of burning cordite whipped back from the Messerschmitt and bits of tattered metal leaped from Bob’s Spitfire. More metal flew at another burst and then a wing slowly crumpled.

Fingers of steel were gripping Douglas’ throat and through his mind spun a string of pictures from the past. Pictures of him and Bob. Fishing on the old creek … their first long pants … their first party … the old car they had bought and patched up so it would run … the Christmases at home …

Bob’s Spitfire was beginning to slideslip and Fred shrieked at it.

“Jump, Bob! Get out of there!”

But no figure hurtled from the crippled ship. Blue smoke still streamed from the Jerry’s guns. The Merlin sang its song of hate … and the Brownings waited.

Then Douglas squeezed the firing button, but even as he did he saw a gout of flame leap out of the sky, saw his brother’s Spitfire streaking for the channel, a blazing funeral pyre.

For a single instant his brain went red with grief and anger and black with terrible hate. His finger tightened on the firing button, almost as if he could squeeze more rounds per second out of the yammering guns.

Bits of metal were flying once again, but this time German metal. Bullets from the eight Brownings literally were chewing the Messerschmitt to bits … slicing off the metal skin, slamming into the fuselage, smashing into the cockpit, ripping at the engine.

And still Douglas held the button on, curses in his throat, red vengeance flaring in his brain.

One of the Jerry’s wings was going now, folding up, hammered apart by the savagery of the Brownings. That bouncing thing in the cockpit was the Nazi pilot, rocked by the impact of the bullets spewing from the Spitfire’s guns.

Suddenly the Messerschmitt was tumbling crazily, black smoke pouring from the cowling. The Brownings ran empty. Far below a second thinning trail of smoke drifted in the air.

Douglas eased back on the stick hauling the Spitfire out of its dive. Suddenly, now that the action was over, his body felt limp and beaten and his mind was sick … sick with the realization that Bob was gone. Dead in a flaming ship over the English channel. Dead because Flight Lieutenant Richard Grant had failed his unwritten pact. All he had to do was kick the rudder and slam home the firing button. Had he done that, Bob would have gone on living.

There could be no question that Grant had seen Bob and the pursuing Nazi. If there only could be … but there wasn’t. The hard truth remained that Grant had failed his trust, had failed to aid the man who twice had saved his life.

Douglas edged the Spitfire upward. There were other Jerries up there. Jerries to be killed. Jerries to help wipe clean the score. But even as he put the ship into a climb he remembered the ammo-belts were empty.

He leveled off, swinging the ship around for home. And just then a storm of steel struck as a lurking Messerschmitt pounced upon him. In one fractional bit of time the instruments were gone as if some giant hand had smashed them. Oil sprayed into the cockpit, covering his goggles, blinding him. The Merlin stuttered and coughed and the ship slid-slipped dangerously.

Above him the Messerschmitt howled in mockery and then a silence swept upon him as the Merlin choked and died.

Instinctively, Douglas tried to roll the ship over on its back. That was the easiest way, the only practical way, to bail out of a fighter. But there was no response to the controls.

Smoke rolled from the cowling and from outside came the high, thin whistle of the atmosphere against the plunging ship.

Desperately, Douglas fought the controls. They were hopelessly jammed. For a moment panic assailed him, a panic born of the whistling shriek that told him he was dashing to his death.

Dense smoke streamed over the hatch, cutting off his vision. Some of it curled back through the broken instrument board and stung his eyes and nose. He heard the crunch of glass as his foot crushed the goggles where he had brushed them on the floor.

Flame surged back from the dead engine and bit into his flesh. The Spitfire began to spin. Furiously Douglas fought back the hatch, clawed savagely to get clear of the plane. Streamers of flame whipped at him and the lurching spin hurled him back into the pit.

Fire lashed back fiercely and the smoke turned the sunlight into night. Athrob with pain, blinded, with all sense of time and direction lost, Douglas scrambled desperately, trying to get through the hatch. The plane lurched suddenly and he was free … free and falling. Seared fingers found the parachute ring and jerked. He wondered dimly if the fire might not have damaged the straps, but a moment later the silk caught hold and he was dangling, floating down.

For the first time, he realized he couldn’t see. His eyes seemed to be puffed shut. His hands and face were flaming balls of fire and when he tried to talk, he couldn’t, for his lips were wrong and his throat was too dry to work.

Three months later the hospital released him as cured and perhaps the hospital knew what it was about. His hands no longer were clenched talons, held in closed-fist positions by seared muscle and flesh. His face was whole again except for a few scars that in time would disappear.

But hands and face weren’t all there was to it, Douglas thought, brooding in a corner of the mess over a double brandy. Three were other things the doctors couldn’t know about. For instance, the things that happened to a man’s brain when he has seen his brother shot down in flames, when he himself is trapped in a blazing plane.

He hadn’t slowed up. He was still bringing down the Jerries. He was still, he knew, as good a pilot as ever. But the doubt that he was as good a fighter as ever was creeping in upon him. The old dash and daring was gone. He no longer took those chances he had taken in the old days. Now he found himself fighting a grim and cautious fight, efficient and calculating … but cautious. Someday that caution would be the end of him. Someday when he needed to take a chance, he wouldn’t take it …

They talked about him a little, he suspected, when he wasn’t about when he was out of hearing.

The door to the briefing room swung open and Flight Lieutenant Grant came in.

“Hi, Grant,” yelled one of them, “come over and have one.”

“Who was that cutie you had last night?” yelled another.

“You chaps are off the beam,” said Grant. “I was in quarters last night.”

“You mean you weren’t down to London?”

“That,” Grant said, “is exactly what I mean.”

Douglas grimaced. Grant was popular. Fifty-three Jerries to his credit … probably the actual toll was even greater, for that was only the official score. The younger men, especially, looked up to him. He was an old-timer, an ace, one of those deadly fighting men who lived a charmed life.

Douglas wiped the scene at the bar from his mind, stared into the brandy glass, his memory leaping back to the day above the channel, the day Bob’s machine streaked for the cliffs of Dover. Again he felt his own ship diving, felt the terror rising in him, was reaching for the emergency boost …

Boots tramped across the floor and Douglas looked up. Grant, glass in hand, stood before him.

“I want to talk to you, Douglas,” he said.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Douglas replied, quietly. “I have to talk to you up in the air. That’s quite enough.”

Grant flushed but held his ground. “We once were friends.”

“We aren’t any more,” Douglas stated flatly.

“You’re eating out your heart,” Grant told him. “You have to break it up.”

“Is that as fight leader?” asked Douglas. “Afraid I’m endangering someone else? Hinting my flying’s not so good?”

“Lord, no,” said Grant. “It’s merely as a friend. I hate to watch what’s happening to you.”

“In that case,” Douglas declared, “you’re concerning yourself with something that’s none of your damn business.”

Grant turned, but Douglas halted him.

“Did I hear you say you were in quarters last night?”

“Why, yes,” said Grant, “perhaps you did.”

Douglas said nothing.

“Why do you ask?”

“Impulse,” Douglas explained. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have. You see, I knew you weren’t.”

“Just why do you hate me?” Grant demanded. “I know the general reasons, of course, although I don’t agree with them. But what is the basic reason?”

“You worked too hard at your career,” said Douglas. “You thought too much about piling up the score. You were so busy getting that … twenty-eight, wasn’t it? … Jerry, that you couldn’t help a friend.”

“I explained about that,” protested Grant.

“You forget I saw it,” Douglas snapped.

“Look, Douglas, I like you … in spite of all you say, the way you act. I asked that you be reassigned to the flight.”

“Anytime you care to ask that I be reassigned again,” said Douglas, “it’ll be agreeable.”

The fields of Holland were green and gold, with little canal ribbons running through them. The sweep was almost over and the R.A.F. was flying home again, leaving behind a trail of blasted ruin.

Douglas settled comfortably down to the job of piloting the Hurricane across the channel and back to base. There had been little excitement. With the Jerries busy in Russia, there was seldom much excitement these days.

Grant flew ahead and to his right was Shorty Cave. Above and behind roared the other flights that had made the sweep.

Douglas’ earphones barked a single word. “Tallyhoo!” Grant’s voice.

Douglas started, the shout jerking him to swift attention.

Diving at them, straight out of the sun, were the roaring shapes of M.E. 110’s. How many there were, Douglas could not be sure, for there was no time to count. The Jerries had been waiting for them, lurking high up in the blue. Now they were shrieking down for a hit and run attack.

Douglas hauled back the stick, threw his ship into a climb. A black shape flickered across his line of vision and he pressed the firing button, but the Nazi was going too fast and the tracer missed. It had, at the best, been a snap shot.

Guns were hammering now as the Nazi planes slashed into the British formation. Smoke bloomed out in the sky and a ship was screaming down.