No Life of Their Own: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 5) (30 page)

He closed his eyes and tried to fight off the certain knowledge of his fate. He might throw away the gun and that would give him some forward motion. He might strip the belt of all equipment and fling it away as well, but he was still too far away. There was nothing else but to face inevitable death.

Life and death in space! He laughed, a short, hard laugh. There was life in space despite the scoffing of the skeptics. Life as expressed in the Space Beasts and in the invisible thing back in the ship. No one knew how many other forms of life. Life clinging close to the Asteroid Belt, making pilgrimages to a flame that flared in space, lairing in old derelicts.

Life that might be formed of silica, but probably wasn’t , for that wouldn’t explain the sudden flaring of their tissues before the hot breath of the blasters. Probably some weird chemistry of space as yet undiscovered and undreamed of by Earthly scientists.

Myths of space. Stories told by crazy asteroid miners home from lonely trips. But myths based on fact. A flame that burned blue atop a pyramid. A flame that gave new life and mutated the form of living things. Perhaps the silent sentinels of all life within the solar system. Perhaps the great, eternal life force that maintained all life … perhaps so long as that flame burned there would be life. But when it was black and dead life would disappear. Radiations lancing out to all parts of the solar system, carrying the attribute, the gift of life.

Johnny laughed again. Maybe he’d go crazy out here, make dying easier. Out here it was easier to understand, to take the evidence of one’s eyes on faith alone, easier to believe. And now there’d be another myth. The Myth of Music. The instrument down there would play on and on … perhaps as long as the blue light shimmered. A Lorelei of space, as asteroid siren!

Music that charmed monsters. He sobered at the thought. There might be … there must be some connection between the curious instrument and the flame, some connection, too, with the grotesque Beasts. Establish the inter-relationship of the three, the Music Box, the Flame, the Beasts and one would have a story. But a story that he, Johnny Lodge, would never know. For Johnny Lodge was going to die in space. A story, perhaps, that no one would ever know.

A red light twinkled on the surface of the asteroid, just above the valley of the flame. Again the red light flashed, a long rippling flash that moved upward, away from the surface. He watched it fascinated, wondering. Up and up it moved, a thin red pencil of flame driving outward from the rock.

The explanation hit him like a blow. Someone was using a blaster for a rocket, was coming out in space to look for him!

George! Good old George!

Hysterically he shouted the name. “George! Hey, George!”

But that was foolish. George would never hear him. It was a crazy thing to do … a foolhardy thing to do. Space was dark and a man was small. George would never find him … never.

But the light was driving straight toward him. George knew where he was … was coming out to get him. Then, sheepishly, Johnny remembered. The helmet light! Of course, that was it.

Limp with the realization that he was saved, Johnny waited.

The pencil of red moved swiftly, blinked out and failed to go on for long minutes, then resumed again, much nearer. The charge had burned out and George had inserted another one.

A space suit glowed in the flare of the advancing blaster flame. The flame shifted slightly and the shit drove toward him. Then the flame blinked out and the bloated suit was bearing down upon him. Johnny waited with outspread arms. His clutching fingers seized the belt of the oncoming suit and hung on. He dragged it close against him. He heard the rasp of steel fingers clutching at his own suit.

“George,” said Johnny, “you were a damn fool. But thanks, anyhow.”

Then the visors of the two suits came together and Johnny saw, not the face of George, but the face of Karen Franklin!

“You!” said Johnny.

“I had to come,” said Karen. “George wanted to, but I made him stay. If I hadn’t reached you … if something had happened, he would have come out and got you anyhow. But I had to make the first try.”

“But why did you bother about me?” Johnny demanded fiercely. “I bungled everything. I found a ship and blew it up. I lost the emergency boat. I threw away the only chance we had.”

“Stop,” yelled Karen. “Johnny Lodge, you stop talking that way. We aren’t licked yet. I brought extra charges. We can use the guns to travel and there are lots of other derelicts.”

They stared through the helmet plates straight into each other’s face.

“Karen,” said Johnny soberly, “you’re all right!”

“Is that all?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “That isn’t all. I love you.”

Johnny straightened from examination of the controls. The ship would run. Probably take a lot of coaxing and tinkering along the way but they would make it if a big meteor didn’t come along. He looked out of the vision plate and shook his fist at space. And it seemed to him that Space stirred and chuckled at the challenge.

“Johnny,” came Karen’s voice, “look what I found!”

Johnny clumped out of the pilot cabin into the living quarters. Probably an old book or an antique piece of furniture. She already had found a bunch of old magazines, published 500 years before, and a camera with a roll of exposed film that might still be good.

But it wasn’t a book or a piece of furniture. Karen was standing at the top of the steps that ran down into the cargo space. Johnny hurried to her side. The hold was filled with glinting ore. Ore that glittered and sparkled and shimmered in the light of their helmet lamps. Unfamiliar ore. Ore that Johnny didn’t recognize and he had seen a lot of ore in years of wandering through space.

He went down the stairs and picked up a lump, studying it closely.

“Gold?” asked Karen. “Silver?”

The breath sobbed in Johnny’s throat.

“Neither one,” he said. “It’s Metal Seven!”

“Metal Seven!” she gasped, with a tremor in her voice. “Enough for dozens of ships!”

The log book would tell where the discovery had been made. Perhaps on some lonely asteroid … perhaps on one of Jupiter’s moons … perhaps clear out on the system’s rim.

Jim Franklin hadn’t been the first man to discover Metal Seven. Intrepid space-men, 500 years ago, had mined a curious new ore and were bringing it home when disaster struck. And now, through the discovery of this ship, Jim Franklin’s daughter would give to the world again the long-lost secret of that mine.

“We’ll build another ship,” said Karen. “We’ll go out again and find it.”

Johnny tossed the chunk of ore away and scrambled to his feet.

“You better go to the lock,” he said, “and signal to George to come on out. He’ll be watching.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

Johnny grinned. “Get this old tub ready to move. Soon as George gets here we blast off. We’re heading for Earth with the richest cargo any ship ever hauled through space.”

Contraption

“Contraption” first appeared in
Star Science Fiction Stories No. 1
, an original anthology created by Frederik Pohl for Ballantine Books, which published the volume in February 1953. This story illustrates the fact that a Simak tale can have the feel of having been set in “Simak Country” without the author actually using any place names to confirm it. Indeed, “Contraption” could have taken place just down the road from “A Death in the House.”

—dww

He found the contraption in a blackberry patch when he was hunting cows. Darkness was sifting down through the tall stand of poplar trees and he couldn’t make it out too well and he couldn’t spend much time to look at it because Uncle Eb had been plenty sore about his missing the two heifers and if it took too long to find them Uncle Eb more than likely would take the strap to him again and he’d had about all he could stand for one day. Already he’d had to go without his supper because he’d forgotten to go down to the spring for a bucket of cold water. And Aunt Em had been after him all day because he was so no-good at weeding the garden.

“I never saw such a trifling young’un in all my life,” she’d shrill at him and then she’d go on to say that she’d think he’d have some gratitude for the way she and Uncle Eb had taken him in and saved him from the orphanage, but no, he never felt no gratitude at all, but caused all the trouble that he could and was lazy to boot and she declared to goodness she didn’t know what would become of him.

He found the two heifers down in the corner of the pasture by the grove of walnut trees and drove them home, plodding along behind them, thinking once again about running away, but knowing that he wouldn’t, because he had no place to go. Although, he told himself, most any place would be better than staying here with Aunt Em and Uncle Eb, who really were not his uncle and aunt at all, but just a couple of people who had took him in.

Uncle Eb was just finishing milking when he came into the barn, driving the two heifers before him, and Uncle Eb still was plenty sore about the way he’d missed them when he’d brought in the other cows.

“Here,” said Uncle Eb, “you’ve fixed it so I had to milk my share and yours, too, and all because you didn’t count the cows, the way I always tell you to so you’ll be sure you got them all. Just to teach you, you can finish up by milking them there heifers.”

So Johnny got his three-legged milk stool and a pail and he milked the heifers and heifers are hard things to milk, and skittish, too, and the red one kicked and knocked Johnny into the gutter, spilling the milk he had in the pail.

Uncle Eb, seeing this, took the strap down from behind the door and let Johnny have a few to teach him to be more careful and that milk represented money and then made him finish with his milking.

They went up to the house after that, Uncle Eb grumbling all the way about kids being more trouble than they’re worth, and Aunt Em met them at the door to tell Johnny to be sure he washed his feet good before he went to bed because she didn’t want him getting her nice clean sheets all dirty.

“Aunt Em,” he said, “I’m awful hungry.”

“Not a bite,” she said, grim-lipped in the lamplight of the kitchen. “Maybe if you get a little hungry you won’t go forgetting all the time.”

“Just a slice of bread,” said Johnny. “Without no butter or nothing. Just a slice of bread.”

“Young man,” said Uncle Eb, “you heard your aunt. Get them feet washed and up to bed.”

“And see you wash them good,” said Aunt Em.

So he washed his feet and went to bed and lying there, he remembered what he had seen in the blackberry patch and remembered, too, that he hadn’t said a word about it because he hadn’t had a chance to, what with Uncle Eb and Aunt Em taking on at him all the blessed time.

And he decided right then and there he wouldn’t tell them what he’d found, for if he did they’d take it away from him the way they always did everything he had. And if they didn’t take it away from him, they’d spoil it so there’d be no fun or satisfaction in it.

The only thing he had that was really his was the old pocket knife with the point broken off the little blade. There was nothing in the world he’d rather have than another knife to replace the one he had, but he knew better than to ask for one. Once he had, and Uncle Eb and Aunt Em had carried on for days, saying what an ungrateful, grasping thing he was and here they’d gone and taken him in off the street and he still wasn’t satisfied, but wanted them to spend good money from a pocket knife. Johnny worried a good deal about them saying he’d been taken in off the street, because so far as he knew he’d never been on any street.

Lying there, in his bed, looking out the window at the stars, he got to wondering what it was he’d seen in the blackberry patch and he couldn’t remember it very well because he hadn’t seen it too well and there’d been no time to stop and look. But there were some funny things about it and the more he thought about it, the more he wanted to have a good look at it.

Tomorrow, he thought, I’ll have a good look at it. Soon as I get a chance, tomorrow. Then he realized there’d be no chance tomorrow, for Aunt Em would have him out, right after morning chores, to weed the garden and she’d keep an eye on him and there’d be no chance to slip away.

He lay in bed and thought about it some more and it became as clear as day that if he wanted a look at it he’d have to go tonight.

He could tell, by their snoring, that Uncle Eb and Aunt Em were asleep, so he got out of bed and slipped into his shirt and britches and sneaked down the stairs, being careful to miss the squeaky boards. In the kitchen he climbed up on a chair to reach the box of matches atop the warming oven of the old wood-burning stove. He took a fistful of matches, then reconsidered and put back all but half a dozen because he was afraid Aunt Em would notice if he took too many.

Outside the grass was wet and cold with dew and he rolled up his britches so the cuffs wouldn’t get all soaked, and set off across the pasture.

Going through the woods there were some spooky places, but he wasn’t scared too badly, although no one could go through the woods at night without being scared a little.

Finally he got to the blackberry patch and stood there wondering how he could get through the patch in the dark without ripping his clothes and getting his bare feet full of thorns. And, standing there, he wondered if what he’d seen was still there and all at once he knew it was, for he felt a friendliness come from it, as if it might be telling him that it still was there and not to be afraid.

He was just a little unnerved, for he was not used to friendliness. The only friend he had was Benny Smith, who was about his age, and he only saw Benny during school and then not all the time, for Benny was sick a lot and had to stay home for days on end. And since Benny lived way over on the other side of the school district, he never saw him during vacation time at all.

By now his eyes were getting a little used to the darkness of the blackberry path and he thought that he could see the darker outline of the thing that lay in there and he tried to understand how it could
feel
friendly, for he was pretty sure that it was just a thing, like a wagon or a silo-filler, and nothing alive at all. If he’d thought that it was alive, he’d been really scared.

The thing kept right on feeling friendly toward him.

So he put out his hands and tried to push the bushes apart so he could squeeze in and see what it was. If he could get close to it, he thought, he could strike the matches in his pocket and get a better look at it.

“Stop,” said the friendliness and at the word he stopped, although he wasn’t sure at all that he had heard the word.

“Don’t look too closely at us,” said the friendliness, and Johnny was just a little flustered at that, for he hadn’t been looking at anything at all—not too closely, that is.

“All right,” he said. “I won’t look at you.” And he wondered if it was some sort of a game, like hide-and-seek that he played at school.

“After we get to be good friends,” said the thing to Johnny, “we can look at one another and it won’t matter then, for we’ll know what one another is like inside and not pay attention to how we look outside.”

And Johnny, standing there, thought how they must look awful, not to want him to see them, and the thing said to him, “We would look awful to you. You look awful to us.”

“Maybe, then,” said Johnny, “it’s a good thing I can’t see in the dark.”

“You can’t see in the dark?” it asked and Johnny said he couldn’t and there was silence for a while, although Johnny could hear it puzzling over how come he couldn’t see when it was dark.

Then it asked if he could do something else and he couldn’t even understand what it tried to say and finally it seemed to figure out that he couldn’t do whatever it had asked about.

“You are afraid,” said the thing. “There is no need to fear us.”

And Johnny explained that he wasn’t afraid of them, whatever they might be, because they were friendly, but that he was afraid of what might happen if Uncle Eb and Aunt Em should find he had sneaked out. So they asked him a lot about Uncle Eb and Aunt Em and he tried to explain, but they didn’t seem to understand, but seemed to think he was talking about government. He tried to explain how it really was, but he was pretty sure they didn’t understand at all.

Finally, being polite about it so he wouldn’t hurt their feelings, he said he had to leave and since he’d stayed much longer than he’d planned, he ran all the way home.

He got into the house and up to bed all right and everything was fine, but the next morning Aunt Em found the matches in his pocket and gave him a lecture about the danger of burning down the barn. To reinforce the lecture, she used a switch on his legs and try as hard as he could to be a man about it, she laid it on so hard that he jumped up and down and screamed.

He worked through the day weeding the garden and just before dark went to get the cows.

He didn’t have to go out of his way to go past the blackberry patch, for the cows were in that direction, but he knew well enough that if they hadn’t been, he’d gone out of his way, for he’d been remembering all day the friendliness he’d found there.

It was still daylight this time, just shading into night, and he could see that the thing, whatever it might be, was not alive, but simply a hunk of metal, like two sauce dishes stuck together, with a rim running around its middle just like there’d be a rim if you stuck two dishes together. It looked like old metal that had been laying around for a long time and you could see where it was pitted like a piece of machinery will get when it stands out in the weather.

It had crushed a path for quite a ways through the blackberry thicket and had plowed up the ground for twenty feet or so, and, sighting back along the way it had come, Johnny could see where it had hit and smashed the top of a tall poplar.

It spoke to him, without words, the way it had the night before, with friendliness and fellowship, although Johnny wouldn’t know that last word, never having run across it in his school books.

It said, “You may look at us a little now. Look at us quick and then away. Don’t look at us steadily. Just a quick look and then away. That way you get used to us. A little at a time.”

“Where are you?” Johnny asked.

“Right here,” they said.

“Inside of there?” asked Johnny.

“Inside of here,” they said.

“I can’t see you, then,” said Johnny. “I can’t see through metal.”

“He can’t see through metal,” said one of them.

“He can’t see when the star is gone,” said the other.

“He can’t see us, then,” they said, the both of them.

“You might come out,” said Johnny.

“We can’t come out,” they said. “We’d die if we came out.”

“I can’t ever see you, then.”

“You can’t ever see us, Johnny.”

And he stood there, feeling terribly lonely because he could never see these friends of his.

“We don’t understand who you are,” they said. “Tell us who you are.”

And because they were so kind and friendly, he told them who he was and how he was an orphan and had been taken in by his Uncle Eb and Aunt Em, who really weren’t his aunt and uncle. He didn’t tell them how Uncle Eb and Aunt Em treated him, whipping him and scolding him and sending him to bed without his supper, but this, too, was well as the things he told them, was there for them to sense and now there was more than friendliness, more than fellowship. Now there was compassion and something that was their equivalent of mother love.

“He’s just a little one,” they said, talking to one another.

They reached out to him and seemed to take him in their arms and hold him tight against them and Johnny went down on his knees without knowing it and held out his arms to the thing that lay there among the broken bushes and cried out to them, as if there was something there that he might grasp and hold—some comfort that he had always missed and longed for and now finally had found. His heart cried out the thing that he could not say, the pleading that would not pass his lips and they answered him.

“No, we’ll not leave you, Johnny. We can’t leave you, Johnny.”

“You promise?” Johnny asked.

Their voice was a little grim. “We do not need to promise, Johnny. Our machine is broken and we cannot fix it. One of us is dying and the other soon will die.”

Johnny knelt there, with the words sinking into him, with the realization sinking into him and it seemed more than he could bear that, having found two friends, they were about to die.

“Johnny,” they said to him.

“Yes,” said Johnny, trying not to cry.

“You will trade with us?”

“Trade?”

“A way of friendship with us. You give us something and we give you something.”

“But,” said Johnny. “But I haven’t …”

Then he knew he had. He had the pocket knife. It wasn’t much, with its broken blade, but it was all he had.

“That is fine,” they said. “That is exactly right. Lay it on the ground, close to the machine.”

He took the knife out of his pocket and laid it against the machine and even as he watched something happened, but it happened so fast he couldn’t see how it worked, but, anyhow, the knife was gone and there was something in its place.