F. Wallace - 10 Lost Pulp Sci-Fi Masterpieces

Hockley was somewhat off in his prediction. It was actually a mere five days after the beginning of the Earthmen’s campaign that the Rykes gave them up and put them firmly aboard a vessel bound for home. The Rykes were apologetic but firm in admitting they had made a sorry mistake, that Earthmen would have to go their own hopeless way while the Rykes led the rest of the Universe toward enlightenment and glory.

Hockley, Showalter, and Silvers watched the planet drop away beneath them. Hockley could not help feeling sympathetic toward the Rykes. “I wonder what will happen,” he said slowly, “when they crash headlong into an impassable barrier on that beautiful, straight road of theirs. I wonder if they’ll ever have enough guts to turn aside?”

“I doubt it,” said Showalter. “They’ll probably curl up and call it a day.”

Silvers shook his head as if to ward off an oppressive vision. “That shouldn’t be allowed to happen,” he said. “They’ve got too much. They’ve achieved too much, in spite of their limitations. I wonder if there isn’t some way we could help them?”

If you can’t find it countless millions of miles in space, come back to Earth. You might find it just on the other side of the fence—where the grass is always greener.

The Ship dove into Earth’s sea of atmosphere like a great, silver fish.

Inside the ship, a man and woman stood looking down at the expanse of land that curved away to a growing horizon. They saw the yellow ground cracked like a dried skin; and the polished stone of the mountains and the seas that were shrunken away in the dust. And they saw how the city circled the sea, as a circle of men surround a water hole in a desert under a blazing sun.

The ship’s radio cried out. “You’ve made it! Thank God! You’ve made it!”

Another voice, shaking, said, “President—Davis is—overwhelmed. He can’t go on. On his behalf and on behalf of all the people—with our hope that was almost dead, we greet you.” A pause. “Please come in!”

The voice was silent. The air screamed against the hull of the ship.

“I can’t tell them,” said the man.

“Please come in!” said the radio. “Do you hear me?”

The woman looked up at the man. “You’ve got to Michael!”

“Two thousand years. From one end of the galaxy to the other. Not one grain of dust we can live on. Just Earth. And it’s burned to a cinder.”

A note of hysteria stabbed into the radio voice. “Are you all right? Stand by! We’re sending a rescue ship.”

“They’ve got a right to know what we’ve found,” said the woman. “They sent us out. They’ve waited so long—.”

He stared into space. “It’s hopeless. If we’d found another planet they could live on, they’d do the same as they’ve done here.”

He touched the tiny golden locket that hung around his neck. “Right now, I could press this and scratch myself and the whole farce would be over.”

“No. A thousand of us died. You’ve got to think of them.”

“We’ll go back out into space,” he said. “It’s clean out there. I’m tired. Two thousand years of reincarnation.”

She spoke softly. “We’ve been together for a long time. I’ve loved you. I’ve asked very little. But I need to stay on Earth. Please, Michael.”

He looked at her for a moment. Then he flipped a switch. “Milky Way to Earth. Never mind the rescue ship. We’re all right. We’re coming in.”

The great, white ship settled to Earth that was like a plain after flood waters have drained away.

The man and woman came out into the blazing sunlight.

A shout, like the crashing of a thousand surfs, rose and broke over them. The man and woman descended the gang-plank toward the officials gathered on the platform. They glanced around at the massed field of white faces beneath them; saw those same faces that had been turned toward them two thousand years past; remembered the cheers and the cries that had crashed around them then, as they and the thousand had stood before the towering spires of the ships, before the takeoff.

And, as then, there were no children among the milling, grasping throng. Only the same clutching hands and voices and arms, asking for an answer, a salvation, a happy end.

Now the officials gathered around the man and the woman, and spoke to them in voices of reverence.

A microphone was thrust into Michael’s hand with the whispered admonition to tell the people of the great new life waiting for them, open and green and moist, on a virgin planet.

The cries of the people were slipping away and a stillness growing like an ocean calm and, within it, the sound of the pumps, throbbing, sucking the water from the seas.

And then Michael’s voice, “The thousand who left with us are dead. For some time we’ve known the other planets in our solar system were uninhabitable. Now we’ve been from one end of the galaxy to the other. And this is what we’ve found…. We were given Earth. There’s no place else for us. The rest of the planets in the galaxy were given to others. There’s no place else for them. We’ve all had a chance to make the best of Earth. Instead we’ve made the worst of it. So we’re here to stay—and die.” He handed the microphone back.

The silence did not change.

The President grasped Michael’s arm. “What’re you saying?”

A buzzing rose up from the people like that of a swarm of frightened bees. The sea of white faces swayed and their voices began to cry. The din and motion held, long and drawn out, with a wail now and a fluttering beneath it.

Michael and the woman stood above them in the center of the pale, hovering faces of the officials.

“Good God,” said the President. “You’ve got to tell them what you said isn’t true!”

“We’ve been searching two thousand years for a truth,” said Michael. “A thousand of us have died finding it. I’ve told it. That’s the way it’s got to be.”

The President swayed, took the microphone in his hands.

“There’s been some mistake!” he cried. “Go back to the pumps and the distilleries! Go back to the water vats and the gardens and the flocks! Go back! Work and wait! We’ll get the full truth to you. Everything’s going to be all right !”

Obediently the mass of faces separated, as though they were being spun away on a whirling disk. Michael and the woman were swallowed up, like pebbles inside a closing hand, and carried away from the great, white ship.

They ushered the man and woman into the beamed and paneled council chambers and sat them in thick chairs before the wall of polished wood desks across which stared the line of faces, silent and waiting. And on a far wall, facing them all, hung a silver screen, fifty feet square.

The President stood. “Members of the council.” He paused. “As you heard, they report—complete failure.” He turned to Michael. “And now, the proof.”

Michael stood beside the motion picture projector, close to his chair. The lights dimmed. There was only the sound of the pumps throbbing in the darkness close and far away, above and beneath and all around. Suddenly on the screen appeared an endless depth of blackness filled with a mass of glowing white, which extended into the room around the watching people, seeming to touch them and then spreading, like an ocean, farther away and out and out into an endless distance.

Now streaks of yellow fire shot into the picture, like a swarm of lightning bugs, the thin sharp nosed shadows of space ships, hurtling, like comets, toward the clustered star smear. And then silent thoughts flashed from the screen into the minds of the spectators; of time passing in months, years and centuries, passing and passing until they themselves seemed to be rushing and rushing into the blackness toward blinding balls of white light, the size of moons.