Robert Sheckley: A Ticket to Tranai

One fine day in June, a tall, thin, intent, soberly dressed young man walked into the offices of the Transstellar Travel Agency. Without a glance, he marched past the gaudy travel poster depicting the Harvest Feast on Mars. The enormous photomural of dancing forests on Triganium didn’t catch his eye. He ignored the somewhat suggestive painting of dawn-rites on Opiuchus II, and arrived at the desk of the booking agent.

“I would like to book passage to Tranai,” the young man said.

The agent closed his copy of Necessary Inventions and frowned. “Tranai? Tranai? Is that one of the moons of Kent IV?”

“It is not,” the young man said. “Tranai is a planet, revolving around a sun of the same name. I want to book passage there.”

“Never heard of it.” The agent pulled down a star catalogue, a simplified star chart, and a copy of Lesser Space Routes. “Well, now,” he said finally. “You learn something new every day. You want to book passage to Tranai, Mister…”

“Goodman. Marvin Goodman.”

“Goodman. Well, it seems that Tranai is about as far from Earth as one can get and still be in the Milky Way. Nobody goes there.”

“I know. Can you arrange passage for me?” Goodman asked, with a hint of suppressed excitement in his voice.

The agent shook his head. “Not a chance. Even the non-skeds don’t go that far.”

“How close can you get me?”

The agent gave him a winning smile. “Why bother? I can send you to a world that’ll have everything this Tranai place has, with the additional advantages of proximity, bargain rates, decent hotels, tours…”

“I’m going to Tranai,” Goodman said grimly.

“But there’s no way of getting there,” the agent explained patiently. “What is it you expected to find? Perhaps I could help.”

“You can help by booking me as far as…”

“Is it adventure?” the agent asked, quickly sizing up Goodman’s unathletic build and scholarly stoop. “Let me suggest Africanus II, a dawn-age world filled with savage tribes, saber-tooths, man-eating ferns, quicksand, active volcanoes, pterodactyls and all the rest. Expeditions leave New York every five days and they combine the utmost in danger with absolute safety. A dinosaur head guaranteed or your money refunded.”

“Tranai,” Goodman said.

“Hmm.” The clerk looked appraisingly at Goodman’s set lips and uncompromising eyes. “Perhaps you are tired of the puritanical restrictions of Earth? Then let me suggest a trip to Almagordo III, the Pearl of the Southern Ridge Belt. Our ten day all-expense plan includes a trip through the mysterious Almagordian Casbah, visits to eight nightclubs (first drink on us), a trip to a zintal factory, where you can buy genuine zintal belts, shoes and pocketbooks at phenomenal savings, and a tour through two distilleries. The girls of Almagordo are beautiful, vivacious and refreshingly naive. They consider the Tourist the highest and most desirable type of human being. Also…”

“Tranai,” Goodman said. “How close can you get me?”

Sullenly the clerk extracted a strip of tickets. “You can take the Constellation Queen as far as Legis II and transfer to the Galactic Splendor, which will take you to Oume. Then you’ll have to board a local, which, after stopping at Machang, Inch-ang, Pankang, Lekung and Oyster, will leave you at Tung-Bradar IV, if it doesn’t break down en route. Then a non-sked will transport you past the Galactic Whirl (if it gets past) to Aloomsridgia, from which the mail ship will take you to Bellismoranti. I believe the mail ship is still functioning. That brings you about halfway. After that, you’re on your own.”

“Fine,” Goodman said. “Can you have my forms made out by this afternoon?”

The clerk nodded. “Mr. Goodman,” he asked in despair, “just what sort of place is this Tranai supposed to be?”

Goodman smiled a beatific smile. “A Utopia,” he said.

Marvin Goodman had lived most of his life in Seakirk, New Jersey, a town controlled by one political boss or another for close to fifty years. Most of Seakirk’s inhabitants were indifferent to the spectacle of corruption in high places and low, the gambling, the gang wars, the teen-age drinking. They were used to the sight of their roads crumbling, their ancient water mains bursting, their power plants breaking down, their decrepit old buildings falling apart, while the bosses built bigger homes, longer swimming pools and warmer stables. People were used to it. But not Goodman.

A natural-born crusader, he wrote expose articles that were never published, sent letters to Congress that were never read, stumped for honest candidates who were never elected, and organized the League for Civic Improvement, the People Against Gangsterism, the Citizen’s Union for an Honest Police Force, the Association Against Gambling, the Committee for Equal Job Opportunities for Women, and a dozen others.

Nothing came of his efforts. The people were too apathetic to care. The politicoes simply laughed at him, and Goodman couldn’t stand being laughed at. Then, to add to his troubles, his fiancee jilted him for a noisy young man in a loud sports jacket who had no redeeming feature other than a controlling interest in the Seakirk Construction Corporation.

It was a shattering blow. The girl seemed unaffected by the fact that the SCC used disproportionate amounts of sand in their concrete and shaved whole inches from the width of their steel girders. As she put it, “Gee whiz, Marvie, so what? That’s how things are. You gotta be realistic.”

Goodman had no intention of being realistic. He immediately repaired to Eddie’s Moonlight Bar, where, between drinks, he began to contemplate the attractions of a grass shack in the green hell of Venus.

An erect, hawk-faced old man entered the bar. Goodman could tell he was a spacer by his gravity-bound gait, his pallor, his radiation scars and his far-piercing gray eyes.

“A Tranai Special, Sam,” the old spacer told the bartender.

“Coming right up, Captain Savage, sir,” the bartender said.

“Tranai?” Goodman murmured involuntarily.

“Tranai,” the captain said. “Never heard of it, did you, sonny?”

“No, sir,” Goodman confessed.

“Well, sonny,” Captain Savage said, “I’m feeling a mite wordy tonight, so I’ll tell you a tale of Tranai the Blessed, out past the Galactic Whirl.”

The captain’s eyes grew misty and a smile softened the grim line of his lips.

“We were iron men in steel ships in those days. Me and Johnny Cavanaugh and Frog Larsen would have blasted to hell itself for half a load of terganium. Aye, and shanghaied Beelzebub for a wiper if we were short of men. Those were the days when space scurvey took every third man, and the ghost of Big Dan McClintock haunted the spaceways. Moll Gann still operated the Red Rooster Inn out on Asteroid 342-AA, asking five hundred Earth dollars for a glass of beer, and getting it too, there being no other place within ten billion miles. In those days, the Scarbies were still cutting up along Star Ridge and ships bound for Prodengum had to run the Swayback Gantlet. So you can imagine how I felt, sonny, when one fine day I came upon Tranai.”

Goodman listened as the old captain limned a picture of the great days, of frail ships against an iron sky, ships outward bound, forever outward, to the far limits of the Galaxy.

And there, at the edge of the Great Nothing, was Tranai.

Tranai, where The Way had been found and men were no longer bound to The Wheel! Tranai the Bountiful, a peaceful, creative, happy society, not saints or ascetics, not intellectuals, but ordinary people who had achieved Utopia.

For an hour, Captain Savage spoke of the multiform marvels of Tranai. After finishing his story, he complained of a dry throat. Space throat, he called it, and Goodman ordered him another Tranai Special and one for himself. Sipping the exotic, green-gray mixture, Goodman too was lost in the dream.