Judith Merril - The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 2

“Octogenarian on Moon,” said big headlines. Then, below: “Radio flash from Moon party says Mortimer Griffiths, elderly Welsh farmer, took place of member of crew injured in earth landing.”

“Well, there is sly for you,” said my father. “Going out for five minutes and finishing up on the Moon.”

Gran said nothing. But she went to the pegs and got her coat and went out of the door.

“Go with her, Bronwen,” my father ordered me, but kindly.

When I got outside it was almost dark, but a big full Moon was just swinging clear of the hill, and I could see Gran going along the path that leads up Break Back and past Ten Acre and brings you to the Little Mountain. Though I was only a child I knew where Gran was going, and why. At the top of Little Mountain she would be nearer to the Moon than anywhere. I also felt, child though I was, that she would want to be alone, so I followed quietly, at a short distance.

Sure enough, Gran kept on up the mountain, and at last we were on the top place where there is nothing but broken rocks, and holes of black water, and lonely old ghosts. And the Moon was well up now, and so near that you felt that if you stood on tiptoe you could touch it like an apple on the tree.

Gran looked at the Moon. And the Moon looked at Gran.

Now Grandfather was a big man, and I knew she was hoping to see him, perhaps putting up a little tent, or lighting a Primus. But there was no sign of anyone on the Moon’s face. And at last, after a long time, Gran shivered and sighed. Then she muttered, “Round at the back, maybe,” and she turned and came slowly down the mountain. And though she must have seen me she said no word.

The next night the same thing happened. At moonrise Gran set off for the mountain, and I followed. But this time the Moon was not quite round, and Gran looked at it for a long time. Then she said, “Shrinking it is,” and came home again.

This happened every night. The Moon grew thinner and thinner, and Gran went out later and later. Young though I was, they let me stay up till all hours to follow Gran up the mountain. But at last the Moon rose so late that Dai my father said, “Bed for you tonight, my girl.”

But I awoke in the small hours, and looked out, and there was the Moon, a thin, silver sickle, and there was the yellow light of a lantern climbing the dark side of the sleeping mountain.

I put on my coat and ran out into the cold.

When I reached the top of the mountain Gran was there. To my surprise she spoke to me. Pointing to the thin crescent she said, “Hanging on by his fingernails now he will be,” and she took my hand and led me home.

The next evening she said to my father, “What time does the Moon rise tonight, Dai?”

My father looked at the paper.

‘There is no Moon tonight, Gran,” he said.

“No Moon,” repeated Gran in a voice of death. “No Moon.” She rose and hung a black cloth over the big picture of Grandfather at the Eisteddfod.

“Falling through the sky he will be now,” she said slowly, as though speaking to herself. “Like a shooting star he will fall, and like a shooting star he will cease to be.” She went back to her chair and sat down, her hands folded in her lap.

“But the fact that you can’t see the Moon doesn’t mean it isn’t there,” my father explained. “It’s just that the sun is shining on the other side of it.”

Gran gave him a look. “Black midnight,” she cried. “Black midnight, and you talk to me of sunshine. Open the door.” She pointed an ancient finger at it. “And, if the sun is shining, run up Snowdon barefoot I will, like the mad woman of Aberdaron.”

Dai my father gave up. There was a silence. Then Gran began talking again, almost to herself.

“He was a hard man,” she said. “I didn’t much care for him. Never would he buy me anything. A spaceship, only a little one, I asked him for, many times.

“ ‘No mention of spaceships in the Lives of the Great Saints,’ he says, smiling nasty, putting the tips of his fingers together, smug as you please. ‘No mention of indoor sanitation either,’ I say, real angry now. ‘But that do not stop Rev. Williams having a little room up at the Manse.’

“But it was no good. There was no arguing with Mortimer Griffiths.” She rose and went to bed. And the next day she left for Aberystwyth and married Llewellyn Time Machine.

They went to 1954 for their honeymoon. And two days after they had gone Grandfather came back from the Moon.

“Finished the harvest?” he asked.

“Yes,” said my father.

“Have you mended the fence in Ten Acre?”

“Never mind the fence in Ten Acre,” said my father. “Gran has married Llewellyn Time Machine.”

That was a terrible moment. For a long time my grandfather stood stroking his beard. Then suddenly he shot out his long arm and grasped a chopper.

“Where are they?” he roared. “Where are they?”

My father, pale, said nothing.

Grandfather seized him by the throat and shook him.

“Where are they?” he repeated.

“In—in 1954,” gasped my father.

Grandfather let him go. “Get the tractor out,” he ordered.

“Where are you going?”

“1954,” said Grandfather.

He was gone for nearly a week.

Then he came back, alone. He was in a good mood, quite talkative for him.

“Hired a Time Machine in Llandudno,” he said, beaming. “Chased them right back to the Middle Ages. Llewellyn caught the Black Death. And I smashed his Time Machine to pieces with my little chopper.”

“And Gran?” asked my father.

“Stranded in the Middle Ages, with no money, and no means of getting back,” said Grandfather with immense satisfaction. “She was taking the veil when I last saw her. Damp the nunnery looked. Damp and cold.

“Teach her to go hankering after spaceships,” said my grandfather.

Almost all of Reginald Bretnor’s fiction, prior to the past year, has been “funny”—if so boisterous a word can be applied to the loving laughter with which the author directs us to regard the naked souls of his subjects.

During 1956 Mr. Bretnor published two perfectly serious stories, both of them distinguished by the same qualities of perceptiveness, compassion, and literacy that have made his humor memorable. “The Past and Its Dead People,” in f&sf, was to my mind the finest single story to appear in any science-fantasy magazine during the year. Unfortunately, it was neither fantasy nor science-fiction, and could not validly be included in this anthology. “The Doorstop,” from Astounding, represents, so far as I know, Bretnor’s first venture into straight science-fiction.

Dr. Cavaness scarcely heard the metallurgist and the chemist reading their detailed technical reports. He tried to look at them, he tried to fasten his attention on their words. But always his glance drifted, to the square, strong face of the Air Force major general sitting across from him, off to the vast industrial landscape of Detroit framed in the window of the Directors’ Room, back to the other faces there—back to the thing, the Doorstop, bronze-bright and dumbbell-shaped, isolated in its bell jar, alone on the polished plain of brown mahogany. And always, refusing discipline, his mind shied from close contact with the here and now, where the Doorstop had undeniable reality, where these men were gathered with their cold answer to the riddle he did not want to solve.

Occasionally a fragment of a phrase came through to him— And when the oxidation rate ... as yet unanalyzed ... a rare-earth compound or —And every fragment sent his mind to seek a refuge in his memories, to find him pictures of a world gardened with all the good, familiar things, a world safe in the narrow limits set by common sense, a world to which the shadow of the Doorstop could never penetrate.