Гарри Гаррисон - 50 in 50

Only in the final few months did he begin to worry. He felt fine and the union doctor congratulated him for being a great example, but this didn't matter. Were the actuaries right — had his time almost run out? He could have worried himself to death, but that was not the way Cabots died! He would face this out and win.

First there were weeks left, then only days. The last five days before the copy was due he locked himself in his room and had the delicatessen send up food. It was expensive but he wasn't going to risk any accidents in the street, not now. He had received his twenty-four copies and his subscription should have expired. The next morning would tell. He could not fall asleep at all that night, even though he knew that regular sleep was important, but just lay there until the sky brightened. He dozed for a bit then, but woke up as soon as he heard the postman's footsteps outside. This was the day. Would the magazine be there? His heart was pounding and he made himself go slow as he got into the bathrobe. His room was the first on the ground floor, right next to the entrance, and all he had to do was step out into the hall and open the front door.

"Morning," he said to the postman.

"Yeah," the man answered, slinging his heavy bag around and digging into it. Amos closed the door first, then feverishly went through the mail.

It wasn't there.

He had won!

If this was not the happiest day in his life it was close to it. Besides this, his victories over the bus company and the coin-machine crooks were nothing. This was a war won, not a battle. He'd licked them, licked their statistics and actuaries, accountants, mechanical brains, card files, clerks, and editors. He had won! He went out and drank a beer, the first one in two years, — then another. Laughed and talked with the gang at the bar. He had won! He fell into bed late and slept like a log until he was dragged awake by his landlady knocking on the door.

"Mail for you, Mr. Cabot. Mail."

Fear gripped him, then slowly ebbed away. It couldn't be. In two years Hereafter had never been late once, not one day. It must be some other mail — though this wasn't his check day. He slowly opened the door and took the large envelope, his grip so loose that it almost fell from his fingers.

Only when he had laid it on the bed did he breathe naturally again — it wasn't Hereafter in its vile blue envelope; this one was a gentle pink. It did contain a magazine though, just about the size of Hereafter, a bulky magazine with lots of pages. Its title was Senility— and the black letters were drawn in such a way that they looked as though they were made of cracked and crumbling stone — and underneath it said The Magazine of Geri-ART-trics. There was a picture of a feeble old man in a wheelchair with a blanket around his shoulders, sucking water through a curved glass tube. Inside was more. Ads for toilet chairs and hemorrhoid cushions, crutches and crank beds, articles on "Learn Braille When the Eyesight Goes," and "Happy Though Bedridden.” and "Immobile for Twenty-five Years." A letter dropped out of the magazine and he half-read phrases here and there.

Welcome to the family. . the magazine of geri-ART-trics that teaches you the art of growing old. . many long years ahead of you. . empty years. . what happiness to find a copy in your mailbox every month. . speaking book edition for the blind. . Braille for the blind and deaf. . every month. .

There were tears in his eyes when he looked up. It was dark, a rainy and cold April morning with the wind rattling the window. Raindrops ran down the glass like great, cold tears.

One instant the spaceship Yuri Gagarin was a thousand-foot-long projectile of gleaming metal, the next it was a core of flame and expanding gas, torn fragments and burning particles. Seventy-three people died at that moment, painlessly and suddenly. The cause of the explosion will never be determined since all the witnesses were killed while the pieces of wreckage that might have borne evidence were hurtling away from each other towards the corners of infinity. If there had been any outside witness, there in space, he would have seen the gas cloud grow and disperse while the pieces of twisted metal, charred bodies, burst luggage and crushed machines moved out and away from each other. Each had been given its own velocity and direction by the explosion and, though some fragments traveled on a parallel course for a time, individual differences in speed and direction eventually showed their effect until most fragments of the spatial debris rushed on alone through the immensity of space. Some of the larger pieces had companions: a book of radio-frequency codes orbited the ragged bulk of the ship's reactor, held in position by the gravitic attraction of its mass. Farther away the gape-mouthed, wide-eyed corpse of the assistant purser clutched the soft folds of a woman's dress in its frozen hands. But the unshielded sun scorched the fibers of the cloth while the utter dryness of space desiccated it, until it powdered and tore and centrifugal force pushed it slowly away. It was obviously impossible for anyone to have survived the explosion, but the blind workings of chance that kill may save as well.

There were three people in the emergency capsule and one, the woman, was still unconscious, having struck her head when the ship erupted. One of the two men was in a state of shock, his limbs hanging limply while his thoughts went round and round incessantly like a toy train on a circular track. The other man was tearing at the seal of a plastic flask of vodka.

"All the American ships carry brandy," he said as he stripped off a curl of plastic, then picked at the cap with his nails. "British ships stock whiskey in their medical kits, which is the best idea, but I had to pull this tour on a Russian ship. So look what we get—" His words were cut off as he raised the flask to his mouth and drank deeply.

"Thirty thousand pounds in notes," Damian Brayshaw said thickly. "Thirty thousand pounds. . good God. . they can't hold me responsible." One heel drummed sluggishly against the padded side of the capsule and moved him away from it a few inches. He drifted slowly back. Even though his features were flaccid with shock, and his white skin even paler now, with a waxen hue, it could be seen that he was a handsome man. His hair, black and cut long, had burst free of its careful dressing and hung in lank strands down his forehead and in front of his eyes. He raised his hand to brush at it, but never completed the motion.

"You want a drink, chum?" the other man asked, holding out the flask-. "I think you need it, chum, knock it back."

"Brayshaw. . Damian Brayshaw," he said, as he took the bottle. He coughed over a mouthful of the raw spirit and for the first time his attention wandered from the lost money, and he noticed the other's dark green uniform with the gold tabs on the shoulders. "You're a spaceman… a ship's officer."

"Correct. You've got great eyesight. I'm Second Lieutenant Cohen. You can call me Chuck. I'll call you Damian."

"Lieutenant Cohen, can you tell—"

"Chuck."

"— can you tell me what happened? I'm a bit confused." His actions matched his words as his eyes roamed over the curved, padded wall of the closed deadlight, to the wire-cased bulb then back down to the row of handles labeled with incomprehensible Cyrillic characters.

"The ship blew up," Lieutenant Cohen said tonelessly, but his quick pull at the flask belied the casualness of his words. Years of service in space had carved the deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and grayed the barely seen stubble of his shaven head, yet no amount of service could have prepared him to accept casually the loss of his ship. "Have some more of this," he said, passing over the vodka flask. "We have to finish it. Blew up, that's all I knew, just blew up. I had the lock of this capsule open, inspection check, I got knocked halfway through it. You were going by, so I grabbed you and pushed you in, don't you remember?"