Clifford Simak - A Death in the House - And Other Stories

“But the Jap planes will be coming back,” said Hart. “If not today, tomorrow.”

Smith smiled quietly. “We shall be ready for them. The invaders landed guns, anti-aircraft. The planes will not suspect. We shall wait until they’re so close we cannot miss.”

He glanced around at the green palms swaying in the breeze.

“It was peaceful once,” he said. “It shall be so again.” He paused, then said, “Perhaps you gentlemen will be wanting to get on to Saipan.”

Saipan field was taking a pounding. A large warship lay a few miles off shore and was heaving salvos of screaming steel into the tiny clearing.

“Looks like a battleship, sir,” said Jackson.

“Perhaps,” suggested Hart, “we should go down and see.”

“We’d never make it,” the gunner declared. “They’d open up on us with everything they had.”

The Avenger, cruising almost at its ceiling, had the sky to itself. Apparently the Yank force was held down for the moment by the bombardment of the field, while all Jap planes probably had been diverted for the naval engagement just fought, perhaps still being fought, to the west.

“Maybe,” said Hart, “if we came in at them low over the water we might make it.”

“It’s worth a try,” Jackson agreed.

“Okay, then,” said Hart. “Pull up your feet. You’re liable to get them wet.”

The plane slid downward in the sky. Below them the Jap ship fired another salvo, the flash of the gun muzzles twinkling in the noonday light. On the air field, jets of smoke cascaded.

Jackson thought of the torpedo in the bomb bay—the torpedo Hart had refused to fire into the flat top. The gunner clenched his fists until the nails bit into his palms.

They had to get that ship!

If they didn’t, it would churn the field into plowed ground, would rob the fighting leathernecks of their air support, would open the way for enemy counterattacks.

The Avenger droned downward until the uneven ground was just below its belly, skidded down the hillside just above the tree-tops, flashed above the foaming beach and headed out to sea.

Hart gunned the motor, and Jackson instinctively slouched into a crouch behind his gun. There probably wouldn’t be much use for it. This would be Hart’s show.

The Avenger scudded no more than fifty feet above the water. Ahead, looming against the horizon was the massive battle wagon in gray battle dress.

One of the forward batteries thundered, and Jackson could see the ship stagger at the recoil. Another battery let loose, then two together.

No one had noticed them as yet. Those firing batteries had given them a break.

Then a smaller gun spat from the ship, and another, and many more. A swelter of shrapnel burst to the right, and geysers of water churned around them.

The battleship loomed up with a rush. The plane jerked to an impact and Jackson saw ribboned metal fluttering from the right wing. Geysering water curled above them and descended on the plane, drenching it.

Hart was swearing under his breath—a stream of malefaction against the Jap—and then there was the bump that told Jackson the torpedo was on its way.

The Avenger tilted up and seemed almost to claw at the sky in its rush to get away.

Jackson found himself standing up and yelling while metallic death whined and droned and zipped around him.

A gust of flame speared out against the battleship and the great hulk shuddered from stem to stern, heeled over, rocked violently.

Two thousand pounds of naval torpedo had hit the ship just below the waterline and penetrated, spewing death and destruction deep within its bowels.

The Avenger raced with howling motor for safety in the sky. Below wallowed a stricken ship, perhaps not badly enough damaged to sink, but at least put out of action.

“Looks like we got the dirty son!” yelled Hart.

“We did, sir!” Jackson yelled back.

“He slapped my face,” said Hart.

And Jackson, suddenly limp, knew then that for Hart this war never again would be impersonal. It took a slap across the face to give him hatred of all things Japanese.

“How many rounds have you left?” yelled Hart.

“Three cans, sir,” said Jackson.

“I got all my belts full,” declared Hart, almost proudly. “What say we give ‘em the works?”

Jackson looked down. They were almost over the smoking ship now.

“By all means, sir,” said Jackson happily.

Hart tilted the nose of the Avenger down and the Wright Cyclone screamed a song of hate.

“Here we come!” Hart yelled.

The machine-guns in the wings broke into a roar.

This story, which features variations on some themes that have appeared in other stories, has not been seen by very many Simak fans—it was only published once, in the December 1957 issue of Short Stories Magazine (which was not a science fiction magazine, but a publication that featured stories from all genres, including Westerns, mysteries, and so on); and it was never reprinted.

After finishing the story in early January of 1957, Cliff sent it to H. L. Gold of Galaxy Science Fiction . While waiting for a reaction, he considered the idea of changing the title to “Safety Valve,” but did not do so in the end. When Gold rejected the story, Cliff sent it to a different editor, including, as he put it in his journal, “a feeble note.” He went on to add, poignantly, “Wish I could write good letters.” But after the story was again rejected, Cliff sent it to Leo Margulies, who bought the story at the end of March.

I was surprised to find the story among Cliff’s papers after his death. I’m glad I did.

Gilchrist Wolfe went to the shelf and took down the journal. On a clean, blank page he wrote: Goff closed the Henderson case today. There is no explanation for the man’s disappearance.

After he had made that last entry he leafed through the pages backwards, slowly, pretending to himself that he was just browsing through them. But he came at last, as surely as if he’d planned it, to that tragic, earlier entry of thirty years before.

The date was Oct. 16, 2334, and the statement began: Antony Tuckerman disappeared today. …

He did not read the rest of it. There was no necessity for him to read it. He could have recited it, letter perfectly, if he had been called upon to do so.

And now there were other comments and statements of fact—today’s, the one he’d just made, and the one which he had made ten days previously. And he hoped he’d made his concluding comment as dispassionate, and as scientific as Wilfred Soames’ original entry of thirty years before.

He turned forward again to his final summing up, and was somewhat astonished—although he should not have been—to find that except for the names he had written almost the same words which Soames had put down on that October day so long ago— July 23, 2364—Sartwell Henderson disappeared last night. …

And why not, he asked himself. Both of them had written of identical incidents, although the men involved had not been the same.

Wolfe wondered vaguely if Henderson and Tuckerman might not have known each other. He decided that they might have. But that did not mean that the coincidence had the slightest bearing on their fate. Probably, he concluded, that aspect of the mystery had no significance whatever. Goff would have checked into such a relationship if he had thought it in any way vital, for Goff was as good a security officer as anyone could wish.

Wolfe turned back to the Tuckerman entry and read it again, despite the fact that he already knew it by heart. He wondered if there might be some clue until now unnoticed—some lurking, hidden hint. But he quickly realized there was nothing of the sort—nothing new at all. It was as terse and as unimaginative as it had always been, because it had been written by a man who had not dared allow himself to entertain the slightest hope. It was a barren recital of a positive fact, and nothing more. And that, thought Wolfe, was entirely understandable. In each of the incidents there was one great central fact: A man had disappeared. He had not run away, and he had not been kidnapped. He had simply vanished. In the here and now one instant, gone out of it the next.