Clifford Simak - The Shipshape Miracle - And Other Stories

“I’ll see him,” said the senator.

So it was a smart political move, was it? Well, maybe so, but after a day or so, even the surprised political experts would begin to wonder about the logic of a man literally giving up his life to be re-elected to a senate seat.

Of course the common herd would love it, but he had not done it for applause. Although, so long as the people insisted upon thinking of him as great and noble, it was all right to let them go on thinking so.

The senator jerked his tie straight and buttoned his coat. He went into the study and Lee was waiting for him.

“I suppose you want an interview,” said the senator. “Want to know why I did this thing.”

Lee shook his head. “No, senator, I have something else. Something you should know about. Remember our talk last week? About the disappearances?”

The senator nodded.

“Well, I have something else. You wouldn’t tell me anything last week, but maybe now you will. I’ve checked, senator, and I’ve found this—the health winners are disappearing, too. More than eighty percent of those who participated in the finals of the last ten years have disappeared.”

“I don’t understand,” said the senator.

“They’re going somewhere,” said Lee. “Something’s happening to them. Something’s happening to two classes of our people—the continuators and the healthiest youngsters.”

“Wait a minute,” gasped the senator. “Wait a minute, Mr. Lee.”

He groped his way to the desk, grasped its edge and lowered himself into a chair.

“There is something wrong, senator?” asked Lee.

“Wrong?” mumbled the senator. “Yes, there must be something wrong.”

“They’ve found living space,” said Lee, triumphantly. “That’s it, isn’t it? They’ve found living space and they’re sending out the pioneers.”

The senator shook his head. “I don’t know, Lee. I have not been informed. Check Extrasolar Research. They’re the only ones who know—and they wouldn’t tell you.”

Lee grinned at him. “Good day, senator,” he said. “Thanks so much for helping.”

Dully, the senator watched him go.

Living space? Of course, that was it.

They had found living space and Extrasolar Research was sending out handpicked pioneers to prepare the way. It would take years of work and planning before the discovery could be announced. For once announced, world government must be ready to confer immortality on a mass production basis, must have ships available to carry out the hordes to the far, new worlds. A premature announcement would bring psychological and economic disruption that would make the government a shambles. So they would work very quietly, for they must work quietly.

His eyes found the little stack of letters on one corner of the desk and he remembered, with a shock of guilt, that he had meant to read them. He had promised Otto that he would and then he had forgotten.

I keep forgetting all the time, said the senator. I forget to read my paper and I forget to read my letters and I forget that some men are loyal and morally honest instead of slippery and slick. And I indulge in wishful thinking and that’s the worst of all.

Continuators and health champions disappearing. Sure, they’re disappearing. They’re headed for new worlds and immortality.

And I … I … if only I had kept my big mouth shut—

The phone chirped and he picked it up.

“This is Sutton at Extrasolar Research,” said an angry voice.

“Yes, Dr. Sutton,” said the senator. “It’s nice of you to call.”

“I’m calling in regard to the invitation that we sent you last week,” said Sutton. “In view of your statement last night, which we feel very keenly is an unjust criticism, we are withdrawing it.”

“Invitation,” said the senator. “Why, I didn’t—”

“What I can’t understand,” said Sutton, “is why, with the invitation in your pocket, you should have acted as you did.”

“But,” said the senator, “but, doctor—”

“Good-by, senator,” said Sutton.

Slowly the senator hung up. With a fumbling hand, he reached out and picked up the stack of letters.

It was the third one down. The return address was Extrasolar Research and it had been registered and sent special delivery and it was marked both PERSONAL and IMPORTANT.

The letter slipped out of the senator’s trembling fingers and fluttered to the floor. He did not pick it up.

It was too late now, he knew, to do anything about it.

The story “Immigrant” was entitled “Emigrant” when Cliff sent it to John W. Campbell Jr. in May of 1953. Campbell returned it for revision; but whatever revision was required, Cliff got it back to the editor in less than a week, and received, in just a few weeks, $700 (it’s a long one). The story then appeared as the cover story in the March 1954 issue of Astounding Science Fiction (except that someone listed the story, on the issue’s cover, as “Immigration”).

The cover painting was by Kelly Freas, who, Cliff told me, had originally presented Campbell with a surrealistic silver-gray painting to be that cover. Campbell handed it back and told Kelly that it needed grass. Kelly went home furious, Cliff said, telling his wife that if John wanted grass, he’d get grass—he was angry, but needed the money, so he spent the evening laying down, blade by tiny blade, an image of a large lawn. But later he got up in the middle of the night, looked at what he’d done, and said ‘By God, it did need grass!’

It got grass, lots of grass filling the expanse of a great lawn that stretched to a distant starship, standing under a vast black sky—with a variety of children’s toys abandoned on the lawn.

The painting grabbed Cliff when he saw it, and he wrote Kelly, explaining he didn’t have much money but would like the painting. Kelly wrote back to say he had a rule never to give away his work—but he would sell it for a dollar and an autographed copy of City . Cliff went out and got the newest silver dollar he could find, then had his bank get him the oldest one it could find (which turned out to be from the 1880s); and he sent Kelly the book and, under separate cover, the dollars, explaining that a dollar was no good unless you had a second one to clink it against … By the time Cliff told me the story, he was able to say, with a certain pride, that the City volume was probably pretty valuable, and the dollars, too—so he had given Kelly value, after all.

He was the only passenger for Kimon and those aboard the ship lionized him because he was going there.

To land him at his destination the ship went two light-years out of its way, an inconvenience for which his passage money, much as it had seemed to him when he’d paid it back on Earth, did not compensate by half.

But the captain did not grumble. It was, he told Selden Bishop, an honor to carry a passenger for Kimon.

The businessmen aboard sought him out and bought him drinks and lunches and talked expansively of the markets opening up in the new-found solar systems.

But despite their expansive talk, they looked at Bishop with half-veiled envy in their eyes and they said to him: “The man who cracks this Kimon situation is the one who’ll have it big.”

One by one, they contrived to corner him for private conversations, and the talk, after the first drink, always turned to billions if he ever needed backing.

Billions—while he sat there with less than twenty credits in his pocket, living in terror against the day when he might have to buy a round of drinks. For he wasn’t certain that his twenty credits would stretch to a round of drinks.