Fredric Brown - The Second Fredric Brown Megapack

He sighed and looked at the red jungle ahead of him.

“What’s that you asked, Dorothy?” She hadn’t asked anything, but it was a game to pretend that she talked back, a game to keep him sane. “Will I get married when I get back? Is that what you asked?”

He gave it consideration. “Well, it’s like this, Dorothy. Maybe and maybe not. You were named after a woman back on Earth, you know. A woman I was going to marry. But five years is a long time, Dorothy. I’ve been reported missing and presumably dead. I doubt if she’s waited this long. If she has, well, I’ll marry her, Dorothy.”

“Did you ask, what if she hasn’t? Well, I don’t know. Let’s not worry about that till I get back, huh? Of course, if I could find a woman who was green, or even one with green hair, I’d love her to pieces. But on Earth almost everything is green except the women.”

He chuckled at that and, sol-gun ready, went on into the jungle, the red jangle that had nothing green except the occasional flash of his sol-gun.

Funny about that. Back on Earth, a sol-gun flashed violet. Here under a red sun, it flashed green when he fired it. But the explanation was simple enough. A sol-gun drew energy from a nearby star and the flash it made when fired was the complementary color of its source of energy. Drawing energy from Sol, a yellow sun, it flashed violet. From Kruger, a red sun, green.

Maybe that, he thought, had been the one thing that, aside from Dorothy’s company, had kept him sane. A flash of green several times a day. Something green to remind him what the color was. To keep his eyes attuned to it, if he ever saw it again.

It turned out to be a small patch of jungle, as patches of jungle went on Kruger III. One of what seemed countless millions of such patches. And maybe it really was millions; Kruger III was larger than Jupiter. But less dense, so the gravity was easily bearable. Actually it might take him more than a lifetime to cover it all. He knew that, but did not let himself think about it. No more than he let himself think that the ship might have crashed on the dark side, the cold side. Or than he let himself doubt that, once he found the ship, he would find the transistors he needed to make his own spacer operative again.

The patch of jungle was less than a mile square, but he had to sleep once and eat several times before he had finished it. He killed two more lions and one tiger. And when he finished it, he walked around the circumference of it, blazing each of the larger trees along the outer rim so he wouldn’t repeat by searching this particular jungle again. The trees were soft; his pocketknife took off the red bark down to the pink core as easily as it would have taken the skin off a potato.

Then out across the dull brown plain again, this time holding his sol-gun in the open to recharge it.

“Not that one, Dorothy. Maybe the next. The one over there near the horizon. Maybe it’s there.”

Violet sky, red sun, brown plain.

“The green hills of Earth, Dorothy. Oh, how you’ll love them.”

The brown never-ending plain.

The never-changing violet sky.

Was there a sound up there? There couldn’t be. There never had been. But he looked up. And saw it.

A tiny black speck high in the violet, moving. A spacer. It had to be a spacer. There were no birds on Kruger III. And birds don’t trail jets of fire behind them—

He knew what to do; he’d thought of it a million times, how he could signal a spacer if one ever came in sight. He raised his sol-gun, aimed it straight into the violet air and pulled the trigger. It didn’t make a big flash, from the distance of the spacer, but it made a green flash. If the pilot were only looking or if he would only look before he got out of sight, he couldn’t miss a green flash on a world with no other green.

He pulled the trigger again.

And the pilot of the spacer saw. He cut and fired his jets three times—the standard answer to a signal of distress—and began to circle.

McGarry stood there trembling. So long a wait, and so sudden an end to it. He touched his left shoulder and touched the five-legged pet that felt to his fingers as well as to his naked shoulder so like a woman’s hand.

“Dorothy,” he said, “it’s—” He ran out of words.

The spacer was closing in for a landing now. McGarry looked down at himself, suddenly aware and ashamed of himself, as he would look to a rescuer. His body was naked except for the belt that held his holster and from which dangled his knife and a few other tools. He was dirty and probably smelled, although he could not smell himself. And under the dirt his body looked thin and wasted, almost old, but that was due of course to diet deficiencies; a few months of proper food, Earth food, would take care of that.

Earth! The green hills of Earth!

He ran now, stumbling sometimes in his eagerness, toward the point where the spacer was landing. He could see now that it was a one-man job, like his own had been. But that was all right; it could carry two in an emergency, at least as far as the nearest planet where he could get other transportation back to Earth. To the green hills, the green fields, the green valleys.

He prayed a little and swore a little as he ran. There were tears running down his cheeks.

He was there, waiting, as the door opened and a tall slender young man in the uniform of the Space Patrol stepped out.

“You’ll take me back?” he shouted.

“Of course,” said the young man calmly. “Been here long?”

“Five years!” McGarry knew that he was crying, but he couldn’t stop.

“Good Lord!” said the young man. “I’m Lieutenant Archer. Of course I’ll take you back, man, as soon as my jets cool enough for a takeoff. I’ll take you as far as Carthage, on Aldebaran II, anyway; you can get a ship out of there for anywhere. Need anything right away? Food? Water?”

McGarry shook his head dumbly. Food, water—What did such things matter now?

The green hills of Earth! He was going back to them. That was what mattered, and all that mattered. So long a wait, then so sudden an ending. He saw the violet sky swimming and then it suddenly went black as his knees buckled under him.

He was lying flat and the young man was holding a flask to his lips and he took a long draught of the fiery stuff it held. He sat up and felt better. He looked to make sure the spacer was still there; it was, and he felt wonderful.

The young man said, “Buck up, old-timer; we’ll be off in half an hour. You’ll be in Carthage in six hours. Want to talk, till you get your bearings again? Want to tell me all about it, everything that’s happened?”

They sat in the shadow of a brown bush, and McGarry told him about it, everything about it. The five-year search for the other ship he’d read had crashed on the planet and which might have intact the parts he needed to repair his own ship. The long search. About Dorothy, perched on his shoulder, and how she’d been something to talk to.

But somehow, the face of Lieutenant Archer was changing as McGarry talked. It grew even more solemn, even more compassionate.

“Old-timer,” Archer asked gently, “what year was it when you came here?” McGarry saw it coming. How can you keep track of time on a planet whose sun and seasons are unchanging? A planet of eternal day, eternal summer—He said flatly, “I came here in twenty-two forty-two. How much have I misjudged, Lieutenant? How old am I—instead of thirty, as I’ve thought?”

“It’s twenty-two seventy-two, McGarry. You came here thirty years ago. You’re fifty-five. But don’t let that worry you too much. Medical science has advanced. You still have a long time to live.”