Spacemen Die at Home
By EDWARD W. LUDWIG
Illustrated by THORNE
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction October 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
One man's retreat is another's prison ... and
it takes a heap of flying to make a hulk a home!
Forty days of heaven and forty nights of hell. That's the way it'sbeen, Laura. But how can I make you understand? How can I tell youwhat it's like to be young and a man and to dream of reaching thestars? And yet, at the same time, to be filled with a terrible, gnawingfear—a fear locked in my mind during the day and bursting out like anevil jack-in-the-box at night. I must tell you, Laura.
Perhaps if I start at the beginning, the very beginning....
It was the Big Day. All the examinations, the physicals and psychos,were over. The Academy, with its great halls and classrooms andlaboratories, lay hollow and silent, an exhausted thing at sleep afterspawning its first-born.
For it was June in this year of 1995, and we were the graduating classof the U. S. Academy of Interplanetary Flight.
The first graduating class, Laura. That's why it was so important,because we were the first.
We sat on a little platform, twenty-five of us. Below us was a beachof faces, most of them strange, shining like pebbles in the warm NewMexican sunlight. They were the faces of mothers and fathers andgrandparents and kid brothers and sisters—the people who a short timeago had been only scrawled names on letters from home or words spokenwistfully at Christmas. They were the memory-people who, to me, hadnever really existed.
But today they had become real, and they were here and looking at uswith pride in their eyes.
A voice was speaking, deep, sure, resonant. "... these boys have workedhard for six years, and now they're going to do a lot of big things.They're going to bring us the metals and minerals that we desperatelyneed. They're going to find new land for our colonists, good rich landthat will bear food and be a home for our children. And perhaps mostimportant of all, they'll make other men think of the stars and look upat them and feel humility—for mankind needs humility."
The speaker was Robert Chandler, who'd brought the first rocket down onMars just five years ago, who'd established the first colony there, andwho had just returned from his second hop to Venus.
Instead of listening to his words, I was staring at his broad shouldersand his dark, crew-cut hair and his white uniform which was silk-smoothand skin-tight. I was worshiping him and hating him at the same time,for I was thinking:
He's already reached Mars and Venus. Let him leave Jupiter and theothers alone! Let us be the first to land somewhere! Let us be thefirst!
Mickey Cameron, sitting next to me, dug an elbow into my ribs. "I don'tsee 'em, Ben," he whispered. "Where do you suppose they are?"
I blinked. "Who?"
"My folks."
That was something I didn't have to worry about. My parents had died ina strato-jet crash when I was four, so I hadn't needed many of those"You are cordially invited" cards. Just one, which I'd sent to CharlieTaggart.
Stardust Charlie, we called him, although I never knew why. He was aveteran of Everson's first trip to the Moon nearly twenty-five yearsago, and he was still at it. He was Chief Jetman now on the LunarLady, a com