Stephen Marlowe

“ Underfoot, Steve could feel the crunchy ground powdering beneath his asbestos boots with every step. And far off toward the horizon, a jagged ridge of blood-red mountains bit at the black sky like festering, toothless gums.
Before long, Teejay's voice sang in Steve's earphones. "Over here, you boys." And Steve could see her crouching, shapeless in the loose asbestos suit, off to his left. The sun's heat had parched a long, snaking crack in the surface and Steve lumbered over to it clumsily, letting his shadow fall across the crevice. "Those stone worms are umbra-tropic," he called, and waited. ”

“ The rusty ochre emptiness spreading out toward the horizon in all directions, spotted occasionally with pale green and frosty white, the sky gray with but a shade of blue in it, distant gusts of Martian wind swirling ochre clouds across the desert, the spaceship poised on its ungainly bottom, a great silver bowling ball with rocket tubes for finger holes, and the Martians from Earth who had been here on this alien world for seven-hundred-eighty days or twice seven-eighty or three times, and who fought in frenzied eagerness, like savages, to reach the descending gangplank first. ”

“ Felg had not risen from the floor. He sat there and he looked up at Matlin, who made no move to use the mace, and he said, his voice a tight whisper now, barely audible, "Will you kill me? I can't stand the waiting."
"I read somewhere," Matlin heard himself saying, "that at the moment before death life is so precious that a man will crave it even if it is a life of torment on torment, a life of torture, a life of terrible pain. But life, any life, rather than the black sleep of death. Life as a slave, and toil without end, and streaming sweat mixed with blood, but life! ”

“ Rikud looked out upon the garden and he trembled. Out there was life. The garden stretched off in unthinkable immensity to the cluster of low mounds against the bright blue which roofed the many plants. If plants could live out there as they did within the world, then so could people. Rikud and his people should. This was why the world had moved across the darkness and the stars for all Rikud's lifetime and more. ”

“ Why did men from the future even insist on poking their noses into his, Malenkov's business? But why was any of this Ruscar's affair, anyway? Ruscar seemed to hold the whip-hand. Ruscar told them what to do, and they did it. Ruscar knew political intrigue as well as a Chenkov, bio-chemistry as well as a Zhubin—for was it not Ruscar who had helped, paved the way, in fact, for Zhubin to construct the monster masquerading as a resurrected Stalin? As if a hideous, naked thing in a glass cage could be a man of flesh and blood and think like a man. ”

“ Diane darted from the stream with a glad little cry, shaking the water from her long, tawny hair, the droplets of water sparkling on her bronzed skin like diamonds, the long, lithe lines of her body clothed only in the moisture until she found her buckskin shorts and halter and dressed. Life was comparatively simple and uncomplicated among the Shining Ones, and she, of all their encampment, remembered no other way. ”

“ Your job, Taylor, will be to see that no one else comes. We cannot lie, but you can. Tell them it is our ultimatum. Tell them anything you think they will believe. Tell them the moment another human foot steps into this crater, the moment a single nation or scientist on Earth begins work on another guided missile, we will blast off and destroy life on Earth. ”

“ And Larkin turned away, laughing.
They were primitive, these people, and as the girl Laurie had said, they needed a scapegoat. They didn't like it here on the ship. There had been a first generation which had known Earth and could savor its flavor through the long years like a delicate wine. And there would be a last which could get out on the Centaurian planet, stretch its legs, and build civilization anew. But these in between were in limbo. They lived and they died on the ship, and it wasn't their idea. They would breed so that the ship would still have a crew when it reached Centauri. ”

“ Only the Glory of the Galaxy’s officers in their bright new uniforms and gold braid knew the grim truth of what awaited the gleaming two-thousand ton spaceship less than twenty-four hours away at the exact center of its perihelion passage.
Something—unidentified as yet—in all the thousands of intricate things that could go wrong on a spaceship, particularly a new one making its maiden voyage, had gone wrong. The officers were checking their catalogues and their various areas of watch meticulously—and not because their own lives were at stake. In spaceflight, your own life always is at stake. ”

“ I mean it, Harry. The Wompan assumes its own shape when its killed. If it's killed because that's rare. Then it looks like a shapeless, jelly-like mass of protoplasm."
"Then what's so dangerous about it?"
"It can mime anything. A swamp-buggy. A man. A blaster."
"A blaster?"
"It can make like a blaster and blast the hell out of you," I said. "It can make like a beautiful woman and then strangle you when you're at your weakest. It can—"
"Did you lock the gate?" Harry asked. I felt a little sorry for him. Maybe I'm no Frank Buck, but Harry wasn't cut out for the frontier at all. ”

“ He passed a skeleton in the companionway, like the one he had seen in another ship. For the same reason, he thought. He had time to think that. And then he saw them.
Diane. On the floor, her spacesuit off her now, a great bruise, blue-ugly bruise across her temple. Unconscious.
And the thing which hovered over her.
At first he did not know what it was, but he leaped at it. It turned, snarling. There was air in the ship and he wondered about that. He did not have time to wonder. The thing was like some monstrous, misshapen creature, a man—yes, but a man to give you nightmares. ”

“ Outside, with the snow still falling, drifting down in unhurried silence, he found himself hating Mr. Davidson. The man should have minded his own business. Old meddler. He was a menace to the community, too. Whose side was he on, anyway? A senile old man? An agent provocateur for the barbarians in the western mountains? Was his self-appointed mission in life to see to it that people like poor Mrs. Friedlander never knew another moment of peace all the rest of their lives?
The short-wave radio—all lies. It had to be lies. If it weren't lies you could understand nothing. ”

“ It would be pretty unimaginative of mankind to consider itself the only sentient form of life, Earth the only home of intelligence, both from a scientific and a religious point of view. We kind of expected to find—neighbors out in space. Kit, the sky is full of stars, most stars have planets. The universe crawls with life, all sorts of life, all sorts of intelligent life. In short, we are not alone. It would be sort of like taking the jet-shuttle from Washington to New York during the evening rush and expecting to be the only one aboard. In reality, you're lucky to get breathing space. ”

“ Right now Diane is the most important thing."
"Diane's future, your future, all our futures ultimately depend on this. What's the matter with you? You fail to see the forest for the trees. Tomorrow, what's tomorrow, with all mankind's days ahead of us—slave or free? Perhaps one man could do the job alone, although two would have a better chance. But I think you know I'm not the man for the job. I don't await your answer, Johnny Hope. I've no one else to turn to. Humanity awaits your answer." ”

“ He wouldn't be able to fool the scientists, and the scientists just wouldn't do it.
But a crash program for time travel, now that was something else. That could be done. He would see that it was done.
For what purpose?
To return to the dawn of the human race. To find dawn man, the first man. Call him Adam. To find the first truly human being.
To kill him.
To snuff humanity out at its source, as a flame is snuffed before it can start a fire.
To prevent the human race from enjoying what he would never enjoy. To destroy humanity by killing the first man. ”

“ Laniq explained. "If a large body of horsemen arrives, they will see it in plenty of time. As for the lone traveler, he could be nothing but a friend. An enemy would not live long in this place."
They advanced on the oasis, the unfamiliar yakskin clothing itching Tedor's skin, the stain which converted him to a Mongol in appearance smarting in his eyes. Before long the black felt yurts were not ahead of them but all around them and they walked, completely uncontested, to the very door of Genghis Kahn's own yurt, the standard of the nine yak tails billowing above it in the stiff wind. ”

“ The Cyclops, his tree-trunk sized walking stick leaning against the wall, was reclining and drinking from a huge bowl of wine. The cave was torchlit. Seventy or eighty sheep milled about, settling for the night after three of their number had supplied a meal for the giant, who had eaten them raw.
"Isn't there anything we can do?" demanded Glaudot, whose dreams of galactic conquest were fading before the spectre of being eaten alive.
"Reserve your strength until he sleeps," Robin said. "Of course there's something we can do." ”

“ In absolute darkness and a ringing in the ears and far away a dim glowing light and larger and brighter and the whirling whirling spinning flashing I don't believe but strangely somehow I have faith, faith in myself, buzzing, humming, glowing ...
The world exploded.
There was a great deal of laughter in the tavern.
At first he thought the laughter was directed at him. Giddily, he raised his head. He saw raw wood rafters, a leaded glass window, a stained and greasy wall, heavy wood-plank tables with heavy chairs and a barbarous-looking crew drinking from heavy clay mugs. ”

“ The beautiful woman looked at him coldly. "You already have this man dead and cremated, don't you, Felg?" she asked contemptuously.
"He'll live on!" cried Felg, in mock reverence. "Don't we all. We live forever—as we die forever! On with the cycle! Hooray for life! Hooray for death! Are you ready, lowborn? Ready for your passage to a higher station?"
The woman whispered fiercely, "You don't believe a word of that, do you?"
Instead of answering her, Felg hefted his mace and waited for the lowborn's reply. "Ranmut is my name," came the other's piping voice. ”

“ Qui Dor ignored him. "Let me tell you in advance," he said, "that the elimination of a copy extends beyond the merely physical. When the second Channing disappears, so will your memory of him. You will remember that any individual, any object—created by me or not—is merely a collocation of qualities perceived by you, the people aware of the object. To destroy the object is to destroy the collocation of qualities within your minds—past, present, and future." ”

“ How would you feel being trapped on a rock less than half a mile across, without any weapons, with your radio shot to hell, without enough fuel in your ship to get you half way to any other asteroid, when you knew that around on the night side were maybe a dozen armed men, claim jumpers, ready to kill you on sight? ”

“ Alan brought the spaceship down on its tail, its rocket exhaust blasting the pumice below with blistering heat.
There was still time, Alan thought.
But they were helpless.
He wondered if, in decisive moments, history was full of such traitors—men like the reporter who would soon bring civilization on Earth, life on Earth, to an end when he returned Alan and his crew over to Keifer's Federation forces within the dome. He shrugged—then wondered also how strongly a man had to believe to forfeit his life for a principle. ”

“ Steve fought shoulder to shoulder with Teejay. Now that he'd been reunited with her, there'd be no more separation, he vowed silently. Not unless he died here on the purple world.
Energy beams crossed back and forth as the men retreated, stumbling and darting among the little hillocks. Time lost its normally rigid control. Hours might have been minutes, or the other way around. Time became utterly subjective, with each man living in his own particular continuum. For Steve it seemed at least a short version of eternity until they reached the Frank Buck. ”

“ There was the red star, a monstrous blotch of crimson swollen and brooding on the horizon and filling a quarter of the sky. There was the fleck of white high up near the top of the red giant, its white-dwarf companion in transit. ”

“ And when Chuls looked away in disinterest, Rikud became angry. If only the man would realize! If only anyone would realize! It all seemed so obvious. If he, Rikud, walked from one part of the world to another, it was with a purpose—to eat, or to sleep, or perhaps to bathe in the health-rays. Now if the world had walked from—somewhere, through the vast star-speckled darkness and to the great garden outside, this also was purposeful. ”

“ The third day, Temple arrived with the sun, sat as before in the tall grass between the pit and the water-hole and waited. Several paces beyond his hidden trap he could see the tall trees of the jungle with vines and creepers hanging from their branches. At his back, a man's length behind him was the water-hole, its deepest waters no more than waist-high. ”

“ He started to turn and got three quarters of the way around when the parabeam hit him.
After that, it was almost like watching a melodrama on television. He could watch the action unfold. His sympathies might be directed first one way, then another, but he had no part in the play. He was a statue, standing upright as the snow drifted down and coated him with white. His body-heat didn't escape the insulined jumper to melt it and in a few moments he was an incredibly manlike snowman with a human face. ”

“ There were stories they could tell, stories of generations long turned to dust, stories of the past and how, from the past, the present came, child of history, buffetted by forces it only half-understood, the helpless, passionate, living present, the moment for which, whether we admit it or not, we all live, ephemeral, hardly palpable, thrilling and then gone, dead, history, the navel for tomorrow which is today.... ”

“ Tears streamed down Hitler's face, yet he laughed. "Think how I feel. I, Hitler. A man today, a God tomorrow, because you showed me the way. Name your price, request your reward; when the world is mine the half you want shall be yours."
"I want only what is best for Germany and its people," said the man.
"What he means," Laniq whispered to Tedor, "is he wants what is best for the monopolist. Naturally he's one of our own people. Fortunately for the world, he drove this point home too strongly. Hitler will move, and soon, making a wild, incredible bid for power. ”

“ He wondered with surprising objectivity if a hundred other names, a hundred other women were not in a hundred other minds while everyone stared at the crescent Earth hanging serenely in space—with each name and each woman as dear as Stephanie, with the same combination of fire and gentle femininity stirring the blood but saddening the heart. ”

“ The battered derelict ships rolled and tumbled and spun out there, slowly, unhurried, in a mutual gravitational field which their own Gormann '87 had disturbed. It was a sargasso like the legendary Sargasso Seas of Earth's early sailing days, becalmed seas, seas without wind, with choking Sargasso weed, seas that snared and entrapped....
"Can we get out?" Diane asked.
He shrugged. "That depends. How strong the pull of gravity is. Whether the Gormann's rocket drive is still working. If we can repair the radar. We'd never get out without the radar." ”

“ In many ways, it was like a scar on the face of the earth, pitted with bomb craters, strewn with the debris of toppled towers, its streets choked with fallen, crumbling masonry and blocked by the skeletons of buildings which once had stood, bare and rusted now but not always so, as monuments to the greatness of man. Yet it was a scar which could be healed, a broken, dying city which could be made great again, with men and women roving its streets, repairing the structures, making the living city function once more. ”

“ Matlin lifted the mace slowly. "Here on Kedak, how can death hold such terrors? Death is not the unknown. Death is not a sleep of forever, a sleep without waking, or the unproven expectation of sharing a dream of immortality with the god. Death here on Kedak is merely a way station in the passage of life, many lives. So why should we fear death? You believe this, do you not? Believe the transcripts from the Book of the Dead as our religious teachers read them?"
"I believe," said Felg quickly, without passion, without conviction. ”

“ His suite was far within the walls of the Kremlin, so deep and so well hidden, in fact that not fifty people in all of Moscow knew its location. For Stalin this had not been necessary, Malenkov thought uncomfortably. His suite had been secret, true enough—but thousands of people had known its location. With Malenkov it was different. He could trust no one—no one. He never knew a man could feel so completely alone, so helpless at night and afraid to sleep. Every time he saw Vladimir Chenkov's lean, gaunt face he went almost sick with fear. ”

“ In volunteering for the Stalintrek, Sophia had invaded man's domain. She had watched not with embarrassment but with scorn while the men in front of her got out of their clothing. She had invaded man's domain, and as she watched them, the short, flabby ones, the bony ones with protruding ribs and collar-bones, those of milky white skin and soft hands, she knew most of them would bite off more than they could chew if ever they tried what was the most natural thing for men to try with a lone woman in an isolated environment. ”

“ If it weren't for the tawny-haired girl who had saved his life, Johnny Hope never would have returned to the encampment of the Shining Ones. He left DeReggio with the intention of again heading north toward New York, but his way led him close by the encampment and he remembered the sudden touch of the girl's hand and before that the vision of her face, lovely and comforting, while he burned with the fever. Calling himself a fool, he entered the encampment warily, half-expecting a dozen men to leap at him with the word traitor on their lips. ”

“ The mace was high over Matlin's head now. The crowd came close, watching. Someone touched the single mace remaining on its hook, and the mace swung slowly. The swinging motion caught Felg's eye and he watched, fascinated. But the mace was out of reach and he must have known it. Everything but death was now out of reach, forever out of reach.
"That death is not a cold sleep from which there is no awakening?" ”

“ Was the Comrade Doctor in the employ of Chenkov to poison him? Was he in the employ of Ruscar for some nameless purpose? Or of Zhubin, the bio-chemist, to transform Malenkov also into a pink thing floating in ghastly fluid in a little glass container?
Almost blubbering as he walked toward the laboratory, Malenkov could feel the weight of Communist Empire, crushing him like a worm to the floor.
"I've never been in the Kremlin," Laniq told Chenkov as they hurried along the silent hallways within the walled fortress. ”

“ Johnny said, "Shut up, damn you." He couldn't deny all that Amos was saying, but his parents had perished at the hands of a man-made Plague, he had been driven from his home, rejected by the Shining Ones, even, until he proved himself in battle. What did he owe to humanity, to that big, sprawling concept which took in all kinds of men and their women, children, good people, bad ones, big and small, with every type of mind and every type of body...?
"All right, marry the girl. Will you raise a family? You're Shining Ones, Johnny, both of you. The rest of humanity fears you, and rightfully. ”

“ Temple suggested.
"No. If she were here today and if everything were normal, would you marry her?"
"Why talk about what can't be?"
"I want to know, that's why."
"All right. Yes, I would. I would marry Stephanie."
"Oh," said Sophia. "Then what happened in the dream meant ... nothing."
"We were two different people," Temple said coolly, then wished he hadn't for it was only half-true. He remembered everything about the dream-which-was-more-than-a-dream vividly. He had been far more intimate with Sophia, and over a longer period of time, than he had ever been with Stephanie. ”