Jesse F. Bone

“ I suppose that it was foolish to give way to the feeling of every man for himself but I am not a spaceman trained to react automatically to emergencies. Neither am I a navigator or a pilot, although I can fly in an emergency. I am a biologist, a specialist member of the scientific staff—essentially an individualist. I knew enough to seal myself in, push the eject button and energize the drive. However, I did not know that a lifeboat had no acceleration compensators, and by the time the drive lever returned to neutral, I was far out in space and thoroughly lost. ”

“ The life here, if not animate, is at least intelligent—and it is not friendly. Yet neither does it hate. It observes me with a slow, methodical curiosity that I can sense at the very threshold of consciousness. It is a peculiar sensation that is quite indescribable—unpleasant—but hardly terrifying. I suppose I can feel it more than a normal person because I am a biologist and it is part of my training and specialized skill to achieve a certain rapport with my surroundings. ”

“ Of course, this world is unnatural, which makes its effect on the nervous system more powerful, yet that does not explain the feeling of tension which I have been experiencing, the silent straining tension of an overloaded cable, the tension of a toy balloon overfull with air. ”

“ It will be amusing to speculate about what sort of a reaction it'll provoke, providing it is ever read. I can see them now, huge-headed humans, wrinkling their noses and saying "Intelligent algae—fantastic—the man must have been mad!"
The manuscript ends here—and of course we know that the "man" was not mad. He left behind a rich heritage indeed, for those few cells that escaped his wrath and floated down to the sea. Did we but know his origin we would erect a suitable memorial if we had to travel to the farthest reach of our galaxy. ”

“ No birds fly, no insects buzz, no animals rustle the silent underbrush. The only noise is the wind in the trees and grasses. I am utterly alone. It is a strange feeling, this loneliness. There is a feeling of freedom in it, a release from the too-close proximity of my fellow men. There is the pleasure of absolute privacy. ”

“ I am surprised that this world is so capable of supporting human life. The consensus of scientific opinion has been that less than one out of 50,000 planets would be habitable. Yet I have struck paydirt on the first try. ”

“ I think as time passes I shall miss the comfort of companionship, the sense of belonging to a group, the card games, the bull sessions, the endless speculation on what comes next, or what we will do when the voyage is over and we are again on Earth ... ”

“ Of course, the term "Homewater" is gradually replacing this archaic concept as we extend our hegemony ever more widely across the disunited worlds of the galaxy.
At that it seems strange that the unknown author's race should have passed. As individuals they had so many advantages, while we are so weak and individually so helpless. They could do almost everything except communicate and cooperate. We can do but little else, yet our larger aggregations can control entire worlds, some peopled perhaps with descendants of this very individual. ”

“ Yet it affords me a certain satisfaction to think that a part of me will remain long after I have returned to dust. In any event, I feel that one is not truly dead if a part of his personality remains. Many of the ancients such as Homer, Phidias, Confucius, Christ, da Vinci, Lincoln, Einstein, Churchill—and many others—live on through their works when otherwise they would long since have been forgotten and thus be truly dead. ”

“ It doesn't get greater, but it has become more insisting—more demanding. I seem to feel that it wants something, that its direction has become more channelized. The conviction is growing within me that I am destined to be absorbed. ”

“ That is one of the outstanding characteristics of the human race—the ability to adjust to our environment, or, failing that, to adjust our environment to us. In addition, I have my hands, tools, and materials to work with here in the lifeboat. ”

“ Intestinal activity stops as blood is channeled into the areas which my fear and my glands decide will need it most. I sweat. My vision blurs. All the manifold changes of the fight or flight syndrome are mobilized for instant action. ”

“ Even the most complex life forms are just aggregations of individual cells working together. So if a few individual cells with rudimentary data-storage capacity got the idea of uniting why couldn't they act like a complex organism? ”

“ Under pressure my body reacts, preparing me to fight or flee. My adrenals pump hormones into my bloodstream, stimulating my heart and my sympathetic nervous system, making glucose more available to my muscles. ”

“ And while I have no expectation of an immortality such as theirs, it flatters my ego to think that there will be some part of me which also will survive ...
(Note: There are several lines following this which are obliterated, defaced or unreadable. There are more to follow. In the future such gaps in the content will be indicated thus: ...)
... I expect that it is a basic trait of character, for spacemen must be gregarious, and although I am not truly a spaceman I have been in space and, in consequence, my character is no different from my ex-crewmates—at least in that respect. ”

“ It may not soothe the enemy, for it isn't savage, but it certainly soothes me, even though there's something repetitive about it after a half a hundred playings. My breast's savage all right. Fact is, it's downright primitive when an attack starts. ”

“ It took a speck of one-celled plant life on a world parsecs away to prove it for all the galaxy. The following manuscript was discovered during the excavation of a lateral connecting link between the North-South streamways in Narhil Province near Issahar on Kwashior. ”