Almost Complete Short Fiction by Lester Del Rey

Author:Lester Del Rey [del Rey, Lester]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jerry eBooks
Published: 2020-03-29T21:00:00+00:00

He was sobbing wildly, and his cries rang in his ears when he found himself back in the control room. The incipient insanity in his own voice snapped him back, slowly this time, through his childhood horror of violence, his bravado as a youth setting out to help save the world, and finally the present where his whole hope and faith had been tied up in this great hulk of metal around him.

It had failed. He faced it now—and he knew that even without all its slowly returning memories, his mind was back to the thirty-five-year level. There were twisted, bitter thoughts still, but he faced the fact which he couldn’t have accepted once. The Station had failed, and his fellow men had blown out the spark of divinity in them and gone back to the jungles, with all the power of the science that could have made them star-men.

He was still crying, and he made no effort to stop it. But he was in control of himself.

Slowly, with a sick fear of what he must see, he moved to the screen that was set to show the scene on Earth toward which the telescope pointed. He flipped it on, adjusting the levers that controlled the instrument by a process of trial and error. For a moment he stopped then, and looked up toward the Moon that rode in space so far above him.

Men had been about to reach that. He’d even hoped that he might go along. Now it was lost.

Then he looked down, seeing the vision of what had been a city through the thin veil of clouds. Atmospheric disturbance blurred some of the outlines, but enough showed through. It was a slag heap, burned out of all resemblance to a scene of Earth. And for fifty miles beyond it, desolation spread out—a land where no life could live.

He shifted the telescope from time to time as the Station moved across the Earth, jumping from city to city, and finally seeking out the lesser ones. Some of those had obviously been hit only by the old-style A-bombs—but damage was complete enough.

He dropped the controls and let the scene below slide by as the Station cruised on. For a few minutes, a welcome numbness hit him. Then he stood up slowly. There would be poison in the dispensary.

He reached for the screen switch, and froze. In the scene, dots moved slowly. He dropped back to the webbing seat, staring down, trying to increase the magnification. The Station was over Africa now—and that meant that he was watching some of the larger animals, probably. But . . .

Something else moved, a mere dot in the screen, but still having a vague shape. Its speed told the real story though. It was an airplane. And now that he looked closer, he saw that the dots below were traveling too straight for beasts. They must be cars on a road!

Life still went on.

Fenton shook himself, and his trembling fingers reached for the switch of the ultra-frequency radio.

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