Stories Complete by Jack Lewis

Author:Jack Lewis [Lewis, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-10-21T00:00:00+00:00

VII

A gentle bump rippled up from the rubber stanchions. He looked out the blister window. The ship had landed. Incredibly and unexplainably it had been whisked across trillions of miles of space in a matter of seconds, and placed like some child’s toy in the center of a broad meadow.

A quarter of a mile away—at the edge of the meadow—was a small lake that lapped at some reedy shore-grass. And across the lake was a building. It was a big building, constructed out of what looked like white marble. It had old-fashioned oblong windows, and a pillar-supported porch that reached up gauntly to roof-top height. In the distance were some low hills.

Vince continued to stare out the window, thinking, trying to rationalize the situation. From the deep pit of his memory, he remembered laughing at the ravings of the science-fiction writers, and their talk of space-time continuums. Yet how else had this been accomplished?

He got up suddenly, and worked his way down the corridor well to the lock room where he checked the air outside. Noted that the Nitrox needle hovered at 78-21. He opened the lock-door and started down the boarding ladder. Nimbly he went, down, past the hot wave that poured off the still-warm jets, past the huge rubber stanchions, jumping impatiently from the fourth rung to the solid ground, where he stood silently in the knee-deep grass, drinking in long gulps of sweet-smelling air.

Above him towered the ship. And across the lake he could see the house clearly between a row of sparsely-scattered trees. He started walking toward it. There was a path around the lake. Not a heat-repellant-metal walkway, like the ones in common use, but an old-fashioned concrete sidewalk. He followed the path around the lake, breathing heavily of the ripe odor of soggy vegetation. He was within fifty yards of the house when the door opened. A man stepped out. He was a big square-jawed man with massive shoulders and deep-rutted leathery skin. He looked to be in his early sixties, but he could have been much older. He neither spoke nor smiled.

Vince walked up to him and extended a hand. “My name’s Vince Conway,” he said.

The man stared at him. He made no attempt to acknowledge the greeting.

Awkwardly, Vince let his hand drop. “I landed on your meadow,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

He watched the man’s mouth twitch. For a moment it occurred to him that the old fellow didn’t understand. Then he spoke: “I don’t mind. . . . I don’t mind if you don’t mind.”

“Would you care to tell me where I am?” Vince asked.

The watery-blue eyes regarded him with a dull stare. “Didn’t they tell you?”

“They?”

The old man nodded. “The Bogs. They must have guided you in.”

“Vince frowned. “By the Bogs, I suppose you mean the little men who dress up like Jack Jupiter, Junior. . . . Yeah, they guided me in. They gave me a lot of space water about bringing me to the Earth Settlement of a planet called Desire.

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