The Speculative Short Fiction of T. D. Hamm by T. D. Hamm & T.D. Hamm

Author:T. D. Hamm & T.D. Hamm
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science fiction, Short stories, Space travelers -- Fiction, Space flight to Mars -- Fiction, http://archive.org/details/Vortex_Science_Fiction_v01n02_1953, Mars (Planet) -- Fiction

"This is different from the deserts back home," Hughes said. "Back there you get the feeling they're just waiting for somebody to move in, but here..."

"It's more like a haunted house," Bryan finished for him. Williams, adjusting his headphones, was conscious of a deepening of his faint uneasiness—why didn't they hurry up and get back! All they really had to do was build a cairn and plant the Federation flag. They had found a few rocks and Bryan was stooping to bury the prepared canister with the data of the flight—

Williams watching incredulously as Bryan and Hughes reeled and staggered, was dimly conscious of a sudden faint tremor along the ship. There was an abrupt metallic shrieking in his headset, a background of thundering, grinding bedlam, and over it Bryan's voice frantic—

"Cave-in! Lift ship—lift ship!"

It had been the one constant in the shifting, nebulous mass of theory drilled into them. They were valuable—the ship was irreplaceable. With a last unbelieving look of horror at the gigantic crack widening under the very feet of his companions, Williams threw himself into the control seat and threw the lever over to "takeoff" position. The rockets fired and the ship rose majestically, the thousand foot fiery splendor of her trail blotting out the space-suited figures toppling into the thundering chasm.

Hours later, Williams pulled himself up, looking around dazedly. The motors had shut off and the great ship was coasting noiselessly along the return track; only the computers ticked steadily and the air-valves made a muted shushing in the silence. Funny he hadn't noticed the silence on the way out—sometimes he had even been irritated with the noise Bryan and Hughes had made with their eternal wrangling over their cards. Automatically he pushed the forward viewing plate button feeling the familiar sense of timeless peace as he looked out on the eternal suns.

Mechanically he ate and slept in the days that followed, dimly aware of a giggling, wild-eyed stranger in some remote corner of his mind, waiting to overtake him if he showed awareness of his presence. He pushed away too, the thought of Bryan and Hughes, forgetting in the sameness of his days that he had ever been anything but alone. At first he had cried a little in his lonesomeness, but as the weeks went on he remembered only that once there had been others who had deserted him. He nodded familiarly to the stars, smiling a little; there was only himself and them, shining steadfastly above him. They would never change—never desert him!

Time went by unnoticed. The green dot of Earth became a glowing green and blue orb, circled by a tiny white dot. The computer changed its rhythm—above the control board the "strap-in" warning flashed unseen as the rockets fired swinging the ship into the turnover, ready for orbit with the satellite ferry station. Williams gazing with dreamy pleasure at the jewelled curtain above him was hurled against the port by the sudden surge of acceleration. The ship heeled over, twisted,

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