On Blazing Wings by L. Ron Hubbard

Author:L. Ron Hubbard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781592126002
Publisher: Galaxy Press
Published: 2011-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

He wrenched the door wide and catapulted himself into the empty dark. . . .

It was the twentieth of February. And that morning David Duane had swung out of his bunk to be transfixed by the sight of the calendar. For in these days of restless waiting, when he had been consigned to his bunk because of an ankle twisted in his descent, he had very carefully combed his memory until he had extracted the last ounce of information.

“But I can change it! I swear I can!”

“You never have.”

“But in knowing this now, I can!”

But could he? So far, events had marched in regular order. Lieutenant Aro, Rossov, escape. And he had the dead feeling that events would continue to march. Had not a twisted ankle detained him here until this date? And was there not still time for Sabrina . . .

He shuddered.

In the few days he had been away from her, he had begun to appreciate the warmth and vitality and beauty of her as he never had done when he was with her. It was a sick, empty feeling, such as a man had when he couldn’t bring a ship out of a spin.

He looked at the calendar again. He had drawn a red circle around the day and then, with a stick of charcoal, had marked out the rest of the year, and would have marked the years thereafter, had they been listed.

He found, strangely enough, that he did not mind the thought of dying. He had lived with that thought so long that it had lost its novelty. You went up and applied what skill and luck you had, and then maybe you came back, or maybe you got a bullet in you and went down flaming. No, he didn’t mind the thought of dying, probably because he had always somehow felt that, after this, there was an Again.

“No, this settles it. We do not have any record of your doing anything but following your own Destiny as forecast.”

“But I won’t! Don’t consign me to Nothingness! Don’t give me the True Death!”

“Men make their own fates. We only forecast them and judge.”

No, he would not mind dying, if dying meant going on. But he could not conceive an abrupt cessation of existence. And he could not stand the thought of never again, never, never again, seeing Sabrina.

What had the fates done to him?

But this was just a dream, he told himself. This was just a dream and it was all false recollection. He had not really known any of those things before they happened. And here it was the twentieth, and as yet Sabrina had not—

“Say, old man,” said Captain Mikko Uotila, from the other bunk, “I’ve never seen such a bad case of the shakes before. Get on your boot or you’ll have me doing it!”

David Duane smiled absently and finished easing his boot over his still-swollen ankle.

“Worried about something?” said Mikko, for he took his squadron’s concerns very seriously.

“Oh, not much,” said David. “I .

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