The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 540
"That may be, but—" Harlow paused, mused a short while, ventured, "Well, maybe I'm not as young as I used to be. But that doesn't make me a dead dog, does it?"
"Not at all."
"Kangshan doesn't think so."
"You say you've got a partner there?"
"Yes, Jim Lacey. He's all I've got in creation. No scout operates alone except by accident. They go places in small bunches or often in pairs. You fellows who zoom around in shiploads don't know what partnership really means. A man's sidekick is his only contact with the human race when the rest of it is multi-million miles away. He's another brain to help solve problems, another pair of hands to work and fight. With each other a couple of trouble-seekers can get by in circumstances where if alone they'd go nuts. So I'm telling you that in faraway places partnership is something very special."
"I can well imagine," said Warhurst.
"Lacey was my first and longest space-partner. We were born in the same town, lived on the same street, went to the same schools and eventually joined the service together. We were dropped into some hot spots and shared the grief when things became rough and tough. Now I'm going to Kangshan. I promised I'd meet him there."
"After best part of forty years he wouldn't figure on seeing you again, would he?"
With a stubborn set to his jaw, Harlow repeated, "I said I'd meet him and that's all that matters." He stood up, a little creakily, "My turn. Same again?" Warhurst nodded.
Taking the empty glasses, Harlow carried them to the bar. "A crew-rum and another shot of that green hair oil."
"Like it, Pop?" asked Joe, willing to be sociable.
Harlow hammered on the bar and bawled, "Don't call me Pop, you bottle-juggling ape! I could outmarch you with a ninety-pound pack and then do a tap dance." Grabbing the drinks, he brought them back, seated himself and snarled, "Booze-slingers in space. They'll be organizing beauty contests next. Human race is on the skids."
"Here's to the old days," said Warhurst. He drank, wobbled his Adam's apple, closed his eyes and held on tight. "For a beginner you show promise, Wharton."
"Warhurst, if you don't mind."
THERE WAS the inevitable spell of rushed work before the landing but Warhurst got through it in good time and stationed himself at the head of the gangway. The formality was always the same; as each passenger began the descent Warhurst put on his most cordial smile and speeded the parting guest with a word of good cheer.
"Hope you've enjoyed your trip, Mr. Soandso. Good-by! Best of luck!"
Harlow came last, having listened to the swan song a dozen times while waiting beside his big case. Heaving the case forward, he stopped at the top of the steps.
"Why don't they tape it and save you the bother? Thought you said there's nothing wrong with doing things the easy way."
"Passengers like the personal touch."
"They would. Mothers' pets. Think they're mighty tough but I could beat 'em away with my hat." His watery eyes gazed across the primitive spaceport and into the far distance. "Last landing for me. Just as well, I reckon. Got to come sometime and it might as well be now."
Warhurst held out a hand. "Good-by, Bill. Glad to have known you."
Giving the hand a couple of prim shakes, Harlow responded with, "We got along, Warburton." Then he lugged his case down the steps and across the tarmac. A big, beefy man met him, chatted briefly, tried to take the case and was fiercely repelled. The big man then led him to a private floater and climbed aboard. Harlow got his case in and followed. A few seconds later the floater emitted a high-pitched whine, shuddered a couple of times, then soared. Heading swiftly northward, it diminished to a dot and vanished.
Winterton appeared at the exit, said with satisfaction, "All off. That's got rid of another menagerie."
"I often wonder just what happens to them," Warhurst ventured.
"I don't," said Winterton. "Couldn't care less. Got more than enough to worry about."
Soon afterward the ship took off and headed back to base with little load aboard. Outward cargo was always plentiful, inward usually small. All they took out of Kangshan was ten tons of osmiridium and two passengers.
THE SHIP made six relatively short hauls from base and one long run to Terra. Then it arrived at Kangshan again. Three years had passed since its last visit but the scene had changed only slightly. The spaceport was now a fraction larger and had a new control tower. The adjacent capital town of Wingbury had added a couple of hundred houses and that was all.
Winterton came along and asked, "Want to go out?"
"Who wouldn't?" responded Warhurst. "Aren't we beating it yet?"
"The refinery says it can boost the return load if we'll wait four days. The agent says we're to stand by and take it. Anyone who wants to run around on solid earth can do so." He waved an arm in the general direction of Wingbury. "Go help yourself."
"Thanks," said Warhurst. "Nine thousand population and one soda-bar."
"You don't have to go."
"I'll go. Give my legs some exercise if nothing else."
Donning his dress uniform, he went into town. He'd been there a couple of times before and knew what to expect. One main street with forty quiet, understocked shops. It was a settlement right on the space frontier, growing and developing with chronic slowness. One could not expect the sophisticated joys of civilization on a planet with two small towns, thirty villages and a total population of less than fifty thousands.
He strolled ten times up and down the main street and stared into the half-empty windows of shops. Becoming bored, he visited the soda-bar, took a stool near to the only other customer, a leathery-faced character in his early thirties.
The customer nodded. "Hi, sailor! What ship?"
"Salamander."
"Should have known she was due. I lose touch these days, being well out of town. When are they going to start sending the really big boats?"
"Darned if I know."
The other nodded again, mused a bit, went on, "Hard luck on you fellows. Nothing for you here. Progress takes time. But things will be different if you can live long enough to see 'em."
"I know," said Warhurst.
"Got no relatives here, no friends, nobody you can visit?"
"Not a soul."
"Too bad."
"I palled on with a fellow who landed on the last trip, three years ago. Wouldn't mind seeing how he's making out."
"Well, what's to stop you?"
"Lost track of him," Warhurst explained. "Saw him off the ship and don't know where he went."
THE OTHER twisted around on his stool and pointed across the road. "Try the governmental building over there, department of immigration. They register every arrival and should be able to tell you where he is."
"Thanks!" Finishing his drink, Warhurst crossed the road, entered the building and found the department on the second floor. He spoke to the young clerk behind the counter. "I'm trying to trace a recent immigrant."
"Date of arrival and full name?"
Warhurst gave the information.
Digging out a ledger, the clerk thumbed through it, asked, "Ex the Salamander?"
"Yes, that's my ship."
"William Harlow," said the clerk. "Exempted from age restriction. Taken into the charge of Joseph Buhl. I don't know what—"
Another clerk standing nearby interrupted with, "Buhl? I saw Joe Buhl a couple of minutes ago. He went up the road as I was looking through the window."
"He's your man," informed the first clerk. "You should have no trouble finding him." He extracted a register and consulted it. "His floater is numbered D117. You'll find it in the park alongside the spaceport."
"What does he look like?"
"As tall as you but a lot heavier. Has a slight paunch, big red face and bushy eyebrows."
"I'll track him down," Warhurst said. "It'll give me something to do."
Trudging back to the spaceport, he reached the floaterpark and found machine D117. He sat on the fat tire of a landing wheel and waited. There were twelve other floaters in the park. Far across the tarmac stood only one spaceship, his own, waiting for its promised payload. After forty minutes a hefty, florid-faced man approached. Warhurst came to his feet.
"Mr. Buhl?"
"That's right."
"Thought I'd like to see Bill Harlow. I've been told that you should know where he is."
Buhl studied him levelly. "Got bad news for you."
"Is he—?"
"Died a year ago, aged ninety."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"You an old friend of his?" Buhl inquired.
"Couldn't be, having only half his years. I kept him company on the last trip. Took a liking to the cantankerous old cuss and he seemed to find me bearable."
"I understand. Why did you figure on looking him up—got some time on your hands?"
"A bit."
"Well, maybe I can fill it in for you, mister—?"
"Steve Warhurst."
"I'll give you a ride and show you something mighty interesting."
BUHL UNLOCKED the floater's door and motioned the other to enter. Warhurst got in and settled himself. Buhl plumped heavily into the pilot's seat, slammed the door, took the machine up and turned its nose to the north.
"Know much about this planet?"
"Not a lot," Warhurst confessed. "There are so many newly settled worlds these days that we space wanderers get to learn little about any of them. On each planet the spaceport and adjacent town is about all we're familiar with."
"Then I'll educate you somewhat," Buhl said. "This planet was discovered by a survey ship called the Kangshan and its captain named it after his ship. He made the usual aerial survey but—as is always the case—it wasn't enough. He came down low to test the atmosphere and found it satisfactory. So he dumped a couple of scouts and took off, leaving them to face a forty days' survival test."
"Bait," Warhurst contributed.
"Correct. Scouts are bait. That's what they're for—among other things." Buhl gazed meditatively forward while the floater hissed steadily on. "The two were Jim Lacey and Bill Harlow."
"Ah! I never knew that."
"You know now. They tramped around looking for exploitable prospects—and trouble. Eventually they arrived at a big quartzite monolith known today as The Needle. Mineral-rich mountains lay to the west, a big river and falls to the east. Time was pressing. Guess what?"
"They split," Warhurst hazarded.
"Correct. They broke the rules and split up. It was no crime but it was a risk. Harlow headed west and Lacey went east. They agreed to meet at The Needle four days later. Harlow returned on time lugging a load of stuff for assay. He camped at The Needle for a couple of days and then went looking for Lacey. He found him near the river, dead."
"Huh?" Warhurst looked baffled. "The old fellow talked as if Lacey were still alive."
"He would," said Buhl. "That's the way these oldtimers were made." He dropped the floater's nose and began to lose altitude. "Lacey had had his feet bitten off by a mud-wallower. He'd blasted it as he fell and thus didn't get eaten. But then he went under from loss of blood. Harlow buried him, marked the grave, examined the wallower and made careful notes about it. In due time the Kangshan homed on his tiny beacon and picked him up. The planet was settled on the strength of his report and wallowers have since been hunted down and exterminated."
"HARLOW didn't say a word about all this," complained Warhurst.
"Typical of him. If he bragged it was always about how he could keep going long after us softer types had dropped." Buhl pointed downward. A wide river now wound beneath with a monster cascade straight ahead. "Lacey Falls." Turning away from the river he brought the floater down to twenty feet above a rough dirt road. He followed the road for a few miles until a small town rolled into sight. "Look to your right."
Obediently, Warhurst looked and was in time to see a large roadside sign that said: HARLOW. Pop. 820.
"Named after him, eh?"
"That's right. I'm the mayor. We gave him a home, comfort and companionship in his last days. It was all we could do for him."
"I'm glad of that."
"Wasn't much use, though. He'd been kept alive beyond his years by change, activity and danger. He was killed by leisure and safety. There was no solution to the problem and he knew it. Often he'd leave town, walk out to The Needle and brood."
"Why?"
"Because he'd told Lacey he'd meet him there. He never forgot it. It became an obsession towards the end. His last words were, 'I told Jim I'd meet him'."
They crossed the town, landed at the base of an enormous quartzite rock. They got out and stared up at it. It soared for two hundred feet, the facets of its crystals glittering in the sun.
"The Needle," informed Buhl. "It's not unique. There are other formations like it. We dug up Lacey's bones and buried them here. We buried Harlow with them."
He led the way around to the front of The Needle. A plain, unadorned grave lay at its foot. On the face of the rock a skilled mason had polished a square yard of crystal and cut a neat inscription thereon.
All it said was:
James Lacey
and
William Harlow
THEY MET.
The End
Eternal Rediffusion
Eric Frank Russell & Leslie J. Johnson
Weird Tales – Fall 1973
ALONG the great ribbon of concrete track roared Sampson's twin-engined Stutz Special. Behind, gradually narrowing the margin between them, thundered the Silver Bullet piloted by Stanley Ferguson. Excited huzzahs of a multitude of fans were drowned by rising howls of flame-belching exhausts as the two leaders plummeted toward the end of the straight. Slow-down flags vibrated in the pits as futilely as reeds in the eddies of a rushing current.
Both men were speed-crazy, and crazily they met the top bend. High up the side of the cup they ripped, Ferguson striving to edge his bonnet past the other's tail, Sampson straining every nerve to prevent a pass. Wheels spoked with fleeting shadows spun madly a foot from the embankment's edge.
Then it happened.
A wheel went over the edge, clawed wildly at nothingness. The following disc screamed as tortured rubber parted from canvas. The tail of the Silver Bullet was grabbed by an invisible hand, lifted upward until the long, sleek machine was poised upon its nose. For a sickening instant it stood like two tons defying gravity, then it surrendered, somersaulted from sight. There came a rending crash.
Above the metal coffin the fire-demons hastily erected an obelisk of smoke.
The grisly maestro played The Speedster's Lament. He drummed with a patter of feet, a pant of bodies as thousands swarmed and converged like ants besieging a broken honeycomb. He plucked upon heart-strings, drew forth deep sobs of women sounding in ghastly antiphon to the muttering of white-faced men. He hammered on the gong of the track ambulance, blew shrill blasts on policemen's whistles, pulled out all the stops of emotion in the mass.
Flames crackled and spat and subsided andante beneath a rising hiss of chemical extinguishers. The concord of pain found its metronome in the rhythmic squeak of an oil-thirsty newsreel camera.
Sampson shoved his way through, murmuring, "Ferguson, Ferguson," his face drawn, chalky. Nobody took any notice; all peered at the wreck.
Men in uniform pulled at the sud-smothered pile. The mashed body was hauled out, dumped on a tray, and slid into the rear of the track wagon like a joint of meat entering an oven. It had been Ferguson, but it was meat. The cooks were clad in white.
The crowd, loving blood next to money, stood on the running-boards, fumbled at the oven door, exclaimed and gaped and drooled. Some hung around with natural expressions, others with suggestions of intelligence.
From the fringe of the crowd sneaked a souvenir hunter. He carried a battered and a very charred helmet. He bore it with the furtive air of a vagabond making off with the casque of a fallen knight.
But Ferguson saw him.
Ferguson saw not only the vagabond, but also the crowd, the wreck, the wagon, the corpse. That which was Ferguson gazed with patient disinterest at that which Ferguson had been. The scene appeared meaningless, offered no data for speculation. His new state of being carried with it an extra-mundane comprehension having nothing in common with earthly minds. The new Ferguson failed to understand mere superficialities. He had a perception of a vast background of which he was but a tiny member, yet he dared not as yet grope back along his life-line to its source. A journey lay before him, and there was no reason why he should wait. A journey lay before the thing that had been his body. But their paths diverged ...
The still-living Ferguson commenced to expand. He was a spiritual entity, an etheric intelligence, substanceless, without form or shape, obeying none of the laws that had compelled obedience when he was bound within a framework of flesh and blood.
He moved in three dimensions at once, travelling along the causeway of rapidly increasing size, his speed being the velocity of thought. He progressed by expansion toward a goal of which he was aware, and he progressed assuredly and urgently, like one who has been overlong in the desert, and has found the route to a far oasis.
Teeming Terra dropped beneath him, and he observed its flight with complete detachment. All its loves, all its fears, and all its bawling ballyhoo were less pregnant with meaning than the midnight howl of a deserted dog.
Away it rushed, a wandering, wondering, whining, warring ball of dirt, praying Sundays, preying Mondays, week in and week out, year after year, aeon after aeon. That once called Ferguson thought not, cared not, wept not. The Universe of which he had once been a part, now seemed a part of him; it was a complete reversal of perception and perhaps also of fact. The querulous speck of dust that had been the Earth, with its colonies of germs, had served its momentary purpose. He watched it shoot up the nozzle of the celestial cleaner.
