Is Something There?

Robert Betts comes to Demensions with Is Soemthing There?

The author in no way wishes to argue against the idea of human interstellar space travel. This story is a warning about it, not an argument againt it. --Robert Betts

     To land on Phlegethon was to descend into limbo. The Searcher could not have landed in a more oppressive looking environment. The landscape stretched out in all directions like a shroud covering a corpse. A mist floated across the ground like a mournful phantom, and draped black stones barely high enough to clear the murk. The stones were strangely soft, but twisted and bent into the most bizarre shapes.
     Not far from the Searcher Lander, a steep cliff curled over at the edge like a poised talon of some gigantic, predatory alien bird. Phlegethon’s dark, gloomy sky cast an eternal dreariness on everything below. The darkness was like smoke issuing from very distant fires, and it blocked out, only too well, the fierce brilliance of Sirius A.
     One kilometer from the spot where the Searcher landed a cave opened up at the entrance like a great dragon’s maw. Fog, like a tongue, continually licked the cave’s long winding interior.
     Robert Charles Dane, his heart beating anxiously, stood at the cave’s entrance and strained his brown eyes as he tried to peer inside. He turned on his krypton flashlight and aimed the beam inside. In his trembling right hand, he held a Yang-Mills stinger.
     He shivered in the cold air. Someone had screamed inside the cave, so Dane feared the worst. He stepped two meters inside and looked around, but saw only the cave’s dark walls, and tendrils of mist, floating about like beckoning goblins.
     "Willie? Willie? It’s Bob!" he shouted. "Can you hear me? Granger? Granger, what’s wrong?"
     Nothing answered him but an echo. He moved deeper into the cave cautiously looking behind him.
     Indecisive. So damned indecisive. Should’ve said no to Granger’s suggestion. Left the two of them together. Dumb, Bob Dane. Real dumb....
     Something was terribly wrong. It was stupid, following Granger’s suggestion to split up. The three of them should have remained together while they searched for the mineral samples. Working for Rixxlon, Inc. was hazardous. The megacompany continued to assign geologists like Robert Dane and John Granger on sample gathering and prospecting missions in offworld environments that were rife with all kinds of dangers.
     And now John and Willie are in some kind of trouble. No sign of them. Damn. If only I hadn’t- -
     "Bob! Over here, Bob! Hurry! God- -"
     Dane ran toward the shouts, carefully making his way down the length of the winding path. After covering thirty meters he saw a human form coming in his direction, moving impulsively in the fog. As it gradually moved into the harsh glare of Dane’s flashlight, Dane saw that it was Granger, in a seeming panic, rushing to meet him.
     Granger was panting. "Bob! Willie, he’s, he’s dead!" A huge, ratlike creature, black, covered with scales. . ." Granger tried to catch his breath.
     Dane gave him a dumbfounded look. "What? What happened?"
     "He fell, Bob. Willie fell." He ran a hand through his disheveled blond hair. "Into some kind of pit, after the, the thing attacked him."
     Dane looked at Granger’s empty holster. "Did you kill it? Where’s your stinger?"
     "Dropped it, back there." He turned and started to go back to the spot. "Come with me. Keep your stinger ready."
     He led Dane deeper into the cave. After a while, they came across the pit. When Dane saw it, he shined his flashlight into it. It was deep, and nearly two meters in diameter. To Dane, it looked like a monster’s greedy, gaping mouth.
     Dane looked at Granger. Aside from Granger’s being out of breath, the man somehow didn’t really appear to be frightened, he thought. He wasn’t trembling or shaking. And there was something in Granger’s steady blue eyes that just didn’t convince Dane about the story.
     "The creature, Bob. Don’t ask me how, but it actually crawled up the wall, directly behind where Willie was standing." He pointed to a spot on the cave wall. "Crawled up and leaped on him. It came from nowhere, black and scaly....It lunged at him and before I could shoot it, the two of them fell over into the pit."
     Dane stared at Granger in shock and disbelief. He crouched down before the pit, Granger standing behind him.
     "Willie!" shouted Dane into the pit. "Can you hear me? If so, then make some kind of noise....Shout, throw a rock, anything!"
     Only an echo came back.
     Dane stood up and faced Granger. "You say some creature attacked him?" Granger found his stinger and put it in his holster.
     "Yeah. About the size of a large dog."
     "And they both fell over?" Granger slapped his thigh and turned around, gesturing wildly with his left hand.
     "What’s the matter with you? Didn’t I tell you that? They both fell over, just like I said."
     "Okay, okay. Calm down." Dane sighed. Then he beamed his flashlight into the pit, but the blackness within it swallowed up the light.
     He abruptly looked behind him and at Granger’s face. Is he smirking? No. Can’t be. Not if what he says is true. It must be an optical trick, caused by the darkness in here, and the fog. And why would he be smirking anyway, unless- -
     "Bob, Willie and I had our differences. Hell, everybody on the Rachel knows that, or nearly anybody. To be frank, I never really liked him. But I never, I never wanted anything like this to happen to him." Granger shook his head and laughed nervously.
     "He could still be alive," said Dane. "We should get some help, climb down the pit and- -"
     "Bob, I heard Willie holler as he fell, for at least ten seconds. If Gamowski is right about this planet having a g roughly equal to eighty-one percent of Earth’s, then that means Willie must have fallen..." He paused to make the calculation in his mind. "At least four hundred meters. No one could survive a fall like that. He’s dead, Dane."
     Again Dane looked down into the black pit. Another Rixxlon casualty, he thought.
     "I guess there’s nothing more we can do but radio the Rachel and tell them what happened," said Granger.
     "They’ll investigate."
     Granger shrugged his shoulders. "Let’s get out of here. There’s nothing more we can do here."
     Dane, reluctantly, agreed. They began to grope their way back to the cave’s entrance.
     Willie, dead. Dane couldn’t believe it. The suddenness of the accident and Granger’s account of it was too much of a shock. He thought back to two days ago, when the Rachel first began to orbit the dreary, death-colored planet, about how the African geophysicist was convinced that beneath the pale and dismal clouds of Phlegethon (named that by Doctor Gamowski) lay a planetary crust rich in nickel, radioactive minerals and precious metals. Willie had the Rachel’s computers generate a list of landing sites where the ship’s geologists could gather samples. Willie himself had decided to take the Searcher Lander to one particular site and wanted Dane and Walter Russell, another geologist, to accompany them. But, for some reason, Granger begged Willie to let him come along, so Willie acquiesced and let him come in Russell’s place. Dane wondered why Granger asked Willie if he could join them. Everyone on the Rachel knew that Granger hated Willie.
     There was an incident one month ago when the Rachel first arrived at the Sirius A System after a nine-year journey. It happened in the ship’s bar. Dane saw Willie seated at a table and observed Granger enter the bar, walk over to Willie, and insult and threaten him. Dane never learned the reason Granger was so angry, but he never forgot how Granger, still angry, came over to him at the bar and told him he would like to "kill that meddlesome sonofabitch."
     As Dane neared the cave entrance, he stopped, wondering if Granger had found the opportunity to carry out his rash threat while in the cave with Willie. It was a terrible question to ask, but there it was in his mind, and it wouldn’t go away.
     "Back at the entrance again, Granger, thank God. But you can thank Him for what awaits out there, if He really exists somewhere." He zipped up his thick, waist length coat. "Damn it. Only thing these company coats do is help us blend in with the gray fog, along with our pants."
     They emerged from the cave entrance, their flashlights blazing into pervasive wisps of fog that reached up to and coiled around their waists like a phantom’s long fingers. Dane pulled out his compass, turned it on, and took note of the digital readings.
     "The Lander is back in that direction," said Dane, pointing off into the distance. If we walk fast enough we’ll make it back in fifteen minutes or less."
     "I didn’t realize we’d strayed so far from the shuttle."
     "I know."
     "What’s the standardtime?" asked Granger.
     Dane check his chronometer. "Twenty-four hundred hours." They started back.
     The bleakness of the landscape unnerved Dane. Fog everywhere. Everywhere, I see fog. Black and gray, the only two colors on this damned planet. Slabs of basalt...the sky...nothing but dark and dirty gray...no moon, no stars, no light. Ground covered with weird sponge like rocks that softly make wheezing sounds when they crumble under your feet...Almost feel like this planet was - manufactured? By an advanced alien race, maybe. Ah, shoot...I’ll leave such speculations to Gamowski.
     "Say, Bob, tell me something. A month ago there was a big stir in the ship observatory when Willie, Gamowski and some others made their spectroscopic analysis of this planet’s atmosphere. Didn’t it have something to do with that blood red band that circles this planet?"
     "Partly. I had a talk with Gamowski that day. The band is a gaseous broth, of sorts. Methane, hydrocarbons, organic molecules. Unpolarized light from Sirius A falls on the clouds and gets polarized. So the red band."
     Dane sighed loudly. "Weird place, isn’t it, this planet? Erratic orbit, a plentiful supply of breathable oxygen. Weird" Dane momentarily studied the landscape. "For a good man like Willie to die in this desolate wasteland. . ." He shook his head.
     Granger nervously rubbed the back of his neck. "He was right about there being radioactive minerals here," said Granger. "And some other valuable minerals, too. That’s really why I wanted to come down here so bad, you know? Just wanted to be directly in on what you guys found."
     "Willie and I made some calculations," said Dane. "This planet has a low density, but the interior is hot. There must be hot water and molten rock at the center, and more radioactive minerals there."
     Granger looked around. "Look at this place. Drab, drab, drab."
     Dane stopped in his tracks. Suddenly he started shaking his head and pressing his hands against his eyes.
     Bewildered, Granger looked back at him, then gripped him on the shoulder. "What’s wrong, Bob?"
     "Just felt disoriented for a moment. Nothing serious." He gave a tense laugh, then resumed walking.
     Granger was a little shaken. "Don’t pass out on me now, guy. We’re all alone out here."
     "I’m. . .I’m okay."
     "It’s this place. That, and, and Willie’s accident. You’ll feel better when we get back to the Lander." They walked on, silently.
     Dane was deeply troubled by Willie’s death, and by the fact that he had not been with him in the cave when the strange creature Granger described attacked. If he had been in the cave, he reasoned, Willie might not be dead.
     What a waste. Another noble sacrifice to the god of mega-corporate enterprise. Willie Nkomo was a kind and honest man. Honesty? Hah. A scarce commodity in this valueless, hedonistic age. Seems like greed and rampant materialism have killed off all morality in this the year of our absent Lord 2683...
     Dane first met Willie ten years ago. At the time, Willie had been with Rixxlon for eleven years while Dane was a young geologist fresh out of graduate school. Dane was woefully unprepared for the ruthlessness and vicious competition he found among power mad Rixxlon executives when he first joined the colossal, financial megaempire. He had been relieved to find in Willie Nkomo a brilliant scientific mind unmotivated by blind ambition.
     He did have his flaws, though. Naive. Too much of a "yes" man. Would never buck against mega-corporate policies, even when the policies were questionable. But at least he was no overly ambitious, money obsessed glory seeker.
     "Tell me, Granger, why did you hate Willie?"
     Anger flashed up in Granger’s eyes. "Don’t accuse me of hating him. I won’t deny that there was no love lost between us. He was so unambitious. And unimaginative, a real willing mega-corporate slave. You know, I wanna start my own company one day, but a dream like that was impossible for him. He was my opposite in every way, Bob. I’m kind of a dreamer." Granger shrugged his shoulders and laughed. "Hell- -how could you spend nine years out here in interstellar space unless you are? A man needs some kind of dream to get high off of. Nkomo was one of the dullest, most uninspiring men I’ve ever known. He certainly didn’t fit in with Rixxlon. Sometimes, I wonder why he joined."
     "He was a good scientist," said Dane.
     "He was married, you know."
     "Yeah. His family lives in New Johannesburg, Luna."
     "I’m surprised Rixxlon even allowed him to come out here, what with their preference for unmarried space travelers."
     Dane seemed puzzled. "But you’re married, aren’t you?" He asked.
     Granger smirked. "Yeah, it’s on paper anyway. But we never really got along and I was planning to divorce her when this interstellar mission began. I knew about the singles only rule but, well, I used connections, which is what I guess Willie did. Dane, I wasn’t going to let anything prevent me from coming out here. I had to come out here, I mean it was too important to me. And you know, in spite of what happened to Willie, and in spite of the years we’ve all spent out here, I’m glad to be out here. I have a feeling I’ll make my fortune out here." Granger smiled.
     Willie’s dead, and he’s grinning from ear to ear?
     Dane felt woozy. He rubbed his face with his hands, shut his eyes tight then opened them, and shook his head. He glanced at Granger, who wasn’t looking at him.
     Anxious. Feel so anxious. God. What is it? He felt his forehead. He was surprised to see sweat come off on his hand. Sweating? But it’s chilly down here.
     Dane’s heart started beating a little faster. Anxiety and apprehension coursed through his entire body like ice water. He looked at Granger again and was surprised to feel a hostility for the man welling up in him.
     "Pretty callous of you," he said. He felt himself slowly seething.
     The remark caught Granger unaware. "What do you mean by that?"
     "Here, Willie’s dead at the hands of God knows what, some ratlike creature, you said? And you’re grinning and thinking about fame and fortune."
     "Aren’t we the sensitive one," said Granger.
     "I guess you really didn’t like him!"
     Granger was furious. He stopped walking and rushed at Dane, his fists clenched. Now waitaminute! That’s unfair! You have no right to–"
     "No sense in being unduly upset over the death of some unimaginative, unambitious kaffir." Now they were glaring at each other, eyeball to eyeball.
     "Who the hell do you think you are? Mister Moral Purity?" Granger screamed. "You don’t know how I felt when I saw that thing claw and bite Willie, how, how I felt when I saw him fall down that pit! You gonna be the judge and jury over the way I react to it? Huh?"
     Dane looked at Granger’s anger-contorted face and felt a mixture of surprise and regret.
     What happened to me? Sure, I have doubts about his story, but me standing up to John Granger?
     "Sorry. Forget it," said Dane. "Forget it, huh? Just...just forget it." It took a while for the both of them to calm down and regain their composure. When they did, they started walking again.
     "There could be more of them," said Granger, after a long silence. "Those creatures, I mean. Maybe they’re all over the planet. Or maybe they only dwell in caves. I dunno." He held his head down. "Poor Willie."
     Not sincere enough.
     "Granger, mind if I ask you something?" Granger looked at him. "What did the two of you fight about in the bar?"
     For a moment it looked like Granger would fly into a rage again, but he didn’t. "Well, I’ll tell you. Sure, why not? You know Valerie Corso, the good-looking blonde singer in the ship’s Entertainment Wing? Well, we’ve been sleeping together. Nkomo found out about it. Actually he chewed me out."
     "Why would he care?"
     "Bob, I didn’t tell you before but, well, Willie was a longtime friend of my wife’s father. Since childhood, I think. He knew Penelope and her brother ever since they were little kids. When he learned I was cheating on Penelope he quite self-righteously chewed me out about it. Naturally, I told him it was none of his business." He put a hand on Dane’s shoulder. "I’m telling you about all this because I’m not ashamed, not one bit."
     Dane, quite unconscious to himself, was giving Granger a scornful look.
     "I’ll be frank with you, Bob," Granger continued. "Penelope is no way near as much woman as Valerie is. Valerie, she’s every man’s fantasy. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her. I really wanna make it out here, you know? Like the old conquistadors who returned to Spain with riches? Rixxlon is gonna make me rich and powerful while I’m out here. Then I’ll have wealth, and Valerie. She’s not just a beautiful woman, Dane, she’s, well, Venus.
     Granger looked Dane over. "You could have won her over before I did. I mean, look at you. You’re good looking. Not quite thirty-five. Classic‘windblown hair’. Sensitive eyes girls go for. Narrow nose. No athlete’s bod, though. Too late, frail poet. An athlete got to her first."
     "I heard she changed her name several years ago," said Dane.
     Granger looked surprised. "What?"
     "I heard her original name was Temple. Temple something or other. Her father was a judge, named her after some Faulkner character."
     But Granger didn’t hear him. He slowed down, stopped, then put his hands to his head and rubbed his brow. "Uhhhhhh. . ." he groaned
     Dane placed a concerned hand on his shoulder. "What is it?"
     "Uhhhhh. . . dizzy. Just felt dizzy. Real strange. Almost like I was going to pass out or something."
     "I felt a little woozy myself back there a bit." They both waited before going on.
     "I’m all right now, Bob," said Granger, after taking a deep breath. "Let’s start walking again. I want to hurry up and get back to the- -"
     Something distracted Granger. He looked up and to the left, into the heart of a mist-strewn black region thirty meters away. He saw, no, imagined (which?) something there, something massive and slowly lumbering toward them in the darkness, something bestial.
     "Bob! There’s something there." Dane looked around. "No- -over to the left. About thirty meters away. See it? Some kind of, what?"
     Dane, eyes straining, aimed the flashlight’s harsh glare onto the spot Granger pointed to. IS something there? No, he’s imagining–yes. A four-legged beast of some kind with black and white stripes on its body, or are they black and yellow? Hard, to make it out. Coming closer. . . .
     Now Dane was trembling and raising his Yang-Mills stinger, raising the instrument of security and death by electrified light up and holding it in front of him as if it were a little bodyguard poised to protect its client, aiming at the menace in the distance, squeezing the trigger, hand shaking, getting ready to fire- -and then the thing was gone. They both stood there gazing into the darkness. But they saw nothing now, and heard only the sound of their anxious breathing and the shrill whistle of a cold wind.
     "Sheeeeesh. What are we, seeing things now?" asked Granger. Dane was silent, still trying to see the creature again, but with no success. "Hey, give it up, Bob. There was nothing there. It was probably just our imagination. I mean, this entire place is so gloomy looking our minds played a trick on us."
     "Maybe not," said Dane. "There’s at least one lifeform on this planet, the thing you said killed Willie. What if there are others here? Bigger, and more dangerous?" Dane cringed as he thought of the possibility. "Hey, Granger. Describe the thing in the cave to me again."
     Granger turned away from him and started walking again while Dane caught up beside him.
     "Yeah, well, um, let’s see." Granger cleared his throat. "It was about two feet high, three feet long, maybe two hundred pounds. Looked like a large rodent, two red, bulbous eyes, dark, slimy fur. . ."
     Dane was bewildered. "Fur? I thought you said the thing had scales."
     Suddenly Granger bristled. "Scales! I meant scales! Lay off, will you?"
     "Take it easy! I was just confused when you said the thing had fur, that’s all. No harm done." Why is he so defensive?
     For nearly one full minute, Granger was quiet. "Don’t expect me to get every detail correct," he finally said. Both men were edgy.
     Something is happening to us, and I don’t know what. And I don’t know how to stop it. Slow. Insidious. Something is happening to us. Can’t put my finger on it.
     Dane glanced about as they walked. He noticed a boulder to the right of them, its base obscured by mist. The boulder sat there like a small mountain in an intangible, gray sea. He studied the boulder as they walked, and suddenly began to feel a peculiar sensation, as if they were not really moving.
     Dane looked down at his feet. He could barely see them through the mist, but he knew they were moving, and in so doing, propelling his body forward. Common sense. The same was true of Granger’s feet; that too made sense. Their bodies functioned exactly the way human bodies in motion do: arms swaying slightly, legs moving, one ahead and the other behind, then the other ahead, and so on. But there remained with him that strange still sensation, as if they didn’t advance forward at all. Dane, looking, looking at the boulder, wondered why it was still there and not passing along behind them as they moved on. It remained there in his vision as if blocking Times’s inexorable flow and reducing their walking to a mere abstraction.
     Our nerves are shot. God, it’ll be good to get back to the Rachel and off of this hellish planet.
     They walked on in silence and fear, eventually approaching, in front of them, a row of rock slabs, each slab equidistant from the ones beside it, and all of them set in the mist-sea like a fleet of black ships carrying phantom voyagers.
     Dane found himself more absorbed in introspection. He thought about his ten years at Rixxlon, and about his willing participation in the mega-corporation’s ruthless exploitation of mineral resources found on Luna and on the satellites of the Jovian planets. He had been a willing accomplice in the rape, he felt. Ganymede, Callisto, Europa, Titan, free from human contact for countless eons, now had their surfaces marred by man and the demonism of his modern world. Gigantic excavation pits and huge hydrocarbon wells covered their surfaces, and systemwide conglomerates like Rixxlon, some of them as powerful as nations, were engaging in vicious legal battles and even resorting to violence with their private armies on the Jovian satellites to obtain the best land for blasting and drilling and raping. They were like rats, all of them. Rixxlon, Orion Multiglobal Industries, Europa Technologies, rats fighting and clawing over spoils. Was there anyone more clever than Western Man? Yet all of his accomplishments were tainted by evil impulses which never seemed to stay buried and which he always trivialized. Why? Where was the nobility in twenty-seventh century science? Where were the Newtons and Einsteins? Would there ever be a return, Dane wondered, to the age old and innocent search for pure truth?
     I doubt it. Look homeward, angel. You can’t go back again. Everyone’s a megacompany man now, even me. Science, Incorporated. Sold ourselves in the marketplace, we scientists. Just what am I doing out here working for Rixxlon? This is the first time ever man has been to the Sirius A system, and here we are seeking a profit. Can’t speak for the other guy, but it sure bothers me.
      Guilt tormented him at times. He soul-searched often, for these harsh truths were
     hard to accept. Dane had talked about these things with Willie two days ago, oddly feeling like some sinner yearning to confess and repent before his priest. Now the priest was dead. But he should not be dead. Dead, on this weird, foggy planet nine light years from home, trying to make a rich megacompany richer.
     "Do we really have a right?" he asked.
     Granger looked at him. "Huh? A right for what?"
     "I was asking myself if we have a right to be out here, doing what we’re doing."
     Granger was puzzled. "Stupid question. Course we do. Rixxlon was the first to send unmanned probes out here. And the first to follow up with our manned starship to reach the Dog here to explore. The other magacompanies haven’t even sent robot probes out here yet. We were the first to plant our mega-corporate flag on this planet. And the Moon Treaty hasn’t applied for centuries. We have first rights ahead of everybody. Any multiglobal corporate attorney will tell you that. Technically, this planet belongs to us now. Finders keepers."
     Dane shook his head. "Not at all what I meant. I meant humankind. Does humankind have a right to be out here? Does he even belong out here? Is he really mature enough, wise enough yet? Remember those strange plants- -lichens- -we found growing in the Titan caves? Remember how we destroyed them, only to have some Russian scientist afterwards tell us they might have been intelligent life forms?"
     "You know what I really worry about, Granger? Suppose we encounter some alien culture inferior to our own one day? Will we behave responsibly, or act like the supermen and superwomen we oftentimes think we are?" Dane looked Granger squarely in the face. "You know, sometimes I think we’re all plunderers. Four centuries ago we started colonizing our solar system and we wound up plundering it for two centuries. Then we built nuclear fusion ramjets to send robot probes to Barnard and Wolf three-five-nine and the Dog Star. . . . Now Rixxlon’s out here, getting ready to plunder again. I mean, do we really have a right to do all this to our universe?"
     "Know-how gives us the right," said Granger. There was a cynical look in his eyes. "Now stop with the soulful questions nobody wants to hear but you."
     Dane looked away from him and looked up at the sky, which looked to him as if it were a black curtain concealing something behind a stage.
     I’m being the moralist. Me, an angel with dirty hands. A noble thing, treading the stars. At least I once thought so.
     We’re the heirs of Western Civilization. . .Great scientific, technological strides. Crossed the expanse of space. . . But man has a dark and cloudy mind. . .Can’t cross his own collective unconscious without becoming lost. . . His intellect? Awake. . . But his ethics are asleep. . . And what is conjured up when one is sleeping?
     Their continued walking was a peculiar journey into stillness. The faster and farther we walk, the more it seems like we’re actually getting nowhere, he thought.
     Eternal Now…. And the whole planet, nothing but black and gray everywhere. . . I feel like, what? Like a shade wandering through Dante’s Limbo. . .
     So many mysteries here. Gamowski couldn’t answer my questions. . .Planet’s orbit so erratic. . . Should be plunged into extremes of heat and cold as it orbits the binary. But the surface temperature is only three-oh-three Kelvin. . . And breathable oxygen here. . . Why? Someone was here before us, I can feel it. . . Feel like maybe the whole planet was adapted for something, by someone. Humanoids maybe. . . Oxygen breathers, who built this place. Not terraformed. Built.
     Dane took a good look at Granger. Something’s bothering him. He’s agitated about something. C’mon Granger. What really happened in that cave?
     Dane started feeling dizzy again. The fog, like cobwebs, seemed to stretch and split as they walked through it.
     "God- -it seems like we’ve been walking forever," said Granger. He was sweating.
     Dane watched as he wiped his forehead. "Tired?"
     Granger shook his head. "I, I don’t remember the Lander being this far away." He looked at Dane. "Just how long have we been walking?"
     Dane looked at his chronometer and frowned. "It’s stopped."
     "What?"
     "Chronometer’s stopped."
     "Kidding?"
     "No."
     "What times does the face show?"
     "Damn- -twenty-four hundred hours." His eyes widened in fright. No- -wait- -twenty-four-oh-five!"
     "It must have stopped working five minutes after we left the cave. Hell, are we headed right? How long you think we’ve been walking?"
     Dane suddenly felt giddy. He could tell Granger felt giddy too.
     "What about the compass reading?" asked Granger, anxiously. "Are we headed right?"
     Dane checked the readings, then nodded. "There’s, there’s something wrong, man. The Lander’s only fifteen minutes away, but it feels like we’ve been walking for close to an hour. Yet the compass says we’re headed in the right direction."
     "Maybe it’s not working either," said Granger, nearly desperate for an easy explanation. Dane pulled out a directionmeter from his backpack and aimed it ahead of them to study the readings carefully.
     "No. It’s working okay. Let’s walk faster, Granger. Let’s get the hell out of here." Both of them quickened their pace.
     "Say, how do you feel?" asked Granger.
     "Strange."
     "Me too. Can’t explain what it is well, but it’s like, well...." Granger was breathing rapidly. "Like I got this stupid feeling something’s gonna happen but I don’t know what, know what I mean?"
     "Fatigue. We’re overworked, overtired, and the accident. With Willie, I mean," said Dane.
     "Yeah, yeah, sure." He patted Dane on the shoulder. "That’s it. We worked like hell on the Rachel before we landed. Long hours without sleep. And the stress of Willie’s accident. Sure, that’s it. What else could it be?"
     They walked on together without speaking. But for how long, neither one could say, for time seemed to stop. It was unnerving, their continued silence, as unnerving as the scenery. Finally, it was too much.
     "Dane, let’s talk about something. Anything to get my mind off this place, the way it looks. Makes me feel like I died and went to hell." Granger paused, then spoke again. "That’s a tragic sounding tune you’re whistling. Where’s it from?"
     A tingle ran across Dane’s neck and down his spine. He was, in fact, whistling, but had never been consciously aware of it.
     "It’s, er, it’s by Tchaikovsky, something he wrote called Francesca da Rimini. But Granger- -you know- -I actually didn’t know that I was- - "
     "Never heard of it." Granger wiped his brow again. "I hear you’re quite an intellectual."
     "Huh?"
     "Gamowski told me. You studied philosophy as an undergrad, right?"
     "Yeah."
     "I’ll bet you’re well read. What did you read?"
     "Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer."
     "And the great writers?"
     "Shakespeare Hemingway Conrad the Bible. . ."
     "Shakespeare, huh? No kiddin’? What’s your favorite tragedy?" Dane felt annoyed because Granger wasn’t really interested, and he knew that. But the small talk was a desperate distraction from the ominous Something that crept all around them.
     "Hamlet."
     "Yeah? The ‘to be or not to be’ guy, eh? You know, I never read it, but I know it was about one hell of a mixed up youth. What was his main hangup, anyway?"
     "Arrested development maybe?" Dane tried to chuckle, but couldn’t. "Most of the actions centers around Hamlet trying to prove his stepfather is a murderer."
     "Uh huh.".
     Dane could see, out of the corner of his eye, Granger looking at him askance.
     "You said you read the Bible?" asked Granger, before sighing nervously.
     "Yes."
     "I didn’t know you believed in God. You always struck me as being something of an atheist, long as I’ve known you."
     "I said I read the Bible. Not that I believed in God."
     "Do you believe in a devil?" Dane didn’t answer. "Well, what did you read from the Bible?"
     "The Psalms. And the Gospels." Dane paused to think. "But their eyes were beholden that they should not know him."
     "What’s that from?"
     "The Gospel of Luke. Chapter twenty-four. But their eyes were beholden that they should not know him. Two travelers, walking down a road towards a village named Emmaus, after the death of the Lord. A stranger walks behind them and then walks along with them to engage them in conversation. Later that day, because of their faith, the stranger reveals to them that he is the resurrected Lord. Their pure hearts are joyful at the revelation. It’s great reading."
     Abruptly, silently, the fog behind them moved with a strange eddying motion, then opened up into a vortex. A hooded form, part goat, and part human, lurked in it, black, sinister, two horns shooting out from its forehead, a wiry beard sticking out from the chin at the bottom of its goat-face. It studied the two men, then it stepped out of the vortex and walked noiselessly behind them as the vortex vanished. It raised two furry hands with fingers which continually waggled over the heads of Dane and Granger, making it resemble some grotesque puppetteer.
     Granger sniffed the air, then he shivered.
     "Do you smell mildew?" he asked.
     "What?"
     "I asked if you smelled mildew. Sniff the air."
     Dane did so; his senses detected the odor, but his mind wanted to deny it. "Yes. That’s strange," he said, almost in a whisper.
     "Pile of dirty laundry somewhere?"
     "Guess so," said Dane. Both men laughed, laughter pregnant with tension.
     The vortex appeared again, seventy-three meters behind them, and this time a tiger-like form lumbered out. Two green eyes burned brightly in its snarling face, and it prowled silently.
     "Uhhhhhh. . ." moaned Dane, then he shivered. He turned quickly to his left, feeling something present other than Granger nearby and desperate to see it, but he saw nothing.
     Granger stopped walking. "Shhhh."
     "What?" Dane could see that Granger was trying to hear something.
     "Something roaring," he finally said after a tense silence. "Hear it?"
     Granger’s voice quivered. They stood in their tracks, stood silently, listening. Dead silence, thought Dane at first, until an almost imperceptible sound crept across the silence and grew in intensity and volume: a very distant growling, a roaring. They strained to listen, then quickly reeled around, stingers drawn, but even before their thoughts executed those actions, the two wraiths had swiftly disintegrated into so much impalpable thistledown that circled and swirled in the alien wind before it completely dissolved away. So they saw nothing, and heard nothing now but their hearts crazily pounding, the wind softly moaning.
     "Dane, maybe- -maybe it was the wind. You know?" He looked to Dane for reassurance.
     "Yeah. Maybe."
     They turned around and resumed walking. Fast. And as soon as their backs were turned, their strange wraith partners took shape anew and resumed trotting and prowling behind them.
     Granger started laughing. He almost sounded hysterical. "We’re imagining things," he said. "No lions out here. Unless there’s a zoo nearby we don’t know about. Let’s get our minds off it. Tell me what else you’ve read." He looked at Dane, who shook. "Hey. Hear me? I said- -"
     "Heart of Darkness," Dane blurted out. "Ever read it?" Dane looked at Granger and watched a manic smile spread across the man’s face.
     "Conrad, huh?"
     "Yup."
     "Never read him."
     "Mistah Kurtz- -he dead."
     "Yeah, I heard that line before."
     "Mankind. Damn him! God damn him!"
     "Dane, what- -"
     "Man has an evil heart, Granger. An evil thing prowls in his hairy chest."
     "Geez, what a remark to make."
     "It’s true. Examine our history. Wars, rapes, pillages, murders, pogroms, slavery, genocide- -it’s all there." Dane inhaled, then sighed. "Now we’re out here. Out here in space. I shudder to think- -"
     Why am I talking so crazy? Feel like I’m falling apart, like I can’t keep it together. . .What the hell is wrong? Never used to talk to Granger like this. . . .
     Don’t- -don’t think about the past so much," said Granger, in a voice that was increasingly shaky. "You can’t return to the past as if it were your favorite old house you’ve come back to renovate."
     Both men now began to drown, slowly, in their fear. Their hearts beat on like noisy kettledrums. They knew Something very evil lingered, Something playing malicious tricks on them but wouldn’t openly expose itself and confront them with the hair raising truth of its Presence. And IT made them feel angry and frustrated along with the ever annoying squish and wheeze of the small, spongy rocks they walked on.
     They were taut rubber bands ready to snap.
     Dane now faintly heard voices and noises besides his and Granger’s: distant voices and noises rudely hammering out damnation. He could hear it all in the wind’s eerie wail. A belligerent tramp, tramp, tramp of soldiers’ boots, marching an intimidating cadence across countless roads and into the ages, swords clashing unrelentingly, guns, missiles and bombs howling, cruel laughter, human shrieks, screams in pain, raped women and children sobbing because of having been wracked by Brutality’s red fist, abrupt shouts and immoral orders issued, violent speeches dripping with hate.
     And after all that, there was running water noisily falling over hands vigorously rubbed together.
     Dane looked at Granger. He’s terrified of something too. Want out, out of here! Scared! Why?
     Dane’s pulse raced, and his heart beat so fast he thought it would burst.
     Oh- -my- -something’s going to happen. Somethingsgoingtohappen. OhmyGodsomethingisgoingtohap- -
     "I don’t read much," said Granger, through his trembling lips. "But there’s one Faulkner line I never forgot."
     "What’s that?"
     "Memory believes before knowing remembers."
     "Believe it?"
     "Y-Yeah. I believe it ought to be true."
     "Knowing means learning and understanding. That’s how I understand it. If our footprints back there are not important, than what the hell is Faulkner about, anyway?"
     "What do you mean? And don’t shout. I can hear you."
     "Ever read Macbeth?"
     "Say what?"
     "Macbeth. Ever read Macbeth?" He looked at Granger accusingly. They stopped walking and stood in the mist, staring at each other.
     "A wise guy."
     "Granger, what really hap- -"
     "Bastard."
     "What do you- -"
     It happened so quickly, all in one confusing and surreal blur: Granger punching Dane and knocking him down, taking Dane’s stinger, aiming it at Dane’s head.
     "I thought you knew all along, the way you were acting."
     "Yeah you believe. So many assholes have faith, just like you do! And so you killed him," said Dane, getting up slowly. "You son of a bitch. You actually killed him!" He placed a hand on his reeling head.
     "Slowwwww, easy. . . there," Granger said. "Get in front of me." Warily, Dane did so. "Now turn around and keep walking."
     Dane began walking, stumbling at times. "What do you think you’re doing, Granger? This is crazy!"
     Granger sighed and wiped his forehead again. "Yeah. You knew all along."
     "Why man? Why did you kill him?"
     "Because I know you! Probably couldn’t wait to get back and rat on me." Now Granger, feeling feverish, held a stinger in each trembling hand.
     "God. It’s crazy! You killed him. You really going to tell me why, or what?"
     They thought they heard something. Granger looked to the left, aiming the stinger in his left hand in that direction, prepared to shoot, wanting to shoot. He saw nothing.
     "There was gold in the cave, Dane. Our detectors found it. We were standing there, in the cave. Nkomo felt a smooth surface under his feet. We bent down and looked-a funny kind of plaque was there. Had weird writing on it. You know, like hieroglyphics? Nkomo suggested it was a burial site of something. While we stood there speculating, the computers on our detectors started going wild. The visual displays indicated that there was a deposit of gold ten meters below the plaque. At least a billion kilograms, do you hear me? Dane, I was so happy, man! I thought of all the years I spent with Rixxlon, all the time I spent biting and clawing like everybody else to get to the top and never succeeding. Well, no more! I was rich, man. With that gold I could have started my own Rixxlon."
     "How did Willie react to finding the gold?"
     "That fool! shouted Granger in a spurt of rage. "If only he had listened to me! If only..." Granger’s eyes were burning and becoming watery. He wanted to wipe them but didn’t. "I told him the gold was ours, right?" He made a nervous chuckling sound. "I mean, we did find it, right? I told him we didn’t have to tell anyone about it. We could go back to the Lander, get a few digging robots. But you know, he laughed at me? We got into a big argument. He kept saying we had to report the find. It was our duty to report the find! Our moral obligation." Granger chuckled again. "But it wasn’t Rixxlon’s gold, I told him. I found it. It was mine. Mine to keep." Granger’s voice got very passionate.
     "But Nkomo wouldn’t have it," he continued. "You know, too much the man of integrity. Anyway, he dropped his flashlight. He turned his back to me and was about to stoop over to pick it up. It all happened so fast. Dane, I felt this, this craziness. I mean, here was my opportunity of a lifetime, and this stupid asshole wasn’t going to let me have it. So I raised my flashlight over his head and hit him hard, on the back of the head."
     "And then you found the pit and dropped him down," offered Dane.
     But Granger didn’t hear him. He was distracted by the same distant roar he thought he heard before. And it seemed to be getting louder.
     "Hate this place," Granger said. "Hearing things, seeing things that aren’t there, or are they? Had a feeling, get a feeling like something’s behind us." They both looked around, expecting, wanting to see something that could serve as a focal point for their rampant fear, something whose presence they could eliminate with the squeeze of a trigger. But they saw nothing.
     "Granger, listen to me."
     "Shut up! Face forward while you walk."
     "Granger, for the love of - -"
     "It all happened so fast, man. I didn’t- -I didn’t go into that cave intending to kill Nkomo. Farthest thing from my mind. It was just the, the craziness I felt in that moment."
     "So now what happens to me?"
     Granger hesitated before speaking. "Remember the cliff we saw when we first landed? You were curious, wanted to get a better look at the planet’s terrain. You went up the cliff, looked down, lost your balance."
     Dane extended his arms in a pleading gesture. "Awwww, c’mon. They’ll never buy that. Two deaths? You can’t do it, man. Come back to the Rachel with me. You could never live with yourself."
     "What are you talking about? My conscience?" Granger laughed. "Let me tell you something. When I was a kid on Luna, my parents gave me a puppy. I was crazy about that puppy. But one day I came home from school and when I went to my room, I found the dog tearing up my expensive, lowgrav baseball mitt. He tore it to pieces. Course, he was just being frisky and mischievous. But I was mad. Always had a temper. I was so mad that I impulsively hit him. Hard. He whimpered pitifully. When I realized what I did, I cried. I cried all afternoon. And when I went to sleep, I had a nightmare. God, it was awful. Giant spiders, devouring me. Sucking the life, the blood away. Hideous, hairy legs. And a mad quick rustling of all these hairy bodies and red eyes with no thinking minds behind them. You know, I had forgotten all about that dream until we came down here? Yeah, when I woke up, I didn’t remember that dream, and that was the last time I ever felt guilty about anything. So when I killed Nkomo, I felt nothing. No soul searching, no twinge of conscience, no guilt trips, nothing, hah, nothing!"
     Dane began to laugh, stupidly and uncontrollably. His whole body shook with it.
     "It’s all like a damned murder mystery on the holovision ...only it ain’t...it ain’t.... Nine light years from Earth...gold...murder...sex...Rixxlon, haaaaaaa!" He started shaking his head, grinning and laughing on until tears came to his eyes. "What I know! What I know...." He began shouting. "Oh what I know...!"
     He looked at Granger with wild eyes. "Goddamn how craven you look! Looking all around like little Australopithecus on the savanna with a lion after him. Only Australopithecus didn’t have a damned Yang-Mills stinger!" He laughed on like a lunatic. "He was our true superior, though…wasn’t he…?"
     Granger ignored him. Terrified, he quickly looked behind him. "Could swear something’s back there."
     "Course it is! It always has been, you stupid idiot!"
     "What time is it?" Dane was still shaking his head. "Hey, I asked you what time it was! Where are we?"
     "I think we are in rat’s alley, where the dead men lost their bones," moaned Dane.
     "What does that mean? What is that from, you wussy human encyclopedia?"
     "I told you before the chronometer stopped." Dane struggled to pull himself together.
     "Look at the compass. Where are we? How far is it now to the Lander?"
     Dane looked at the compass reading. "It’s, we must have strayed, we’re, we’re lost...going northwest instead of west."
     Granger was furious. "Lying bastard!"
     "So help me, it’s the truth. We’re- -"
     "You’re obviously trying to trick me."
     "Oh, we’re lost, truly..."
     "How else could we have wound up northwest unless you- -" an attack of dizziness cut Granger’s words short.
     Dane’s eyes became stinging and watery. He rubbed them, then began to look at the fog all around. "Granger, I think it’s this fog! That’s the reason why we feel so screwy- -it has to be! There’s something about it...." Dane slowed down his steps.
     "Ah, what the, I oughtta kill you right now."
     "Granger, can’t you see? It’s the fog, man! It’s affecting you and me somehow. I can’t explain it, but- -"
     "Shut up!" Granger growled. "Ah, hell, I might as well kill you right now." A patch of fog separated them so that he temporarily lost sight of Dane. Granger moved about frantically, trying to find Dane again.
     That’s when Dane made his move. He came from behind and clutched Granger tightly around the neck with his right arm. His left hand fumbled for one of Granger’s stingers. A shot went wild, sending a crackling of electrical quanta through the air and off into the distance. Granger dropped the stinger in his left hand. He reeled around. His right fist connected with Dane’s jaw, and Dane went down. Quickly Dane grabbed one of Granger’s legs and yanked. Granger fell to the ground and the two of them grappled in a fury. Then Granger, the stronger, the more crazed of the two, gained the upper hand. Now he was rising, fumbling for a stinger and a flashlight.
     That’s when they both heard it: a deafening roar, savagely erupting into unquestionable reality. And they saw it for real this time, the tiger-beast, three meters long and nearly two and one half meters high, striped like a tiger, its eyes burning as brilliant green. It poised to leap at them.
     "Ahhhhh!"
     "Kill it, Granger! Shoot it!"
     Granger shot at the thing repeatedly. The bright electrical energy enveloped the beast, but it had no effect. The beast leaped, but passed through them before it sank down and vanished into the mist-strewn ground. Granger screamed again and continued to shoot until the stinger’s batteries were empty. He threw the empty stinger where the beast buried itself and turned to run.
     He didn’t see Dane, who, horrified, stared at something else.
     "Damn! Granger, stop! Look at that! Oh, God!"
     It suddenly loomed in Granger’s path, the thing that horrified Dane: a hooded thing two meters high, black and wraithlike. Human-shaped arms and trunk fused with a goat’s head and legs. Its two red eyes glared fiercely into Granger’s flashlight beam, while a mildew smell stuffed the two men’s noses.
     The creature opened its mouth. Cruel laughter dripped out.
     Terrified, Granger turned away from the thing. He darted to the right, stumbling about blindly, groping through the murk.
     "John!" A booming voice. The craven John Granger knew only too well who it belonged to. He turned to his left and saw Willie Nkomo standing there, his neck and back broken, his face laced with streaks of blood, staring accusingly.
     "Willie!" Granger, hysterical. "Willie, please! I didn’t mean to kill you! Forgive me! I didn’t mean to kill you!"
     "Blood will have blood."
     Granger sobbed, sobbed like a child, dropped to his knees and covered his face with his hands. Dane slowly got up, his mind drowning in terror. He looked up, over at Granger. Then Granger got up and turned to run in another direction, while twenty feet away, the tiger-beast sprouted up from the misty ground, snarling, growling with an ever distant sounding rumble.
     "Granger! Wait- -don’t leave me!"
     Granger paid no attention to him. He ran into the fog and disappeared.
     Dane scrambled about, trying to find the other stinger and a flashlight. When he found them, he got up and ran away from the monsters.
     Suddenly, Dane heard a scream that ripped the shredded fabric of his nerves like a razor. He turned hesitatingly, then ran in the direction of the scream.
     From this day forward, it would remain in his mind, so rudely stamped.
     He saw a light at first, glaring and harsh on his eyes. He came nearer to it and saw Granger’s bright flashlight, abandoned, and sticking up in the soft mist-covered ground like a small beacon.
     Dane looked upward a bit, and observed something bound tightly inside what looked to him like thick, white cords, sticky and elastic. When he looked more closely, he saw Granger, whimpering hysterically, bound up.
     Dane then looked above Granger and saw, in one frightening explosion of awareness, three gigantic spiders black and hideous with hair, all throbbing like evil’s thrice-living hearts in the center of a spiraled web. Dane watched as they noiselessly glided down, each one on its eight spindly legs, moving with a vicious swiftness.
     "Dane! My God! Do something! Pleeeeeese!"
     A hurricane of fright battered Dane’s heart and paralyzed him. He stood there transfixed and indecisive, his heart beating wildly. But Granger’s continued screams finally aroused him to action. Dane fired the stinger repeatedly at the spiders and watched the technology-spun lightning crackle and dance ineffectually in the spiral of silky death.
     And then it hit him. Again. The fog. Something in the fog! The realization liberated his tormented and feverish mind.
     I had a nightmare, giant spiders devouring me, he said! Dane frantically tugged on the cocoon of death.
     "Granger, listen to me! It’s an illusion! Don’t know how, or why, but none of these things are real! Listen to me- -the fog is making us hallucinate! They’re not there at all! Something’s affecting our thoughts! Our collective unconscious, Granger! There’s nothing there! There’s nothing there, man!"
     Dane’s wobbling legs collapsed like the canes blind men use, and he fell to the ground, a desolate, crumpled mass. And even though he didn’t see, he knew Granger’s monsters were surrounding and stabbing their prey with their fangs.
     When he woke from his delirium, he found himself in a bed in the Rachel’s infirmary. A warm human voice awakened him from his dark and uneasy mind dreams.
     "How do you feel, Dane?"
     A voice with a heavy British accent. It took Dane a little while to clear away the fogginess in his head. He glanced up and saw one of the infirmary doctors.
     "Doc, where am- -oh, this is the infirmary. . .Willie, I, um, Granger, no! He- -shhhhh!" He covered his face with his hands.
     The doctor patted him on the shoulder. It’s been three days since you’ve been down there. Give it two more now. You’ll be all right."
     "Granger, doc?"
     "You’ve been through quite an ordeal down there," said the doctor. "Most of the landing parties have. Seems Rixxlon sent all you guys down there a little prematurely. We discovered a strange mist down there just a few days ago. It’s all over the planet. A very strong hallucinogen. Gamowski’s convinced aliens put it there for some reason or other."
     "Granger. How is he?"
     The doctor, a bespectacled thin man of about sixty-five, ran a hand through graying hair.
     "Dead." Another voice had answered before the doctor could. Dane looked behind the doctor and focused his cloudy gaze on a man standing in the doorway.
     "Who are you?" asked Dane.\
     "Sergeant Dwight Chandler. Rixxlon Security Office." A hefty man Dane’s age, so hefty his uniform fit too tightly around the contour of his body. He walked over to Dane’s bed and sat down in a chair.
     "He died of cardiac arrest," said the doctor. "Something literally scared him to death. Will you gentlemen excuse me? I have to leave now."
     The doctor left the room. The sergeant pulled a chair over to the bed and sat down.
     "He’s been running ragged for the past several hours," he said. "One case of altered states after another, from all the landing parties. Everyone’s been seeing monsters and going crazy down there."
     Dane sat up in his bed. "I wonder what Rixxlon will do now."
     "You guys will have to suit up when you go down. Too bad, huh? I mean, Gamowski was so convinced you wouldn’t need ‘em. Some of the guys died down there. Like the guy you were with, John Granger? Real shame." He sighed. "But the mining has to start soon, so I guess we’ll be sending more landing parties down after this thing about the hallucinogen is cleared up. Say, you know- -finding out about Granger killing Nkomo the way you did, the weird visions you had, well, the doctor was right. You have been through quite an ordeal."
     Dane suddenly sat up. "Wait a minute. How did RixxSec find all that out? I don’t remember telling any uniforms about it."
     "Our rescue party found out from you. One was sent down after you three didn’t check in. They landed not far from the Searcher. When they didn’t find any of you guys in the Lander, they started looking for you. One of the men heard someone sobbing. Turned out to be you. You were delirious, but you told them everything in one crazy rush: Granger killing Nkomo, the gold, the monsters." Sergeant Chandler shook his head. "Poor Granger. That mist really unsettled his mind." He pulled off his cap and ran a hand through neatly combed but abundant blond hair.
     "They’re not there," said Dane. "They’re not down there, anyway."
     "Sorry?"
     "Dane stared blankly into Sergeant Chandler’s quizzical face.
     "The cave Nkomo was killed in. Did I say anything about it?"
     "We found it, Doctor Dane.
     "Funny. Don’t remember anyone at Rixxlon calling me ‘Doctor’ Dane."
     "And that weird plaque. We found that too. It’s made of technetium. Gamowski made a copy of the alien inscription on it and got the Rachael’s Quant Comp to translate it. The gold was in some way deadly to the life forms who buried it."
     "How?"
     "No one knows. But Gamowski has a theory that Phlegethon might be a huge, planet wide disposal site where oxygen breathing humanoids buried their deadly gold. You know, the way we dispose of our radioactive wastes on the smaller asteroids. But the aliens were afraid that some other intelligent lifeforms–oxygen breathers like us–might land on Phlegethon and come in contact with the ‘poisonous’ gold. So they covered the planet surface with a hallucinogen to discourage others from staying."
     Dane lay down again. "But we’re staying," said Dane, emphatically. To mine some alien garbage dump.
     Sergeant Chandler looked at Dane hard. "I know what you’re thinking. Yeah. Rixxlon is staying. Well, I have to go now. But I came to remind you that Security has to debrief you about what happened down there."
     "Did they ever find Nkomo’s body?"
     "No, but we’re still looking. Gotta go now. I’ll be back in a few days."
     Dane watched as Sergeant Chandler lifted his bulky frame off the chair and left. Yeah, Rixxlon is staying. And for what? Because of our restless need for adventure and challenge? Yeah, right. Ha. Ha. Ha.
     Close ranks, march on. Though it be into hell for glory, a good lay and a gold coin. Hurry up and conquer the universe, Siegfried, can’t keep Valerie waiting. . . .
     He thought over what Chandler had said about the aliens and their ‘poisonous gold’ waste, but then as he thought about Willie’s murder, Granger’s confession and the hallucinations, he abruptly jumped up in the bed with a soft moan and placed his fingers over his eyes as if he would pluck them out.
     A woman giggled as she passed his door in the hallway.
     "C’mon, let’s hurry, Jimmy. I’ve got to be at work in three ship hours."
     Dane recognized the voice. It belonged to Valerie Corso.
     He felt his heart aching as he suddenly laughed.
     "Must’ve read my mind, Val," he said, with a heavy sigh.
     I feel so desolate.
     He looked up at a picture on the infirmary wall: a blue-green Earth rising above its Moon, both waltzing together in Eternity’s ballroom.
     Look homeward, angel. You can’t go home again. Who wrote that, anyway?
     Robert Dane lay back in his bed and closed his eyes.
     No. I can’t go home again. Not with what I know.

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