Destiny Doll (3 page)

A raw and bleeding landscape, with red lands stretching to a mauve, storm-torn horizon, broken by crimson buttes, and in the foreground a clump of savage yellow flowers. But even as I tried to grasp all this, to relate it to the kind of world it might have been, it changed, and in its place was a jungle world, drowned in the green and purple of overwhelming vegetation, spotted by the flecks of screaming color that I knew were tropic flowers, and back of it all a sense of lurking bestiality that made my hide crawl even as I looked at it.

 Then it, too, was gone—a glimpse and it was gone—and in its place was a yellow desert lighted by a moon and by a flare of stars that turned the sky to silver, with the lips of the marching sand dunes catching and fracturing the moon and starlight so that the dunes appeared to be foaming waves of water charging in upon the land.

The desert did not fade as the other places had. It came in a rush upon us and exploded in my face.

Beneath me I felt the violent plunging of a bucking Dobbin and made a frantic grab at the cantle of the saddle which seemed to have no cantle and then felt myself pitched forward and turning in the air.

I struck on one shoulder and skidded in the sand and finally came to rest, the breath knocked out of me. I struggled up, cursing—or trying to curse and failing, because I had no breath to curse with—and once on my feet, saw that we were alone in that land we had seen upon the glowing block.

Sara sprawled to one side of me and not far off Tuck was struggling to his feet, hampered by the cassock that had become entangled about his legs, and a little beyond Tuck, George was crawling on his hands and knees, whimpering like a pup that had been booted out of doors into a friendless. frigid night.

All about us lay the desert, desiccated, without a shred of vegetation, flooded by the great white moon and the thousand glowing stars, all shining like lamps in a cloudless sky.

"He's gone!" George was whimpering as he crawled about. "I can't hear him anymore. I have lost my friend."

And that was not all that was lost. The city was lost and the planet on which the city stood. We were in another place. This was one trip, I told myself, that I never should have made. I had known it all along. I'd not believed in it, even from the start. And to make a go of it, you had to believe in everything you did. You had to have a reason for everything you did.

Although, I recalled, I had really no choice.

I had been committed from the moment I had seen that beauty of a spaceship standing on the field of Earth.

TWO

I had come sneaking back to Earth. Not back really, for I never had been there to start with. But Earth was where my money was and Earth was sanctuary and out in space I was fair game to anyone who found me. Not that what I had done had been actually so bad, nor was I to blame entirely, but there were a lot of people who had lost their shirts on it and, they were out to get me and eventually would get me if I failed to reach Earth's sanctuary.

The ship that I was driving was a poor excuse—a fugitive from a junkyard (and that was exactly what it was), patched up and stuck together with binder twine and bailing wire, but I didn't need it long. All I wanted of it was to get me to Earth. Once I stepped out of it, it could fall into a heap for all it mattered to me. Once I got to Earth, I'd be staying there.

I knew that Earth Patrol would be on watch for me—not that Earth cared; so far as Earth was concerned, the more the merrier. Rather a patrol to keep undesirable characters like myself from fleeing back to Earth.

So I came into the solar system with the Sun between myself and Earth and I hoped that my slide rule hadn't slipped a notch and that I had it figured right. I piled on all the normal-space speed I could nurse out of the heap and the Sun's gravity helped considerably and when I passed the Sun that ship was traveling like a hell-singed bat. There was an anxious hour when it seemed I might have sliced it just a bit too close. But the radiation screens held and I lost only half my speed and there was Earth ahead.

With all engines turned off and every circuit cut, I coasted on past Venus, no more than five million miles off to my left, and headed in for Earth.

The patrol didn't spot me and it was sheer luck, of course, but there wasn't much to spot. I had no energy output and all the electronics were doused and all they could have picked up was a mass of metal and fairly small, at that. And I came in, too, with the Sun behind me, and the solar radiations, no matter how good the equipment you may have, help louse up reception.

It was insane to try it, of course, and there were a dozen very nasty ways in which I could have failed, but on many a planet-hunting venture I had taken chances that were no less insane. The thing was that I made it.

There is just one spaceport on Earth. They don't need any more. The traffic isn't heavy. There are few people left on Earth; they all are out in space. The ones who are left are the hopeless sentimentalists who think there is status attached to living on the planet where the human race arose. They, and the ones like myself, are the only residents. The sentimentalists, I had heard, were a fairly snooty crowd of self-styled aristocrats, but that didn't bother me. I wasn't planning on having too much to do with them. Occasionally excursion ships dropped in with a load of pilgrims, back to visit the cradle of the race, and a few freighters bringing in assorted cargo, but that was all there was.

I brought in the ship and set it down and walked away from it, carrying my two bags, the only possessions I had been able to get away with before the vultures had come flocking in. The ship didn't fall into a heap; it just stood there, its slab-sided self, the sorriest-looking vessel you ever clapped your eyes on.

Just two berths away from it stood this beauty of a ship. It gleamed with smart efficiency, slim and sleek, a space yacht that seemed straining toward the sky, impatient at its leash.

There was no way of knowing, of course, just by looking at it, what it had inside, but there is something about a ship that one simply cannot miss. Just looking at this one, there was no doubt that no money had been spared to make it the best that could be built. Standing there and looking at it, I found my hands itching to get hold of it.

I suppose they itched the worse because I knew I'd never go into space again. I was all washed up. I'd spend the rest of my life on Earth the best way that I could. If I ever left it, I'd be gobbled up.

I walked off the field and went through customs—if you could call it customs. They just went through the motions. They had nothing against me or anyone; they weren't sore at me, or anyone. That, it seemed to me, was the nicest thing one could say of Earth.

I went to an inn nearby and once I'd settled in, went down to the bar.

I was on my third or fourth when a robot flunky came into the bar and zeroed in on me.

"You are Captain Ross?"

I wondered, with a flare of panic, just what trouble I was in for. There wasn't a soul on Earth who knew me or knew that I was coming. The only contacts I had made had been with the customs people and the room clerk at the inn.

"I have a note for you," said the robot, handing it to me. The envelope was sealed and it had no marks upon it.

I opened it and took out the card. It read:

Captain Michael Ross,

 Hilton Inn

If Captain Ross will be my dinner guest tonight, I would be much obliged. My car will be waiting at the entrance of the inn at eight o'clock. And, captain, may I be among the first to welcome you to Earth.

 Sara Foster

I sat there staring at it and the bottle robot came sliding down the bar. He picked up the empty glass. "Another one?" be asked.

"Another one," I said.

Just who was Sara Foster, and how had she known, an hour after my arrival, that I was on Earth?

I could ask around, of course, but there seemed no one to ask, and for some reason I could not figure out why I felt disinclined to do so.

It could be a trap. There were people, I well knew, who hated me enough to have a try at smuggling me off the Earth. They would know by now, of course, that I had obtained a ship, but few who would believe that such a ship would carry me to Earth. And there could be none of them who could even guess I'd already reached the Earth.

I sat there, drinking, trying to get it straight in mind, and I finally decided I would take a chance.

Sara Foster lived in a huge house set atop a hill, surrounded by acres of wilderness that in turn surrounded more acres of landscaped lawns and walks, and in the center of all of this sat the huge house, built of sun-warmed bricks, with a wide portico that ran the length of the house, and with many chimneys thrusting from its roof.

 I had expected to be met at the door by a robot, but Sara Foster was there, herself, to greet me. She was wearing a green dinner dress that swept the floor and served to set off, in violent contrast, the flame of her tumbled hair, with the one errant lock forever hanging in her eyes.

"Captain Ross," she said, giving me her hand, "how nice of you to come. And on such short notice, too. I'm afraid it was impetuous of me, but I did so want to see you."

 The hall in which we stood was high and cool, paneled with white-painted wood and the floor of wood so polished that it shone, with a massive chandelier of crystal hanging from the ceiling. The place breached wealth and a certain spirit of Earth-rooted gentility and it all was very pleasant.

"The others are in the library," she said. "Let us go and join them."

She linked her arm through mine and led me down the hail until we came to a door that led into a room that was a far cry from the hall which I had entered. It might have been a library—there were some shelves with books—but it looked more like a trophy room. Mounted heads hung from every wall, a glass-enclosed gun rack ran across one end, and the floor was covered with fur rugs, some with the heads attached, the bared fangs forever snarling.

Two men were sitting in chairs next to the mammoth fireplace and as we entered one of them got up. He was tall and cadaverous, his face long and lean and dark, not so much darkened, I thought as I looked at him, by the outdoors and the sun as by the thoughts within his skull. He wore a dark brown cassock loosely belted at the waist by a string of beads, and his feet, I saw, were encased in sturdy sandals.

"Captain Ross," said Sara Foster, "May I present Friar Tuck."

He held out a bony hand. "My legal name," he said "is Hubert Jackson, but I prefer Friar Tuck. In the course of my wanderings, captain, I have heard many things of you."

I looked hard at him. "You have done much wandering?" For I had seen his like before and had liked none of what I saw.

He bent his bony head. "Far enough," he said, "and always in the search of truth?'

"Truth," I said, "at times is very hard to come by."

"And captain," Sara said, quickly, "this is George Smith." The second man by this time had fumbled to his feet and was holding out a flabby hand in my direction. He was a tubby little man with a grubby look about him and his eyes were a milky white.

"As you can see by now," said Smith, "I am quite blind. You'll excuse me for not rising when you first came in the room."

It was embarrassing. There was no occasion for the man to so thrust his blindness on us.

I shook his hand and it was as flabby as it looked, as nearly limp as a living hand can be. Immediately he fumbled his way back into the chair again.

"Perhaps this chair," Sara said to me. "There'll be drinks immediately. I know what the others want, but . . ."

"If you have some Scotch," I said.

I sat down in the chair she had indicated and she took another and there were the four of us, huddled in a group before that looming fireplace and surrounded by the heads of creatures from a dozen different planets.

She saw me looking at them. "I forgot," she said. "You'll excuse me, please. You had never heard of me—until you got my note, I mean."

"I am sorry, madam."

"I'm a ballistics hunter," she said, with more pride, it seemed to me, than such a statement called for.

She could not have missed the fact that I did not understand. "I use only a ballistics rifle," she explained. "One that uses a bullet propelled by an explosive charge. It is," she said, "the only sporting way to hunt. It requires a considerable amount of skill in weapon handling and occasionally some nerve. It you miss a vital spot the thing that you are hunting has a chance at you."

"I see," I said. "A sporting proposition. Except that you have the first crack at it."

"That is not always true," she said.

A robot brought the drinks and we settled down as comfortably as we could, fortified behind our glasses.

"I have a feeling, captain," Sara said, "that you do not approve."

"I have no opinion at all," I told her. "I have no information on which opinion could be based."

"But you have killed wild creatures."

 "A few," I said, "but there was no such thing involved as sporting instinct. For food, occasionally. At times to save my life."

I took a good long drink. "I took no chance," I told her. "I used a laser gun. I just kept burning them as long as it seemed necessary."

"Then you're no sportsman, captain."

"No," I said, "I am—let us say I was—a planet hunter. It seems I'm now retired."

And I wondered, sitting there, what it was all about. She hadn't invited me, I was sure, just for my company. I didn't fit in this room, nor in this house, any better than the other two who sat there with me. Whatever was going on, they were a part of it and the idea of being lumped with them in any enterprise left me absolutely cold.

She must have read my mind. "I imagine you are wondering, captain, what is going on."

"Ma'am," I said, "the thought had crossed my mind."

"Have you ever heard of Lawrence Arlen Knight?"

"The Wanderer," I said. "Yes, I've heard of him. Stories told about him. That was long ago. Well before my time."

"Those stories?"

"The usual sort of stories. Space yarns. There were and are a lot of others like him. He just happened to snare the imagination of the story tellers. That name of his, perhaps. It has a ring to it. Like Johnny Appleseed or Sir Launcelot."

"But you heard . . ."

"That he was hunting something? Sure. They all are hunting something."

"But he disappeared."

"Stay out there long enough," I told her, "and keep on poking into strange areas and you're bound to disappear. Sooner or later you'll run into something that will finish you."

"But you . . ."

"I quit soon enough," I said. "But I was fairly safe, at that. All I was hunting were new planets. No Seven Cities of Cibola, no mystic El Dorado, no trance-bound Crusade of the Soul."

"You mock at us," said Friar Tuck. "I do not like a mocker."

"I did not mean to mock," I said to Sara Foster. "Space is full of tales. The one you mention is only one of many. They provide good entertainment when there's nothing else to do. And I might add that I dislike correction at the hands of a phony religico with dirty fingernails."

I put my glass down upon the table that stood beside the chair and got up on my feet.

"Thanks for the drink," I said. "Perhaps some other time . . ."

"Just a moment, please," she said. "If you will please sit down. I apologize for Tuck. But it's I you're dealing with, not him. I have a proposal that you may find attractive."

"I've retired," I said.

"Perhaps you saw the, ship standing on the field. Two berths from where you landed.

"Yes, I saw the ship. And admired it. Does it belong to you?"

She nodded. "Captain, I need someone to run that ship. How would you like the job?"

"But why me," I asked. "Surely there are other men."

 She shook her head. "On Earth? How many qualified spacemen do you think there are on Earth?"

"I suppose not many."

"There are none," 'she said. "Or almost none. None I'd trust that ship to."

I sat down again. "Let's get this straight," I said. "How do you know you can trust the ship to me? What do you know about me? How did you know I had arrived on Earth?"

She looked straight at me, squinting just a little, perhaps the way she'd squint down a rifle barrel at a charging beast.

"I can trust you," she said, "because there's nowhere you can go. You're fair game out in space. Your only safety would lie in sticking with the ship."

"Fair enough," I admitted. "And how about going out in space? The Patrol . . ."

"Captain, believe me, there's nothing that can overtake that ship, And if someone should set out to 'do it, we can wear them down. We have a long, hard way to go. It would not be worth their while. And, furthermore, I think it can be arranged so that no one ever knows you've gone into space."