LITMIR.BIZ

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like for them to remember me like that."

      "They will."

      "I wish—" She swallowed. "The way I'll die—I wish they wouldn't ever think of that. I've read how people look who die in space—their insides all ruptured and exploded and their lungs out between their teeth and then, a few seconds later, they're all dry and shapeless and horribly ugly. I don't want them to ever think of me as something dead and horrible, like that."

      "You're their own, their child and their sister. They could never think of you other than the way you would want them to; the way you looked the last time they saw you."

      "I'm still afraid," she said. "I can't help it, but I don't want Gerry to know it. If he gets back in time, I'm going to act like I'm not afraid at all and—"

      The signal buzzer interrupted her, quick and imperative.

      "Gerry!" She came to her feet. "It's Gerry, now!"

      He spun the volume control knob and asked: "Gerry Cross?"

      "Yes," her brother answered, an undertone of tenseness to his reply. "The bad news—what is it?"

      She answered for him, standing close behind him and leaning down a little toward the communicator, her hand resting small and cold on his shoulder.

      "Hello, Gerry." There was only a faint quaver to betray the careful casualness of her voice. "I wanted to see you—"

      "Marilyn!" There was sudden and terrible apprehension in the way he spoke her name. "What are you doing on that EDS?"

      "I wanted to see you," she said again. "I wanted to see you, so I hid on this ship—"

      "You hid on it?"

      "I'm a stowaway ... I didn't know what it would mean—"

      "Marilyn!" It was the cry of a man who calls hopeless and desperate to someone already and forever gone from him. "What have you done?"

      "I ... it's not—" Then her own composure broke and the cold little hand gripped his shoulder convulsively. "Don't, Gerry—I only wanted to see you; I didn't intend to hurt you. Please, Gerry, don't feel like that—"

      Something warm and wet splashed on his wrist and he slid out of the chair, to help her into it and swing the microphone down to her own level.

      "Don't feel like that—Don't let me go knowing you feel like that—"

      The sob she had tried to hold back choked in her throat and her brother spoke to her. "Don't cry, Marilyn." His voice was suddenly deep and infinitely gentle, with all the pain held out of it. "Don't cry, sis—you mustn't do that. It's all right, honey—everything is all right."

      "I—" Her lower lip quivered and she bit into it. "I didn't want you to feel that way—I just wanted us to say good-by because I have to go in a minute."

      "Sure—sure. That's the way it will be, sis. I didn't mean to sound the way I did." Then his voice changed to a tone of quick and urgent demand. "EDS—have you called the Stardust? Did you check with the computers?"

      "I called the Stardust almost an hour ago. It can't turn back, there are no other cruisers within forty light-years, and there isn't enough fuel."

      "Are you sure that the computers had the correct data—sure of everything?"

      "Yes—do you think I could ever let it happen if I wasn't sure? I did everything I could do. If there was anything at all I could do now, I would do it."

      "He tried to help me, Gerry." Her lower lip was no longer trembling and the short sleeves of her blouse were wet where she had dried her tears. "No one can help me and I'm not going to cry any more and everything will be all right with you and Daddy and Mama, won't it?"

      "Sure—sure it will. We'll make out fine."

      Her brother's words were beginning to come in more faintly and he turned the volume control to maximum. "He's going out of range," he said to her. "He'll be gone within another minute."

      "You're fading out, Gerry," she said. "You're going out of range. I wanted to tell you—but I can't, now. We must say good-by so soon—but maybe I'll see you again. Maybe I'll come to you in your dreams with my hair in braids and crying because the kitten in my arms is dead; maybe I'll be the touch of a breeze that whispers to you as it goes by; maybe I'll be one of those gold-winged larks you told me about, singing my silly head off to you; maybe, at times, I'll be nothing you can see but you will know I'm there beside you. Think of me like that, Gerry; always like that and not—the other way."

      Dimmed to a whisper by the turning of Woden, the answer came back:

      "Always like that, Marilyn—always like that and never any other way."

      "Our time is up, Gerry—I have to go, now. Good—" Her voice broke in mid-word and her mouth tried to twist into crying. She pressed her hand hard against it and when she spoke again the words came clear and true:

      "Good-by, Gerry."

      Faint and ineffably poignant and tender, the last words came from the cold metal of the communicator:

      "Good-by, little sister—"

      She sat motionless in the hush that followed, as though listening to the shadow-echoes of the words as they died away, then she turned away from the communicator, toward the air lock, and he pulled down the black lever beside him. The inner door of the air lock slid swiftly open, to reveal the bare little cell that was waiting for her, and she walked to it.

      She walked with her head up and the brown curls brushing her shoulders, with the white sandals stepping as sure and steady as the fractional gravity would permit and the gilded buckles twinkling with little lights of blue and red and crystal. He let her walk alone and made no move to help her, knowing she would not want it that way. She stepped into the air lock and turned to face him, only the pulse in her throat to betray the wild beating of her heart.

      "I'm ready," she said.

      He pushed the lever up and the door slid its quick barrier between them, enclosing her in black and utter darkness for her last moments of life. It clicked as it locked in place and he jerked down the red lever. There was a slight waver to the ship as the air gushed from the lock, a vibration to the wall as though something had bumped the outer door in passing, then there was nothing and the ship was dropping true and steady again. He shoved the red lever back to close the door on the empty air lock and turned away, to walk to the pilot's chair with the slow steps of a man old and weary.

      Back in the pilot's chair he pressed the signal button of the normal-space transmitter. There was no response; he had expected none. Her brother would have to wait through the night until the turning of Woden permitted contact through Group One.

      It was not yet time to resume deceleration and he waited while the ship dropped endlessly downward with him and the drives purred softly. He saw that the white hand of the supplies closet temperature gauge was on zero. A cold equation had been balanced and he was alone on the ship. Something shapeless and ugly was hurrying ahead of him, going to Woden where its brother was waiting through the night, but the empty ship still lived for a little while with the presence of the girl who had not known about the forces that killed with neither hatred nor malice. It seemed, almost, that she still sat small and bewildered and frightened on the metal box beside him, her words echoing hauntingly clear in the void she had left behind her:

      I didn't do anything to die for—I didn't do anything—

      Space Prison

       Table of Contents

       PART 1

       PART 2

       PART

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