The Lonely Ones

  Produced by Frank van Drogen, Greg Weeks, and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net.

  The Lonely Ones

  By Edward W. Ludwig

  Illustrated by PAUL ORBAN

  _The line between noble dreams and madness is thin, and loneliness can push men past it...._

  Onward sped the _Wanderer_, onward through cold, silent infinity, on andon, an insignificant pencil of silver lost in the terrible, broodingblackness.

  But even more awful than the blackness was the loneliness of the six menwho inhabited the silver rocket. They moved in loneliness as fish movein water. Their lives revolved in loneliness as planets revolve in spaceand time. They bore their loneliness like a shroud, and it was as much apart of them as sight in their eyes. Loneliness was both their brotherand their god.

  Yet, like a tiny flame in the darkness, there was hope, a savage,desperate hope that grew with the passing of each day, each month, andeach year.

  And at last....

  "Lord," breathed Captain Sam Wiley.

  Lieutenant Gunderson nodded. "It's a big one, isn't it?"

  "It's a big one," repeated Captain Wiley.

  They stared at the image in the _Wanderer's_ forward visi-screen, at thegreat, shining gray ball. They stared hard, for it was like anenchanted, God-given fruit handed them on a star-flecked platter ofmidnight. It was like the answer to a thousand prayers, a shining symbolof hope which could mean the end of loneliness.

  "It's ten times as big as Earth," mused Lieutenant Gunderson. "Do youthink this'll be it, Captain?"

  "I'm afraid to think."

  A thoughtful silence.

  "Captain."

  "Yes?"

  "Do you hear my heart pounding?"

  Captain Wiley smiled. "No. No, of course not."

  "It seems like everybody should be hearing it. But we shouldn't getexcited, should we? We mustn't hope too hard." He bit his lip. "Butthere _should_ be life there, don't you think, Captain?"

  "There may be."

  "Nine years, Captain. Think of it. It's taken us nine years to get here.There's _got_ to be life."

  "Prepare for deceleration, Lieutenant."

  Lieutenant Gunderson's tall, slim body sagged for an instant. Then hiseyes brightened.

  "Yes, sir!"

  ----

  Captain Sam Wiley continued to stare at the beautiful gray globe in thevisi-screen. He was not like Gunderson, with boyish eagerness andanxiety flowing out of him in a ceaseless babble. His emotion was asgreat, or greater, but it was imprisoned within him, like swirling,foaming liquid inside a corked jug.

  It wouldn't do to encourage the men too much. Because, if they weredisappointed....

  He shook his silver-thatched head. There it was, he thought. A newworld. A world that, perhaps, held life.

  Life. It was a word uttered only with reverence, for throughout theSolar System, with the exception of on Earth, there had been only death.

  First it was the Moon, airless and lifeless. That had been expected, ofcourse.

  But Mars. For centuries men had dreamed of Mars and written of Mars withits canals and dead cities, with its ancient men and strange animals.Everyone _knew_ there was or had been life on Mars.

  The flaming rockets reached Mars, and the canals became volcaniccrevices, and the dead cities became jagged peaks of red stone, and theendless sands were smooth, smooth, smooth, untouched by feet of livingcreatures. There was plant-life, a species of green-red lichen in thePolar regions. But nowhere was there real life.

  Then Venus, with its dust and wind. No life there. Not even the stars tomake one think of home. Only the dust and wind, a dark veil of deathscreaming eternally over hot dry land.

  And Jupiter, with its seas of ice; and hot Mercury, a cracked, witheredmummy of a planet, baked as hard and dry as an ancient walnut in afurnace.

  Next, the airless, rocky asteroids, and frozen Saturn with its swirlingammonia snows. And last, the white, silent worlds, Uranus, Neptune, andPluto.

  World after world, all dead, with no sign of life, no reminder of life,and no promise of life.

  Thus the loneliness had grown. It was not a child of Earth. It was notborn in the hearts of those who scurried along city pavements or ofthose in the green fields or of those in the cool, clean houses.

  It was a child of the incredible distances, of the infinite night, ofemptiness and silence. It was born in the hearts of the slit-eyed men,the oldish young men, the spacemen.

  For without life on other worlds, where was the sky's challenge? Why goon and on to discover only worlds of death?

  The dream of the spacemen turned from the planets to the stars.Somewhere in the galaxy or in other galaxies there _had_ to be life.Life was a wonderful and precious thing. It wasn't right that it shouldbe confined to a single, tiny planet. If it were, then life would seemmeaningless. Mankind would be a freak, a cosmic accident.

  And now the _Wanderer_ was on the first interstellar flight, hurtlingthrough the dark spaces to Proxima Centauri. Moving silently, as ifmotionless, yet at a speed of 160,000 miles a second. And ahead loomedthe great, gray planet, the only planet of the sun, growing larger,larger, each instant....

  ----

  A gentle, murmuring hum filled the ship. The indicator lights on thecontrol panel glowed like a swarm of pink eyes.

  "Deceleration compensator adjusted for 12 G's, sir," reported LieutenantGunderson.

  Captain Wiley nodded, still studying the image of the planet.

  "There--there's something else, Captain."

  "Yes?"

  "It's Brown, sir. He's drunk."

  Captain Wiley turned, a scowl on his hard, lined face. "Drunk? Where'dhe get the stuff?"

  "He saved it, sir, saved it for nine years. Said he was going to drinkit when we discovered life."

  "We haven't discovered life yet."

  "I know. He said he wouldn't set foot on the planet if he was sober.Said if there isn't life there, he couldn't take it--unless he wasdrunk."

  Captain Wiley grunted. "All right."

  They looked at the world.

  "Wouldn't it be wonderful, Captain? Just think--to meet another race. Itwouldn't matter what they were like, would it? If they were primitive,we could teach them things. If they were ahead of us, they could teachus. You know what I'd like? To have someone meet us, to gather aroundus. It wouldn't matter if they were afraid of us or even if they triedto kill us. We'd know that we aren't alone."

  "I know what you mean," said Captain Wiley. Some of his emotionoverflowed the prison of his body. "There's no thrill in landing on deadworlds. If no one's there to see you, you don't feel like a hero."

  "That's it, Captain! That's why I came on this crazy trip. I guessthat's why we all came. I...."

  Captain Wiley cleared his throat. "Lieutenant, commence deceleration. 6G's."

  "Yes, sir!"

  The planet grew bigger, filling the entire visi-screen.

  Someone coughed behind Captain Wiley.

  "Sir, the men would like to look at the screen. They can't see theplanet out of the ports yet." The speaker was Doyle, the ship'sEngineer, a dry, tight-skinned little man.

  "Sure." Captain Wiley stepped aside.

  Doyle looked, then Parker and Fong. Just three of them, for Watkins hadsliced his wrists the fourth year out. And Brown was drunk.

  As they looked, a realization came to Captain Wiley. The men weregetting old. The years had passed so gradually that he'd never reallynoticed it before. Lieutenant Gunderson had been a kid just out of SpaceAcademy. Parker and Doyle and Fong, too, had been in their twenties.They had been boys. And now something was gone--the sharp eyes and suremovements of youth, the
smooth skin and thick, soft hair.

  Now they had become men. And yet for a few moments, as they gazed at thescreen, they seemed like happy, expectant children.

  "I wish Brown could see this," Doyle murmured. "He says now he isn'tgoing to get off his couch till we land and discover life. Says he won'tdare look for himself."

  "The planet's right for life," said Fong, the dark-facedastro-physicist. "Atmosphere forty per cent oxygen, lots of water vapor.No poisonous gases, according to spectroscopic analyses. It should beideal for life."

  "There _is_ life there," said Parker, the radarman. "You know why?Because we've given up eighteen years of our lives. Nine years to gethere, nine to get back. I'm thirty now. I was twenty-one when we leftEarth. I gave up all those