Captain Future 26 - Earthmen No More (March 1951) Read Free Page A

different particular tricks of phrase and expression, the kindness and cruelty and courage and fear — the wisdom and the folly, moulded together into the separate forms of men. And they had talked of Earth.
    They had planned what they would do when they got back, with the wealth of a new world in their hands. They had talked of the women who would be waiting for them, of the parades and the speeches, the fame that would be theirs around the globe. They had talked and all the time the darkness that was just beyond the hull had been listening with a silent mirth and John Carey was the only one who would ever come back again.
    As the ship rushed nearer to the orbit of Earth, Carey’s eagerness increased until it was like a fever in him. He talked of home as those other men had talked and Curt Newton listened with a kind of pity in his eyes.
    “Don’t expect too much,” he said. “It’s changed — but it’s still Earth, not Paradise.”
    The forward jets were cut in and the ship quivered to the brake-blasts — not the anguished uncertain shuddering of the ships Carey had known but a controlled lessening of speed. The green remembered world came gleaming across the forward port and Carey stared at it, sitting motionless and absorbed, urging the misty continents into shape, watching the oceans spread into blueness and the mountains rise and become real.
    Suddenly he was afraid. He covered his face with his hands, and said, “I can’t. I can’t walk like a ghost through streets I never saw, looking for people who have been dead for generations.”
    “It won’t be easy,” said Curt Newton. “But you’ll have to. Until you do you’ll be living and thinking in the past.” He looked at Carey, half smiling. “After all, you came into this world a stranger once before.”
    “What will they say to me?” whispered Carey. “How do people talk to a dead man?”
    “As rudely as they do to everyone else. And how will they know unless you tell them? Come on, Carey, stiffen up. Forget the past. Start thinking about the future.”
    “Future!” said Carey and the word had a strange hollow sound to him. “Give me time. I haven’t caught up with the present yet.”
    He was silent after that. Newton asked for and got clearance for a landing. The ship picked up her pattern and spiraled in.
    Nothing was clear to Carey. Confused vistas reeled and spun beneath him, a huge monster of a city, the many-colored patchwork of a spaceport, strange and unknown, yet with a haunting familiarity, like a language learned in childhood and long forgotten. His heart pounded fiercely. It was hard to breathe.
    The ship touched ground. And John Carey had come home from space.
    He remained as he was, sitting still, his fingers sunk deep into the padded arms of the recoil-chair. Curt Newton’s voice was faint and far away. “Simon and I are going to Government Center. Grag will stay with the ship. But Otho can go along with you if you like.”
    “No,” said Carey. “No thanks — I...” There was more he wanted to say but he could not form the words. He got up and went past the others, seeing them only as shadows. The airlock was open. He went out.
     
    THE blaze of a summer sun smote hard upon him. He looked up at white clouds piling slowly in the sky and thought out of some dim coign of memory, Later there will be a storm. He began to walk across the concrete apron, scarred with many flames.
    This was the same spaceport. It had to be for there was the city before him and behind him was the sea. Here, from a little field that had looked so big and grand, the Victrix had taken flight for Jupiter. Here a girl had said goodbye and kissed him with the bitterness of tears.
    But it was not the same. The little field was swallowed up and gone, drowned in the mighty rows of docks. Where the administration building had stood a white pylon towered up into the clouds. The air was filled with the thunderous roar of ships, landing, taking off, jets