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Read Ebook: To Each His Star by Walton Bryce
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Ebook has 71 lines and 5418 words, and 2 pages
"Ready, Russ?"
Russell couldn't say anything. He stared at the endless void which now he would share with no one. Not even crazy old Dunbar.
"All right," Johnson said. "Good-bye."
Russell felt the release, felt the sudden inexplicable isolation and aloneness even before Alvar and Johnson used their life-guns and shot out of sight, Johnson toward the left and Alvar back toward that other red-rimmed sun behind them.
And old Dunbar shooting right on ahead. And all three of them dwindling and dwindling and blinking out like little lights.
Fading, he could hear their voices. "Each to his own star," Johnson said. "On a bee line."
"On a bee line," Alvar said.
Russell used his own life-gun and in a little while he didn't hear Alvar or Johnson's voices, nor could he see them. They were thousands of miles away, and going further all the time.
Russell's head fell forward against the front of his helmet, and he closed his eyes. "Maybe," he thought, "I shouldn't have killed the old man. Maybe one sun's as good as another...."
Then he raised his body and looked out into the year of blackness that waited for him, stretching away to the red-rimmed sun. Even if he were right--he was sure now he'd never make it alone.
The body inside the pressure suit drifted into a low-level orbit around the second planet from the sun of its choice, and drifted there a long time. A strato-cruiser detected it by chance because of the strong concentration of radio-activity that came from it.
They took the body down to one of the small, quiet towns on the edge of one of the many blue lakes where the domed houses were like bright joyful jewels. They got the leathery, well-preserved body from the pressure suit.
"An old man," one of them mused. "A very old man. From one of the lost sectors. I wonder how and why he came so very far from his home?"
"Wrecked a ship out there, probably," one of the others said. "But he managed to get this far. It looks as though a small meteor fragment pierced his body. Here. You see?"
"Yes," another of them said. "But what amazes me is that this old man picked this planet out of all the others. The only one in this entire sector that would sustain life."
"Maybe he was just a very lucky old man. Yes ... a man who attains such an age was usually lucky. Or at least that is what they say about the lost sectors."
"Maybe he knew the way here. Maybe he was here before--sometime."
The other shook his head. "I don't think so. They say some humans from that far sector did land here--but that's probably only a myth. And if they did, it was well over a thousand years ago."
Another said. "He has a fine face, this old man. A noble face. Whoever he is ... wherever he came from, he died bravely and he knew the way, though he never reached this haven of the lost alive."
"Nor is it irony that he reached here dead," said the Lake Chieftain. He had been listening and he stepped forward and raised his arm. "He was old. It is obvious that he fought bravely, that he had great courage, and that he knew the way. He will be given a burial suitable to his stature, and he will rest here among the brave.
"Let the women dance and the music play for this old man. Let the trumpets speak, and the rockets fly up. And let flowers be strewn over the path above which the women will carry him to rest."
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