Short Fiction by Mack Reynolds (ready to read books .TXT) 📕

preoccupied with thoughts of Joseph and the story Sam had told of him. The guards at the main gate must have let us through without question when they saw my United Space Lines uniform. At any rate, when I looked up, it was too late. Not only was I on the landing field and in full view of the concrete takeoff aprons, but one gigantic freighter was in the process of blasting off.

All the horror of it flowed over me with a rush. The careful training of years; the work of the doctors who had treated me; all my own self-discipline⁠—were gone. I shook with terrified frenzy. The depths of space! The free fall! The black emptiness! The utter, uncontrollable terror!

I screamed shrilly and the cabbie turned, wide-eyed, to stare at me.

He knew the symptoms. “Space cafard! A halftripper!” he gasped, and spun the cab about to get me to a hospital. He must have realized then that my uniform didn’t necessarily mean that I worked on the liners themselves, but that I could be an office employee who only on rare occasions went near the ships.

He knew too, that the very sight of a spacecraft blasting off was enough to put me in bed for a week; and that I was uncommonly lucky to have the funds for the hospitalization. Mars was strewn with the human wrecks of halftrippers who hadn’t.

As we whirled from the yard, we passed the bent figure of Joseph walking unhurriedly toward a liner which was loading for the Venus run.

My heart cried out, even through my terror, my sickness:

Joseph, Joseph.⁠ ⁠… So you too are still alive; and still seeking forgiveness. I had thought I was the last.

But you are by far the better off of we two, Joseph. For at least you have been free to wander while I have stayed on this one hated spot since all those centuries ago when we fled from Calypso and the wrath of the people who had loved the boy so. As though we hadn’t loved him ourselves, Joseph.

Yes, you are the better off, you can seek throughout the stars for forgiveness. Then, too, your mind is forever dulled with your madness, while mine is horribly aware, always, of what we’ve been through and of the centuries ahead; it is only blurred when the space cafard comes.

Joseph, Joseph⁠ ⁠… you didn’t even recognize your brother Micheal, nor I you, when we met.

The Cosmic Bluff

To everyone in the Solar System I was a big shot, understand? Everyone but two⁠—the two that counted most. One of the two was Suzi, and the other was me. The difference was that Suzi made no bones about telling me I was a fake; in my own mind the knowledge was there but more or less subconscious.

On this particular occasion Suzi was standing in the center of the half acre living room of my new penthouse on top the two hundred story Spacenter Building in Neuve Los Angeles. She had her hands on her hips and was glaring around at the furniture, the pictures, the statuary.

She said bitingly, “Jak, you’re a phony.”

“A what?” I complained. “Listen, Suzi, don’t start calling me those prehistoric names again.”

“A phony,” she said, “a humbug, a four flusher, a quack, a faker.⁠ ⁠…”

She’d finally got to a word I knew. “Hey,” I protested, “what’s this all about?”

She indicated the portraits of me hanging on the wall. She pointed out the statuettes. She picked up a magazine and showed me the ad on the back page⁠—me, endorsing a boomerang. I’d got a thousand credits for that.

She went over to the bookcase and pulled out a copy of How I Became Champ and the first volume of Gladiator Technique. Both by me. That is, ghost written for me; but my name was on the cover. She indicated two or three other books I was cashing in on.

“You’re a phony, Jak,” she repeated. “You used to be a nice quiet fellow, actually more shy and retiring than was good for you. Now your head is swollen beyond bearing.”

I was getting a little hot about this. For the past few months I’d been acquiring the habit of having people look up to me, admiring me, asking for my autograph, that sort of thing.

“Look here,” I said. “Just because you’ve known me for years and just because for most of that time I’ve been chasing you, doesn’t mean that the Gladiator Champion of the Solar System is a nobody.” I finished with what I thought would be the clincher. “Let me tell you, there isn’t one girl in a billion who wouldn’t be glad to be in your shoes⁠—engaged to Jak Dempsi.”

It was the clincher all right. She took her hands from her hips and folded them over her breasts and glared. “Oh yes there is,” she told me. “There’s exactly one girl who isn’t interested in being engaged to you Gladiator Jak Dempsi. Me,” she snapped.

I glared back at her. “Are you crazy?” I asked. “We’re going to be married the day after tomorrow.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” she snapped again. “I became engaged to a nice, quiet, thoughtful, second-rate gladiator. A mistake happened and he wound up Solar System Champion⁠—and a stuffed shirt. The engagement is off.”

“Second-rate gladiator.⁠ ⁠…” I blurted indignantly, but she was already on her way, stamping across the Venusian Chameleon rug to the door.

I was so surprised I stood there, letting her go. It took me a full minute to understand that Suzi had just run out on me. Me! The victor at the Interplanetary Meet. The sole survivor of the scores of gladiators who fought it out once every ten years to see which planet of the System would dominate interplanetary affairs.

I went over to the bookcase and wrenched out one of the many books on prehistoric times that Suzi was always insisting I read. That’s Suzi’s bug, if you didn’t know. Prehistoric times, customs, history, language, legends⁠—all of a period that most