Part 1

THE CASTAWAY

By GEORGE DANZELL

Who was this bearded castaway of space? Some said he was Jonah. Others thought him a long-lost, mad scientist. But Lieutenant Brait knew him by a name that was old when the world was young.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1940. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

There was an ad in the classified columns of this week's _Spaceways Weekly_. It asked for information concerning the whereabouts of one "Paul Moran, last known to have taken off from Long Island Spaceport for parts unlogged." Captain McNeally drew the notice to my attention. He said, "Look at this, Brait. Wasn't Moran the chap we picked up in the asteroids? It seems to me I remember--"

"You should," I told him. "You see his name twice every shuttle, engraved on cold steel. And you can be thankful for that. But I don't think he'll answer this ad. I don't think they'll ever hear from him."

"That," scoffed the Shipper, "is nonsense! Do you realize what this means, Brait? This ad was inserted by the Government Patent Office. There's a fortune waiting for Mr. Moran back on Earth, when he sees this--"

"A fortune waiting," I said softly, "when and if he ever sees it. But I wonder, Skipper. I wonder."

* * * * *

We were about three thousand miles north, west and loft of Ceres when we first sighted him. I remember that well, because I was on the Bridge, and our Sparks, Toby Frisch, had just handed me a free clearance report from the space commander of that planetoid.

I read it and chuckled. I said, "Sparks, this bit of transcription is a masterpiece. Nobody expects a radioman to be good-looking or have brains, but blue space above, man, your spelling and grammar--"

"Leave my relatives," said Sparks stiffly, "out of this. Is the message O.Q. or ain't it?"

"Yes," I told him, "with a light sprinkling of no. Sometimes I wish we had a good operator aboard the _Antigone_. Like one of those Donovan brothers, for instance."

"Them guys!" sniffed Sparks. "Too wise for their britches, both of 'em. I'm a bug-pounder, not a joke-book. If it's smart cracks you want, why don't you buy an audio?"

It was at this point that Lt. Russ Bartlett, First Mate of our ship, who had been shooting the azimuth through the perilens, turned and waved to me excitedly.

"Brait, take a look! Quick! There's a man down below! On one of the minor asteroids!"

I said, "A joke, Bartlett? You'd better check the alignment of that perilens. That's the Man in the Moon you see."

Gunner McCoy, Bartlett's staunchest friend and admirer, looked up from the rotor port, wrinkled his leathery, space-toughed cheeks into a frown, and squirted mekel-juice at a distant gobboon.

"Mebbe you better look, Mr. Brait," he said. "If Russ says there's a man there, then there's a man there."

So I looked. And to look was to act. I cut in my intercommunicating unit and bawled a stop hypo order to Chief Lester in the engine room below. Bartlett was right. There was a single, bulger-clad figure sprawled on the craggy rock of a tiny asteroid hurtling beneath us. A man who lay there quietly, did not rise, did not wave, gave no sign of noticing our approach even when I dropped the _Antigone_ down toward the spatial island.

Bartlett, peering through the duplicate lens, said, "Dead, Brait. He must have cracked up. He's not moving."

But there was no wrecked spaceship anywhere around. I said, "We'll know in a few minutes." And then the Skipper burst into the bridge, startled and curious. "Something haywire, boys? Here, I'll take over."

He was a good man, Cap McNeally. A hardened spacehound, canny and wise to the ways of the void, always on deck in moments of emergency. That's why the IPS, the Corporation for which we work, had placed him in command of the _Antigone_, finest and fastest ship in the fleet.

But I calmed his rotors. "Everything O.Q., sir," I told him. "We're standing by to take on a space-wrecked sailor. I think."

My guess was right. A few minutes later we threw out a grapple, space-anchored the _Aunty_, and a rescue party landed on the asteroid. They brought back with them a sad looking specimen of the genus _Homo sapiens_. His cheeks were drained and sunken beneath a bristling, unkempt beard; his skin was blistered frightfully from long exposure to solars and cosmics; his limbs were so feeble that he couldn't walk unaided. He had to be carried.

Someone unscrewed his face-port for him. He drew a long, deep breath of the pure _Antigone_ air. His wan eyes lighted dimly and he spoke in a voice that was a thin husk of sound.

"Thank you, gentlemen. I had hoped that at last I might--But you meant well, I suppose."

Which was, I thought at the time, a damned strange speech of gratitude. But I had no time to answer. For his knees suddenly buckled beneath him, his eyes closed. Had it not been for the friendly hands that supported him, he would have pitched forward on his face.

Cap McNeally snapped, "Sick-bay! Snap it up, you lubbers! The man's in bad shape. Out on his feet, cold!"

Sparks whispered, "Gosh, he looks like a corpus!" as the sailors bore our unexpected passenger away. I stared at him disgustedly.

"Corpse." I said.

"Huh?" said Sparks.

"Corpse!" I repeated. "Corpse!"

"You," suggested Sparks, "oughta take somethin' for that indigestion, Lootenant. My sister had it. It made her a physical reek."

It's against the rules for a Second Mate to punch a radioman. So I kicked him. There are limits.

* * * * *

That was our first meeting with the mysterious Paul Moran. We didn't know his name then, of course. We learned that several days later. After Doc Jurnegan, our medico, had coaxed, bulldozed and sulfanilamided him back off the brink of the dark and nasty.

Doc was the first to tag Moran with the adjective we all, eventually, accepted.

"It's the damnedest thing," he told me, "I've ever seen. Brait, I'll swear on a pile of prescriptions that he didn't have one chance in a million of pulling through. But he's still alive!

"By rights, he should have been dead two weeks before we found him. Do you know he was on that asteroid five solid weeks? Without food. With only one container of water. With the oxygen reserve in his tank practically exhausted!

"And his condition--" Jurnegan shook his head uncomprehendingly. "Deplorable! He was dessicated, undernourished, fouled from weeks in a bulger. Acute cyanosis alone should have killed him. But--"

I said, "The will-to-live, Doc. It's the determining factor in many a borderline case. I've heard of men with holes in their heads you could drive a stratoplane through who simply refused to--"

"That's just it," said Jurnegan. "He _wants_ to die! He refused to take food. I had to feed him intravenously and force him to drink. But in spite of his physical and mental condition, he still lives. It--it's mysterious, Brait!"

So I went in to visit our strange passenger.

He wasn't a bad looking chap, now that his whiskers had been plowed. Thin, of course; hollow of cheek and eye. His skin was sallow, faintly olive; the contours of his head long and narrow, short-indexed. He was a typical Mediterannean, if what my profs taught me is right. Medium stature, small-boned, thin, tapering fingers. Crisp, oily hair, black as space.

I said, "Well, you look like a new man!"--which he did, and, "You're looking fine!" I said--which he wasn't.

He turned his head slowly, studied me with grave, questioning eyes. His voice was faint, but low and pleasing.

"You are Mr. Brait, the Second Mate? I believe I have you to thank for having rescued me?"

"That's all right," I told him.

"Why," he interrupted gently, "did you do it?"

I said, "Oh, come now! You've got to perk up! You get a little flesh on your bones and you'll feel better."

But he went on, as though not hearing my words, "It was a chance. The best chance I've had for years--a thousand years--and you took it from me. Out there I might have found peace at last. The power cannot--it _must_ not--extend into the depths of space."

* * * * *

His voice had risen; there was a light of madness, of strange, savage intensity in his eyes. I felt the little hairs on the back of my neck pringling. I knew, now, that the man had not come unscathed through his experience. He was space crazy. Wildly, desperately so. I said, in what I hoped was a soothing voice,

"Now, take it easy, Mr.--er--Moran, isn't it?"

The ghost of a smile touched his lips, and his body became less tense. He said wearily, "Moran--yes. Or Ader. Or Cart--Oh, anything you choose. It hardly seems important any more. I've had so many, many names."

That wasn't exactly encouraging. But at least he was quieter now. And I had to know a few things about him to put in the ship's log. I asked, "How did you get on that asteroid, Moran? Were you space-wrecked? If so, what was the name of your craft? The authorities will want to know."

He answered, almost mockingly, "I was marooned."

"Marooned! But--but that's criminal! Who did it? We'll have them picked up and punished!"

"You'll do nothing of the sort. They marooned me on that asteroid because I deserved it and I respect and thank them for it!" His voice was rising again; higher, shriller. "I thank them, do you hear? I bless them, a hundred, thousand, million times. Though their effort was in vain. I was, and am, a Jonah. A Jonah, Jonah, _Jonah_!"

He sat bolt upright in bed, screaming the word defiantly. Doc Jurnegan raced in, glanced at me reproachfully and took his patient in hand. "You'd better go, Brait," he suggested.

So I left. The sweat on my forehead was damp and cold. I needed a drink.

When I told Cap McNeally of my experience, he nodded soberly.

"I know, Brait. I saw him before you did. And he acted just as loony toward me. Warned me he was a Jonah--"

"I'm not superstitious," I interrupted, "but there _are_ such things as Jonahs. Men whose very presence aboard a spaceship seems to cause trouble, dissention, disaster. You remember that Venusian blaster on the _Goddard III_? The survivors always swore he caused the crack-up."

"Moran's case," frowned the skipper, "is more than just superstition. He told me that he never wanted to see Earth again. When I told him that was too bad, that we were headed for Earth right now, he warned me solemnly that he'd do everything in his power to prevent our getting there. So what do you think of that?"

"I think," I said glumly, "he's nuts! And if we pay any attention to him, we'll all be nuts, too. Well, I've got to go, Cap. I've got to check the shield generators before we go busting into Earth's H-layer."

And I left.

* * * * *

Well, I was busy for the next four days on my job. It was a plenty important job, and had to be done carefully. The H-layer of the planets--the Kennelly-Heaviside layer--is a supertensioned field of force similar in composition to the corona of a star. A wide swath of ionized gas with high potential, serving as a shield against the murderous Q- and ultra-violet rays that emanate from solar bodies.

But the H-layer is a barrier as well as a shield. The first space-flight experimenters learned that, and the knowledge cost them their lives. For their craft hit the H-layer unguarded; and where had been a glistening ship, now was pitted, blackened metal; where had been life, now there was charred carbon.

Now all spaceships were equipped with shield generators. They were "generators" by courtesy only; actually they were huge condensers fed by cable lines tied at intervals to the hull plates. The theory was that as the craft plunged into and through the H-layer, these condensers would absorb the excess potential, thus allowing the ship to pass through unharmed.

And it worked swell, most of the time. Oh, every year a few ships would get theirs--would blow out in a blue wreath of coruscating flame--but for the most part the trip was safe enough. Except, of course, when a condenser was in bad condition. Which was why I was giving ours a check and double check.

Still, I could never rid myself of a queasy moment when we hit that blanket of spark-happy ionization. Particularly when a planet was at aphelion as Earth was now. Because at such times the H-layer was more highly activated than usual.

And to tell the truth, I wasn't satisfied with the way my work was going. First I hit my thumb with a monkey-wrench. It didn't hurt the wrench, but the thumb turned pale mauve and throbbed like a sixteen-year-old kid's pulse on his first hayride.

Then I lost a brass collar off the hull-brace, and since we didn't carry a reserve stock I had to ask Chief Lester to make me one. By the time that was ready, I'd busted a .44 coil cable lock, and had to jerry-rig a substitute.

Oh, it was a headache! But I wasn't the only guy on board the _Aunty_ who was having troubles. Slops raised a howl to high heaven because his stove went on the squeegee. Gunner McCoy stalked into the officer's mess one afternoon demanding what such-and-such so-and-so had stripped the gears of his pet rotor-gun. Sparks burned out three vacuum tubes in one day, breaking contact with all transmitting stations and almost causing us to crack up on a rogue asteroid. Even Cap McNeally was visited by the plague. He came wailing to me, on the bridge, that the refrigeration units in the No. 3 storage bin had broken down.

"--and we've lost a whole binfull of _clab_, Brait! Worth at least six thousand credits on Earth. The Corporation will be mad as hell."

"That's tough," I said, "but there's nothing we can do about it. It wasn't your fault."

He eyed me curiously. "Brait--" he said.

"Yes, Cap?"

"I've been wondering--do you think there could be anything in what Moran said? About him being a--a--"

"Jonah?" I'd been thinking the same thing myself. "I don't know, Skipper. I wouldn't say yes, and I wouldn't say no. But there's no doubt about it, things have been going haywire ever since we picked him up. I'll be glad when he lifts gravs off the _Aunty_."

Cap said petulantly, "Of course it's just nonsense. Bad luck doesn't hang around one man like that. It's against the law of averages. Still, I wish you'd sort of keep an eye on him for the next three days, Brait. Till we land on Earth. I've got a notion--"

"So has Earth," I grinned. "Five of 'em. Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and the two Etceteras. What's yours?"

"It might," frowned the skipper. "Be sabotage. He said he'd do everything in his power to prevent our reaching Earth. And he's up and around now."

"If you think that," I suggested, "why don't you shove him in the clink, just to make sure?"

"Can't do it. Because I've no _proof_ he's responsible for these occurrences, and besides, a rescued passenger is entitled to the courtesy of the ship."

* * * * *

So that's how I assumed, in addition to the rest of my duties, the job of watch-dogging the mysterious Paul Moran. As Cap McNeally had said, Moran was up and about now. He had made what Doc Jurnegan claimed was the swiftest recovery in the annals of medicine. He still looked like a skeleton in search of a square meal. But there was sanity in his eyes. If not always in his speech. Like that afternoon in Sparks' radio turret, for instance.

We had been talking, Sparks and I, about space-flight. What a great thing it was. How, only in its infancy, it was already changing man's outlook, widening the borders of man's domain, creating a newer, greater universe.

"We got," Sparks said, "reason to be proud of ourselves. Gee, I was readin' in the library--"

"You," I interrupted wonderingly, "can read?"

"Comets to you, Lootenant!" sniffed Sparks. "As I was sayin' before I was so rudely ruptured, I was readin' in the library some old books from the Twentieth Century. Just about a hundred an' fifty years old, mind you! They had the craziest ideas about what men would find on other planets, if an' when they ever got there. Flame-men, an' robots, an' all sorts of things.

"Nothin' like what we actually found. 'Course, we shouldn't laugh at 'em too much. They had no way of knowin'. We're the first people ever traveled in space."

"No!" said Moran.

Sparks said patiently, "Well, I didn't mean us here in this room. Of course we ain't. But I mean the people of our time."

"And I still say," said Moran gravely, "no! Man in all ages is a creature of conceit, self-pride, self-glorification. There was space-flight long before you lived, Sparks. A race, long dead now, from a neighbor planet."

I said gently, "You're thinking of those pyramids found on Venus and Mars, Moran? I know that's a puzzler to modern science. And I've read several theories regarding their builders. But most authorities agree that their mere presence does not necessarily imply the existence of a single race of engineers. The pyramid is a fundamental structural form. Any intelligent race--"

"Man," said Moran almost sadly. "Man the dreamer; Man the doubter. No, Lieutenant, I am not speaking of theories, now. I am speaking of tales I've heard; accounts I've read in archives long molded into dust. At least three times in the past have civilized races spanned the void. It was the dying Martian race that first achieved space-flight. They found Venus a rank and stinking jungle, but on Earth certain of them set up their new abode." He smiled quietly. "And reverted to savagery, as is always the case when civilized men, removed from the source of their culture, find themselves face to face with stark reality.

"Then it was the Moon-creatures who fled their airless world, spanned the distance to nearby earth."

I said, "That's an interesting thought, Moran. It explains the coloration of the races of man, doesn't it? I'd like to read that book you mentioned. Where can I get it?"

He shook his head sadly.

"You can't, Lt. Brait. The last copy of it was destroyed more than twelve centuries ago. Simon Magnus was the last man to read it as I remember. I loaned it to him--"

He stopped abruptly. But Sparks' eyes were plate-sized and incredulous. "--you loaned it to him?"

I spun on Sparks, angry. Jurnegan had told us to humor Moran, help him to a complete recovery. I didn't approve of this, not a little bit. I snapped, "That'll do, Sparks! Good Lord, man--What's the matter, Moran?"

For suddenly his face had paled, his eyes widened in horror, and he was backing away from me. He thrust out a trembling hand, gasped hoarsely, "Have a care, Brait! 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain--'!"

Then he fled; his running footsteps clattered down the ramp, and the echoes were strangely disturbing. Sparks stared after him, then made a circular motion at his temple.

"Nuts!" he said. "Crazy as a loon, Lootenant."

* * * * *

Oh, he was an odd one, that Moran. Those next days are somehow garbled in my mind. They were so full of incident that now, looking back upon them, I can hardly distinguish between that which actually _was_, and that which an active imagination conjured for me out of fancy.

This I do know--it was the worst trip I've ever experienced in the _Antigone_ or any other ship. Something was always wrong. Lt. Russ Bartlett, whose mind is as accurate as the cogs of a computing machine, discovered to his dismay that he had made an error in calculation; that at our present rate of speed we would miss Earth entirely and plunge Sunward at a rate that would destroy us all. He discovered that by sheer accident, and just in time to scream a hasty, "Cut hypos!" to the engine room, else I wouldn't be here to tell it. Then there was that mysterious occurrence in the galley. Our cook had a pet cat, and if it weren't for his habit of feeding the pussy before he fed the crew, half of us would be stiff now. Because the cat slopped up its dinner and forthwith proceeded to give up all nine of its lives simultaneously. Ptomaine, from faulty food tins. The first time such a thing had happened in more than forty years!

You couldn't say Moran was behind either of these near-disasters. For I was dogging his footsteps; I'll take my oath he was not involved. Physically, that is. But they say a Jonah's curse works even though the Jonah takes no actual part.

Oh, he was an odd one, that Moran. For instance, the time Sparks' selenium plate blew out. It was Moran who got permission to use the machine shop, construct a substitute out of a uranoid-steel atmochamber. We used that freak audio throughout the trip, then replaced it with a standard one when we reached Earth. Like dopes! Because two years later that screwball First Mate of the _Saturn_ "invented" a uranium time-speech-trap exactly like the one Moran made us. He earned a quarter million credits from it. Imagine!

Then there was the time, as we were approaching the Lunar outpost, that our calculating machine jammed. Lieutenant Bartlett and Cap McNeally were in a dither trying to figure the approach velocity. It's a fifteen-minute job for the machine; a six-hour job for a man's brain. But Moran, who happened by, glanced casually at the declension chart, said, "Cut to forty-three at 3.05 Earth Standard, Captain. Maintain full speed for point three five parsecs, alter declension to north one, loft seven, fire fore jets twice--"

Having no better idea, McNeally did as Moran suggested. And we warped past the Moon oh-oh-oh on trajectory!

* * * * *

Which put us within scant hours of Earth's H-layer. And which also roused in me the realization that the mysterious Paul Moran was more than the ordinary space-sailor he pretended to be. Maybe I'm snoopy, I don't know. Anyway, I went to the radio room. I told Sparks grimly, "You and I are going to find out just who or what this Moran guy is. Send a message, Sparks. To Fred Bender, at Long Island Spaceport. Tell him to find out if there's a scientist missing who answers to this description. Five feet, seven and a half inches; a hundred and twenty-five pounds, dark hair, brown eyes--"

The relay of that description and the subsequent reply took longer than I had anticipated. That's why Sparks and I were among the last to learn of the new trouble. We didn't learn until, excited, we burst onto the bridge, confronted the skipper with our information.

"Look, Skipper!" I yelled. "No wonder 'Moran' was able to fix Sparks' radio and set your course! Do you--"

And the Captain raised haggard eyes to me.

"Brait, where have you been? I've been audioing all over the ship for you."

"In Sparks' cabin. Listen, though. Moran is--"

"I don't care," said the skipper wearily, "who he is. And in a little while, nobody else will, either. Your check-up, Mr. Brait, was a miserable failure! We are only an hour and a half out of the H-layer--and the shield generators refuse to function!"

I just stared at him for a minute. When I caught my breath, there was only enough of it for one word.

"Impossible!"

"Impossible, maybe," acknowledged the First Mate, "but unfortunately, Don, the Captain's right. Three lead-in cables are broken, the stripping is off the condenser."

"But--but everything was in perfect order an hour ago! I don't understand! Yes, I do! Moran! He said he'd destroy us all if he got a chance! Skipper, there's the answer. He's done it. The madman--"

Then there was a mirthful chuckle in the doorway, and Moran was standing there looking at us, his thin lips wide in a smile.

"You're right, Brait. I _did_ do it. But I'm not a madman. I'm a happy man. The happiest man who ever lived!" His eyes lighted triumphantly; he stretched his arms above his head in a great, yearning gesture. "Soon will come freedom! The great, everlasting freedom of death."