Death of a Spaceman Read online

was gone. I'd better take it easy on thewhiskey, he thought. You got to wait, Donegal, old lush, until Nora andKen get here. You can't get drunk until they're gone, or you might getthem mixed up with memories like Caid's.

  Car doors slammed in the street below. Martha glanced toward the window.

  "Think it's them? I wish they'd get here. I wish they'd hurry."

  Martha arose and tiptoed to the window. She peered down toward thesidewalk, put on a sharp frown. He heard a distant mutter of voices andoccasional laughter, with group-footsteps milling about on the sidewalk.Martha murmured her disapproval and closed the window.

  "Leave it open," he said.

  "But the Keiths' guests are starting to come. There'll be such aracket." She looked at him hopefully, the way she did when she promptedhis manners before company came.

  Maybe it wasn't decent to listen in on a party when you were dying, hethought. But that wasn't the reason. Donegal, your chamber-pressure'sdropping off. Your brains are in your butt-end, where a spacer's brainsbelong, but your butt-end died last month. She wants the window closedfor her own sake, not yours.

  "Leave it closed," he grunted. "But open it again before the moon-runblasts off. I want to listen."

  She smiled and nodded, glancing at the clock. "It'll be an hour and ahalf yet. I'll watch the time."

  "I hate that clock. I wish you'd throw it out. It's loud."

  "It's your medicine-clock, Donny." She came back to sit down at hisbedside again. She sat in silence. The clock filled the room with itsclicking pulse.

  "What time are they coming?" he asked.

  "Nora and Ken? They'll be here soon. Don't fret."

  "Why should I fret?" He chuckled. "That boy--he'll be a good spacer,won't he, Martha?"

  Martha said nothing, fanned at a fly that crawled across his pillow. Thefly buzzed up in an angry spiral and alighted on the ceiling. Donegalwatched it for a time. The fly had natural-born space-legs. I know yourtricks, he told it with a smile, and I learned to walk on the bottomsideof things before you were a maggot. You stand there with your magnasoleshanging to the hull, and the rest of you's in free fall. You jerk a soleloose, and your knee flies up to your belly, and reaction spins youhalf-around and near throws your other hip out of joint if you don't jamthe foot down fast and jerk up the other. It's worse'n trying to runthrough knee-deep mud with snow-shoes, and a man'll go nuts trying tokeep his arms and legs from taking off in odd directions. I know yourtricks, fly. But the fly was born with his magnasoles, and he trottedacross the ceiling like Donegal never could.

  "That boy Ken--he ought to make a damn good space-engineer," wheezed theold man.

  Her silence was long, and he rolled his head toward her again. Her lipstight, she stared down at the palm of his hand, unfolded his bonyfingers, felt the cracked calluses that still welted the shrunken skin,calluses worn there by the linings of space gauntlets and the handles offuel valves, and the rungs of get-about ladders during free fall.

  "I don't know if I should tell you," she said.

  "Tell me what, Martha?"

  She looked up slowly, scrutinizing his face. "Ken's changed his mind,Nora says. Ken doesn't like the academy. She says he wants to go tomedical school."

  Old Donegal thought it over, nodded absently. "That's fine. Space-medicsget good pay." He watched her carefully.

  She lowered her eyes, rubbed at his calluses again. She shook her headslowly. "He doesn't want to go to space."

  The clock clicked loudly in the closed room.

  "I thought I ought to tell you, so you won't say anything to him aboutit," she added.

  Old Donegal looked grayer than before. After a long silence, he rolledhis head away and looked toward the limp curtains.

  "Open the window, Martha," he said.

  Her tongue clucked faintly as she started to protest, but she saidnothing. After frozen seconds, she sighed and went to open it. Thecurtains billowed, and a babble of conversation blew in from the terraceof the Keith mansion. With the sound came the occasional brassy discordof a musician tuning his instrument. She clutched the window-sash as ifshe wished to slam it closed again.

  "Well! Music!" grunted Old Donegal. "That's good. This is some shebang.Good whiskey and good music and you." He chuckled, but it choked offinto a fit of coughing.

  "Donny, about Ken--"

  "No matter, Martha," he said hastily. "Space-medic's pay is good."

  "But, Donny--" She turned from the window, stared at him briefly, thensaid, "Sure, Donny, sure," and came back to sit down by his bed.

  He smiled at her affectionately. She was a man's woman, wasMartha--always had been, still was. He had married her the year he hadgone to space--a lissome, wistful, old-fashioned lass, with big violeteyes and gentle hands and gentle thoughts--and she had never complainedabout the long and lonely weeks between blast-off and glide-down, whenmost spacers' wives listened to the psychiatrists and soap-operas andsoon developed the symptoms that were expected of them, either becausethe symptoms were _chic_, or because they felt they should do somethingto earn the pity that was extended to them. "It's not so bad," Marthahad assured him. "The house keeps me busy till Nora's home from school,and then there's a flock of kids around till dinner. Nights are a littleempty, but if there's a moon, I can always go out on the porch and lookat it and know where you are. And Nora gets out the telescope you builther, and we make a game of it. 'Seeing if Daddy's still at the office,'she calls it."

  * * * * *

  "Those were the days," he muttered.

  "What, Donny?"

  "Do you remember that Steve Farran song?"

  She paused, frowning thoughtfully. There were a lot of Steve Farransongs, but after a moment she picked the right one, and sang itsoftly ...

  "O moon whereo'er the clouds fly, Beyond the willow tree, There is a ramblin' space guy I wish you'd save for me.

  "_Mare Tranquillitatis_, O dark and tranquil sea, Until he drops from heaven, Rest him there with thee ..."

  Her voice cracked, and she laughed. Old Donegal chuckled weakly.

  "Fried mush," he said. "That one made the cats wilt their ears and wailat the moon.

  "I feel real crazy," he added. "Hand me the king kong, fluff-muff."

  "Keep cool, Daddy-O, you've had enough." Martha reddened and patted hisarm, looking pleased. Neither of them had talked that way, even in theold days, but the out-dated slang brought back memories--school parties,dances at the Rocketport Club, the early years of the war when Donegalhad jockeyed an R-43 fighter in the close-space assaults against theSoviet satellite project. The memories were good.

  A brassy blare of modern "slide" arose suddenly from the Keith terraceas the small orchestra launched into its first number. Martha caught anangry breath and started toward the window.

  "Leave it," he said. "It's a party. Whiskey, Martha. Please--just asmall one."

  She gave him a hurtful glance.

  "Whiskey. Then you can call the priest."

  "Donny, it's not right. You know it's not right--to bargain for such asthat."

  "All right. Whiskey. Forget the priest."

  She poured it for him, and helped him get it down, and then went out tomake the phone-call. Old Donegal lay shuddering over the whiskey tasteand savoring the burn in his throat. Jesus, but it was good.

  You old bastard, he thought, you got no right to enjoy life whennine-tenths of you is dead already, and the rest is foggy as a thermaldust-rise on the lunar maria at hell-dawn. But it wasn't a bad way todie. It ate your consciousness away from the feet up; it gnawed away thePresent, but it let you keep the Past, until everything faded andblended. Maybe that's what Eternity was, he thought--one man'ssubjective Past, all wrapped up and packaged for shipment, a singlespace-time entity, a one-man microcosm of memories, when nothing elseremains.

  "If I've got a soul, I made it myself," he told the gray nun at the footof his bed.

  The nun held out a pie pan, rattled a few coins in it. "Contr
ibute tothe Radiation Victims' Relief?" the nun purred softly.

  "I know you," he said. "You're my conscience. You hang around theofficers' mess, and when we get back from a sortie, you make us pay forthe damage we did. But that was forty years ago."

  The nun smiled, and her luminous eyes were on him softly. "Mother ofGod!" he breathed, and reached for the whiskey. His arm obeyed. The lastdrink had done him good. He had to watch his hand to see where it wasgoing, and squeezed the neck until his fingers