Bradbury, Ray - SSC 13
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Authors: S is for Space (v2.1)
S is for
Space
Ray Bradbury
For Charles Beaumont who lived in that little
house halfway up in the next block most of my life.
And for Bill Nolan
and Bill Idelson, friend of Rush Gook,
and for Paul Condylis . . .
Because • • •
Jules Verne was my father.
H. G. Wells was my wise uncle.
Edgar Allen Poe was the batwinged cousin we
kept high in the back attic room.
Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers were my brothers
and friends.
There you have my ancestry.
Adding, of course, the fact that in all
probability Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author of Frankenstein, was my mother.
With a family like that, how else could I have
turned out than as I did: a writer of fantasy and most curious tales of science
fiction.
I lived up in the trees with Tarzan a good
part of my life with my hero Edgar Rice Burroughs. When I swung down out of the
foliage I asked for a toy typewriter during my twelfth year, at Christmas. On
this rattletrap machine I wrote my first John Carter, Warlord of Mars imitation
sequels, and from memory tapped out whole episodes of Chandu the Magician,
I sent away boxtops and think I joined every
secret radio society that existed. I saved comic strips, most of which I still
have in great boxes down in my California basement. I went to movie matinees. I
devoured the works of H. Rider Haggard and Robert Louis Stevenson. In the midst
of my young summers I leapt high and dove deep down into the vast ocean of
Space, long long before the Space Age itself was more than a fly speck on the
two-hundred-inch Mount Palomar telescope.
In other words, I was in love with everything
I did. My heart did not beat, it exploded. I did not warm toward a subject, I
boiled over. I have always run fast and yelled loud about a list of great and
magical things I knew I simply could not live without.
I was a beardless boy-magician who pulled
irritable rabbits out of papier-mache hats. I became a bearded man-magician who
pulled rockets out of his typewriter and out of a Star Wilderness that
stretched as far as eye and mind could see and imagine.
My enthusiasm stood me well over the years. I
have never tired of the rockets and the stars. I never cease enjoying the good
fun of scaring heck out of myself with some of my weirder, darker tales.
So here in this new collection of stories you
will find not only S is for Space, but a series of subtitles that might well
read: D is for Dark, or T is for Terrifying, or D is for Delight. Here you will
find just about every side of my nature and my life that you might wish to
discover. My ability to laugh out loud with the sheer discovery that I am alive
in a strange, wild, and exhilarating world. My equally great ability to jump
and raise up a crop of goosepimples when I smell strange mushrooms growing in
my cellar at midnight, or hear a spider fiddling away at his tapestry-web in
the closet just before sunrise.
You who read, and I who write, are very much
the same. The young person locked away in me has dared to write these stories
for your pleasure. We meet on the common ground of an uncommon Age, and share
out our gifts of dark and light, good dream and bad, simple joy and not so
simple sorrow.
The boy-magician speaks from another year. I
stand aside and let him say what he most needs to say. I listen and enjoy.
I hope you will, too.
Ray Bradbury
Los Angeles, California
December 1, 1965
hrysalis
Rockwell didn't like the room's smell. Not so
much McGuke's odor of beer, or Hartley's unwashed, tired smell—-but the sharp
insect tang rising from Smith's cold green-skinned body lying stiffly naked on
the table. There was also a smell of oil and grease from the nameless machinery
gleaming in one comer of the small room.
The man Smith was a corpse. Irritated,
Rockwell rose from his chair and packed his stethoscope. "I must get back
to the hospital. War rush. You understand, Hartley. Smith's been dead eight
hours. If you want further information call a post-mortem—"
He stopped as Hartley raised a trembling, bony
hand. Hartley gestured at the corpse—this corpse with brittle hard green shell
grown solid over every inch of flesh. "Use your stethoscope again,
Rockwell. Just once more. Please."
Rockwell wanted to complain, but instead he
sighed, sat down, and used the stethoscope. You have to treat fellow doctors
politely. You press your stethoscope into cold green flesh, pretending to
listen—
The small, dimly lit room exploded around him.
Exploded in one green cold pulsing. It hit Rockwell's ears like fists. It hit
him. He saw his own fingers jerk over the recumbent corpse.
He heard a pulse.
Deep in the dark body the heart beat once. It
sounded like an echo in fathoms of sea water.
Smith was dead, unbreathing, mummified. But at
the core of that deadness—his heart lived. Lived, stirring like a small unborn
baby!
Rockwell's crisp surgeon's fingers darted
rapidly. He bent his head. In the light it was dark-haired, with flecks of gray
in it. He had an even, level, nice-looking face. About thirty-five. He listened
again and again, with sweat coming cold on his smooth cheeks. The pulse was not
to be believed.
One heartbeat every thirty-five seconds.
Smith's respiration—how could you believe
that, too one breath of air every four minutes. Lungcase movement
imperceptible. Body temperature?
Sixty degrees.
Hartley laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh.
More like an echo that had gotten lost. "He's alive," he said
tiredly. "Yes, he is. He almost fooled me many times. I injected adrenalin
to speed that pulse, but it was no use. He's been this way for twelve weeks.
And I couldn't stand keeping him a secret any longer. That's why I phoned you,
Rockwell. He's—unnatural.
The impossibility of it overwhelmed Rockwell
with an inexplicable excitement. He tried to lift Smiths' eyelids. He couldn't.
They were webbed with epidermis. So were the lips. So were the nostrils. There
was no way for Smith to breathe—
"Yet, he's breathing." Rockwell's
voice was numb. He dropped his stethoscope blankly, picked it up, and saw his
fingers shaking.
Hartley grew tall, emaciated, nervous over the
table. "Smith didn't like my calling you. I called anyway. Smith warned me
not to. Just an hour ago."
Rockell's eyes dilated into hot black circles.
"How could he warn you? He can't move."
Hartley's face, all razor-sharp bone, hard
jaw, tight squinting gray eyes, twitched nervously. Smith— thinks. I know his
thoughts. He's afraid you'll expose him to the world. He hates me. Why? I want
to kill him, that's why. Here." Hardey fumbled blindly for a blue-steel
revolver in his rumpled, stained coat. "Murphy. Take this. Take it before
I use it on Smith's foul body!"
Murphy pulled back, his thick red face afraid.
"Don't like guns. You take it, Rockwell."
Like a scalpel, Rockwell made his voice slash.
"Put the gun away, Hartley. After three months tending one patient you've
got a psychological blemish. Sleep'll help that." He licked his lips.
"What sort of disease has Smith got?"
Hartley swayed. His mouth moved words out
slowly. Falling asleep on his feet, Rockwell realized. "Not
diseased," Hartley managed to say. "Don't know what. But I resent
him, like a kid resents the birth of a new brother or sister. He's wrong. Help
me. Help me, will you?"
"Of course." Rockwell smiled.
"My desert sanitarium's the place to check him over, good. Why—why Smith's
the most incredible medical phenomenon in history. Bodies just don't act this
way!"
He got no further. Hartley had his gun pointed
right at Rockwell's stomach. "Wait. Wait. You—you're not going to bury
Smith! I thought you'd help me. Smith's not healthy. I want him killed! He's
dangerous! I know he is!"
Rockwell blinked. Hartley was obviously psychoneurotic.
Didn't know what he was saying. Rockwell straightened his shoulders, feeling
cool and calm inside. "Shoot Smith and I'll turn you in for murder. You're
overworked mentally and physically. Put the gun away."
They stared at one another.
Rockwell walked forward quietly and took the
gun, patted Hartley understandingly on the shoulder, and gave the weapon to
Murphy, who looked at it as if it would bite him. "Call the hospital.
Murphy. I'm taking a week off. Maybe longer. Tell them I'm doing research at
the sanitarium."
A scowl formed in the red fat flesh of Murphy's
face. "What do I do with this gun?"
Hartley shut his teeth together, hard.
"Keep it. You'll want to use it—later."
Rockwell wanted to shout it to the world that
he was sole possessor of the most incredible human in history. The sun was
bright in the desert sanitarium room where
Smith lay, not saying a word, on his table;
his handsome face frozen into a green, passionless expression.
Rockwell walked into the room quietly. He used
the stethoscope on the green chest. It scraped, making the noise of metal
tapping a beetle's carapace.
McGuire stood by, eyeing the body dubiously,
smelling of several recently acquired beers.
Rockwell listened intently. "The
ambulance ride may have jolted him. No use taking a chance—"
Rockwell cried out.
Heavily, McGuire lumbered to his side. 'What's
wrong?"
"Wrong?” Rockwell stared about in
desperation. He made one hand into a fist. "Smith's dying!"
"How do you know? Hartley said Smith
plays possum. He's fooled you again—"
"No!" Rockwell worked furiously over
the body, injecting drugs. Any drugs. Swearing at the top of his voice. After
all this trouble, he couldn't lose Smith. No, not now.
Shaking, jarring, twisting deep down inside,
going completely liquidly mad. Smith's body sounded like dim volcanic tides
bursting.
Rockwell fought to remain calm. Smith was a
case unto himself. Normal treatment did nothing for him. What then? What?
Rockwell stared. Sunlight gleamed on Smith's
hard flesh. Hot sunlight. It flashed, glinting off the stethoscope tip. The
sun. As he watched, clouds shifted across the sky outside, taking the sun away.
The room darkened. Smith's body shook into silence. The volcanic tides died.
"McGuire! Pull the blinds! Before the sun
comes back!"
McGuire obeyed.
Smith's heart slowed down to its sluggish,
infrequent breathing.
"Sunlight's bad for Smith. It counteracts
something. I don't know what or why, but it's not good—" Rockwell relaxed.
"Lord, I wouldn't want to lose Smith. Not for anything. He's different,
making his own standards, doing things men have never done. Know something,
Murphy?"
"What?"
"Smith's not in agony. He's not dying
either. He wouldn't be better off dead, no matter what Hartley says. Last night
as I arranged Smith on the stretcher, readying him for his trip to this
sanitarium, I realized, suddenly, that Smith likes me.”
"Gah. First Hartley. Now you. Did Smith
tell you that?"
"He didn't tell me. But he's not unconscious
under all that hard skin. He's aware. Yes, that's it. He's aware."
"Pure and simply—he's petrifying. He'll
die. It's been weeks since he was fed. Hartley said so. Hartley fed him
intravenously until the skin toughened so a needle couldn't poke through
it."
Whining, the cubicle door swung slowly open.
Rockwell started. Hartley, his sharp face relaxed after hours of sleep, his
eyes still a bitter gray, hostile, stood tall in the door. "If you'll
leave the room," he said, quietly, "I'll destroy Smith in a very few
seconds. Well?"
"Don't come a step closer." Rockwell
walked, feeling irritation, to Hartley's side. "Every time you visit,
you'll have to be searched. Frankly, I don't trust you." There were no
weapons. "Why didn't you tell me about the sunlight?"
"Eh?" Soft and slow Hartley said it.
"Oh—yes. I forgot. I tried shifting Smith weeks ago. Sunlight struck him
and he began really dying. Naturally, I stopped trying to move him. Smith
seemed to know what was coming, vaguely. Perhaps he planned it; I'm not sure.
While he was still able to talk and eat ravenously, before his body stiffened
completely, he warned me not to move him for a twelve-week period. Said he
didn't like the sun. Said it would spoil things. I thought he was joking. He wasn't.
He ate like an animal, a hungry, wild animal, fell into a coma, and here he
is—" Hartley swore under his breath. "I'd rather hoped you'd leave
him in the sun long enough to kill him inadvertently."
McGuire shifted his two hundred fifty pounds.
"Look here, now. What if we catch Smith's disease?"
Hartley looked at the body, his pupils
shrinking. "Smith's not diseased. Don't you recognize degeneration when
you see it? It's like cancer. You don't catch it, you inherit a tendency. I
didn't begin to fear and hate Smith until a week ago when I discovered he was
breathing and existing and thriving with his nostrils and mouth sealed. It
can't happen. It mustn't happen."
McGuire's voice trembled. "What if you
and I and Rockwell all turn green and a plague sweeps the country—what
then?"