The Chalice of Death (50 page)

From memory, he punched out the coordinates for his journey on the autopilot. He activated the unit, stripped, and lowered himself once again into the suspension tank.

He thought:

Firnik thinks I'm dead. He'll be surprised when a ghost turns up on Earth, leading the underground revolt against the Sirians. And I'll have to explain everything very carefully to Myreck as soon as I get back
—
if I can find Myreck
.

And he thought:

My double back home is going to have some fancy explaining to do, too. About what happened to the ship he took up with him, and how his car got to the spaceport while he was in the workship. He'll have plenty of fast talking to do. But he'll manage. He's a pretty shrewd sort. He'll get along
.

He paused for a moment to wish a silent good-bye to the wife and son who would never know he had left them. Then he stretched out his feet and switched on the suspension unit. The temperature began to drop.

Darkness swirled up around him.

Chapter Twenty

The time was 1421, of a warm midsummer afternoon on Corwin. Baird Ewing finished sweeping the shattered fragments of his painstakingly constructed projector into the disposal unit, looked around, put the crowbar back in the tool shelf.

Then he snapped on the housephone and said, “Okay, Laira. The experiment's over. Thanks for helping out.”

He hung up and trotted up the stairs to the study. Laira was bent over her book; Blade stared entranced at the video screen. He crept up behind the boy, caught him suddenly with one big hand at the back of his neck, and squeezed affectionately. Then, leaving him, he lifted Laira's head from her viewing screen, smiled warmly at her, and turned away without speaking.

Later in the afternoon he was on his way to Broughton Spacefield via public transport to reclaim his car. He was still some miles distant when the sudden overhead roar of a departing spaceship sounded.

“One of those little military jobs taking off,” someone in the bus said.

Ewing looked up through the translucent roof of the bus at the clear sky. No ship was visible, of course. It was well on its way Earthward now.

Good luck
, he thought. And Godspeed.

The car was in the special parking field. He smiled to the attendant, unlocked it, climbed in.

He drove home.

Home—to Laira and Blade.

Chapter Twenty-One

Baird Ewing woke slowly, sensing the coldness all about him. It was slowly withdrawing down the length of his body; his head and shoulders had come out of the freeze, and the rest of him was gradually emerging.

He looked at the time-panel. Eleven months, fourteen days, six hours had elapsed since he had left Corwin. He hoped they hadn't held their breaths while waiting for him to return their ship.

He performed the de-suspending routine and emerged from the tank. He touched the stud and the vision-plate lit up. A planet hung centered in the green depths of the plate—a green planet, with vast seas bordering its continents.

Earth.

Ewing, smiled. They would be surprised to see him, all right. But he could help them, and so he had come back. He could serve as coordinator for the resistance movement. He could spearhead the drive that would end the domination of the Sirians.

Here I come
, he thought.

His fingers moved rapidly over the manual-control bank of the ship's instrument panel. He began setting up the orbit for landing. Already, plans and counterplans were forming in his active mind.

The ship descended to Earth in a wide-sweeping arc. Ewing waited, impatient for the landing, as his ship swung closer and closer to the lovely green world below.

A Biography of Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg (b. 1935) is an American author best known for his science fiction titles, including
Nightwings
(1969),
Dying Inside
(1972), and
Lord Valentine's Castle
(1980)
.
He has won five Nebula Awards and five Hugo Awards. In 2004, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America honored Silverberg with the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award.

Silverberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, on January 15, 1935, the only child of Michael and Helen Silverberg. An avid reader and writer from an early age, Silverberg began his own fanzine,
Spaceship
, in 1949. In 1953, at age eighteen, he sold his first nonfiction piece to
Science Fiction Adventures
magazine. His first novel,
Revolt on Alpha C
, was published shortly after, in 1955. That same year, while living in New York City and studying at Columbia University, Silverberg met his neighbors and fellow writers Randall Garrett and Harlan Ellison, both of whom went on to collaborate with him on numerous projects. Silverberg and Randall published pieces under the name Robert Randall. In 1956, Silverberg graduated from Columbia University with a bachelor of arts degree in comparative literature, married Barbara Brown, and won the Hugo Award for Most Promising New Author.

Following the whirlwind of his college years, Silverberg continued to write consistently for most of his life. Writing under various pseudonyms, including David Osborne and Calvin M. Knox, Silverberg managed to publish eleven novels and more than two hundred short pieces between 1957 and 1959. Having established himself as a science fiction writer by this time, Silverberg went on to show dexterity in other genres, from historical nonfiction with
Treasures Beneath the Sea
(1960) to softcore pornography under the pseudonym Don Elliot.

Silverberg continued to write outside science fiction until Frederik Pohl, the editor of
Galaxy Science Fiction
, convinced him to rejoin the field. It was in this period, from the late 1960s to early 1970s, that Silverberg's classics, including
Tower of Glass
(1970),
The World Inside
(1971), and
The Book of Skulls
(1972), came to life. After taking a break from writing, Silverberg returned with
Lord Valentine's Castle
in 1980.

Though they had been separated for nearly a decade, Silverberg and Barbara officially ended their marriage in 1986. A year later, Silverberg married fellow writer Karen Haber. They went on to collaborate on writing
The Mutant Season
(1990) and editing several anthologies. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, Silverberg published important titles including
Star of Gypsies
(1986), and continued his established Majipoor series with
The Mountains of Majipoor
(1995) and
Sorcerers of Majipoor
(1997). In 1999, Silverberg was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

With a career that spans half a century, multiple genres, and more than three hundred titles, Silverberg has made major contributions as a writer. He currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife.

Silverberg at six months old with his parents.

Silverberg at summer camp in August 1952, reading the September issue of
Galaxy Science Fiction
, which featured a story by Theodore Sturgeon.

The first page of Silverberg's manuscript for his first novel,
Revolt on Alpha C
, published in 1955.

An early rejection letter dated July 18, 1949.

Silverberg conversing with a nymph at author Brian Aldiss's home in Oxford, England, after the 1987 Brighton Worldcon. (Courtesy of Andrew Porter.)

Silverberg with his wife, Karen, at the 2004 Nebula Awards in Seattle, where he received his Grand Master Award.

(Unless otherwise noted, all images taken from
Other Spaces, Other Times
by Robert Silverberg, courtesy of Nonstop Press.)

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.