Interstellar travel -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction
“But you aren’t finding it, Ross. You aren’t doing anything except get
drunk and pass out and wake up and get drunk. Come on, drink the drink.”
Ross impatiently dashed it to the floor. Bernie sighed. “All right,
Ross,” he said wearily. “Helena can run the ship; we’re taking off.”
“Go ’head.”
“Good-by, Ross. We’re going back to Halsey’s Planet, where you came
from. Maybe Haarland can tell us what to do.”
“Go ’head. _That_ wise guy!” Ross sneered.
The attendant was watching dubiously as Bernie slammed out and Ross
peered at himself in a mirror. “Dime?” the attendant asked in his tired
voice. Ross gave him one and went back to the party.
Somehow it was not much fun.
He shuffled back to the bar. The boilermaker didn’t taste too good. He
set it down and glowered around the room. The party was back in swing
already; Helena and Bernie were nowhere in sight. Let them go, then....
He drank, but only when he reminded himself to. This party had become a
costume ball; one of the men lurched out of the room and staggered back
guffawing. “Looka him!” one of the women shrieked. “He got a woman’s hat
on! Horace, you get the craziest kinda ideas!”
Ross glowered. He suddenly realized that, while he wasn’t exactly sober,
he wasn’t drunk either. Those soreheads, they had to go and spoil the
party....
He began abruptly to get less drunk yet. Back to Halsey’s Planet, they
said? Ask Haarland what to do, they said? Leave him here——?
He was cold sober.
He found a telephone. The automatic Central checked the automatic
Information and got him the Captain of the Port, Baltimore Rocket Field.
The Captain was helpful and sympathetic; caught by the tense note in
Ross’s voice when he told him who wannit to know, the Captain said,
“Gee, buddy, if I’d of known I woulda stopped them. Stoled your ship, is
that what they done? They could get arrested for that. You could call
the cops an’ maybe they could do something——”
Ross didn’t bother to explain. He hung up.
The party was no fun at all. He left it.
Ross walked along the street, hating himself. He couldn’t hate Helena
and Bernie; they had done the right thing. It had been his fault, all
the way down the line. He’d been acting like a silly child; he’d had a
job of work to do, and he let himself be sidetracked by a crazy round of
drinking and parties.
Of course, he told himself, something had been accomplished. Somebody
had built the machines—not the happy morons he had been playing with.
Somebody had invented whatever it was that flared with blue light and
repaired the idiot errors the morons made. Somebody, somewhere.
Where?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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