Short Fiction quotes

The Old Man had that look of intense glee on his face that meant someone was in for a very rough time.

Since we were alone, it took no great feat of intelligence to figure it would be me. I talked first, bold attack being the best defense and so forth.

“How I wish I could fire you all! Combination space-jockeys, mechanics, engineers, soldiers, con-men and anything else it takes to do the repairs.

I have to browbeat, bribe, blackmail and bulldoze you thugs into doing a simple job.

If you think you’re fed up, just think how I feel. But the ships must go through! The beacons must operate!”

When he passed next day, I whispered into the mike: “

Welcome, O Goat-boy Grandson! This is your grandfather’s spirit speaking from paradise.

” This fitted in with what I could make out of the local religion.

“It has been decided,” a lizard said, “that you shall remain here forever and tend the Holy Waters. We will stay with you and serve your every need.”

A delightful prospect, eternity spent in a locked beacon with three blind lizards.

In spite of their hospitality, I couldn’t accept.

“I just deliver, I don’t X-ray ’em. It came on the morning rocket from earth is all I know.” He gunned the truck more than he had to and threw up a billowing cloud of red dust.

“Jokers,” I growled to myself. “Mars is full of jokers.”

When I went over to look at the box I could feel the dust grate between my teeth. Chief Craig must have heard the racket because he came out of his office and helped me stand and look at the box.

Even if the thing blew up, nobody would really mind. There would probably be someone along some day to get a report on it. Well, they had picked the right spot all right.

Nineport was just a little bit beyond nowhere.

Which, of course, was why I was there. I was the only real cop on the force. They needed at least one to give an illusion of the wheels going around.

I had ten years on a metropolitan force, earthside. Why I left is nobody’s damn business. I have long since paid for any mistakes I made there by ending up in Nineport.

Nineport is not a city, it’s just a place where people stop.

The only permanent citizens are the ones who cater to those on the way through. Hotel keepers, restaurant owners, gamblers, barkeeps, and the rest.

Therefore I am resigning from the force. Because if that is whom I think it is over there with the cuffs on, I will not live to be a day older as long as I am around here.”

“Rat.” The Chief growled in pain through his clenched teeth. “Deserting the sinking ship. Rat.”

“Squeak,” Fats said and left.

“Rat.” The Chief growled in pain through his clenched teeth. “Deserting the sinking ship. Rat.”

“Squeak,” Fats said and left.

The Chief was beyond caring at this point. He didn’t blink an eye when I took Fats’ badge off the desk. I don’t know why I did it, perhaps I thought it was only fair.

“This is a very great honor, not only for me but for all robots. I will do my best to fulfill all the obligations of the office.”

Jack Armstrong in tin underwear.

I could hear the little motors in his guts humming with joy as he booked Alex.

To lose a planet, I mean. If the readings are done correctly, and the k-factor equations worked to the tenth decimal place, then it’s really just a matter of adjustment, making the indicated corrections. After all, Societics is an exact science—”

“Exact? Exact! Of course it’s not! Have I taught you so little that you dare say that to me?”

Anger animated the old man, driving the shadow of death back a step or two.

“Let them.

There are few enough pleasures in this life without taking away all delusions.

”

“Good? Bad? What is it?”

Neel raised his head and his eyes were ten years older.

“Positive. Bad. Much worse than it was when we left Earth.”

“You must look at the power struggle between planets as a kind of celestial chess game. It has its own rules. When I talked about individuals earlier I was talking about pieces on this chessboard. What I’m proposing now is a little more dramatic.

I’m going to win the chess game in a slightly more unorthodox way. I’m going to shoot the other chess player.

”

Pausing on the top step, he breathed the fresh air of the new morning. There was a sighing below as an early train pulled into the station.

The dawn-lit sky was the color of blood.

“Blood,” he said aloud. Then, “Do we have to keep on killing? Isn’t there another way?”

Pausing on the top step, he breathed the fresh air of the new morning. There was a sighing below as an early train pulled into the station. The dawn-lit sky was the color of blood.

“Blood,” he said aloud. Then, “Do we have to keep on killing? Isn’t there another way?”

He started guiltily as his voice echoed in the empty street, but no one had heard him.

To come all this way—through all the multiple hazards of space—then to fall into a hole. …

There was just no justice.

At the base of the ship Gino flexed his legs and bounded high up towards the top section of the Bug, grabbing onto the bottom of the still open door of the cabin.

“Thanks, Dan.” He raised the thing and squeezed, swallowing twice. He handed it back.

“Here’s to a good pilot and a good joe, Eddie Glazer,” Dan Coye said raising the flask, suddenly serious. “He wanted to get to the moon and he did. It belongs to him now, all of it, by right of occupation.”

He squeezed the doll dry and methodically screwed the head back on and replaced it in his pocket. “Now let’s see what we can do about contacting control, putting them in the picture, and start cutting an orbit back towards Earth.”

“Look!” Dan shouted hoarsely, “The lights—where are the lights?”

In their last orbit the twinkling lights of the American cities had been seen clearly through their telescope. The entire continent was now black.

“Wait, see South America—the cities are lit up there, Gino. What could possibly have happened at home while we were in that orbit?”

“Get in,” the officer ordered. He did not change his tone of voice, but he did pull his long-barreled Luger from its holster and leveled it at them.

“Come on,” Gino said, putting his hand on Dan’s tense shoulder. “You outrank him, but he got there fustest with the mostest.”

They climbed into the open back of the half-track and the captain sat down facing them. Two silent soldiers with leveled machine-pistols sat behind their backs. The tracks clanked and they surged forward: stifling dust rose up around them.

But the policy was no-foreign-entanglements and do business with anyone who’s willing to pay. It wasn’t until the invasion of Britain that people began to realize that the Nazis weren’t the best customers in the world, but by then it was too late.”

“It’s like a mirror image of the world⁠—a warped mirror,”

Dan said, drawing savagely on his cigarette. “While we were going around the moon something happened to change the whole world to the way it would have been if history had been altered some time in the early thirties.”

“Nothing has changed, that is the important thing that you must realize. The world is the same and you are the same, but you have—for want of a better word I must say—moved. I am not being clear. It is easier to express in mathematics.”

“Anyone who climbs into a rocket has to be a bit of a science fiction reader, and I’ve absorbed my quota,”

Dan said. “Have we got into one of those parallel worlds things they used to write about, branches of time and all that?”