Short Science Fiction

Supreme General Hoshawk, chief of staff, watched with piercing gray eyes while the President of the United States of the Western Hemisphere, Jeffrey Wadsworth, lay relaxed under a cosmic-ray lamp, with no covering but a towel over his loins.

The surgeon-general of the Hemispheric Armies raised his hand, and the lamp receded.

“Is that enough?” Hoshawk asked dryly.

“It’s the maximum, even for him,” said the surgeon-general. “His reflexes will be faster than light itself.”

Hoshawk grunted, his eyes narrow. As far as he could see, the speed of a man’s reflexes, even of a man who was about to champion seven hundred million persons, wasn’t as important as the man’s loyalty or his sense of personal responsibility. And Hoshawk did not have much use for Wadsworth.

Augusto Iraola of Brazil, deputy president for South America, stepped forward from the group of forty men. He asked the President anxiously, “How do you feel?” Iraola was old and bearded.

“Not bad,” said the President, and his voice squeaked a little as it changed pitch.

The Minister of State, with a big portfolio under his arm, said, “Shouldn’t we prepare the vice president?”

Morrison, vice president for Canada, spoke pedantically, “It would be a tragedy to lose President Wadsworth. Last month his I.Q. was 340, nearly twenty points above any other member of the Mutant College.”

I could have taken that three hundred dollars and gone to school for a year, by washing dishes two hours a night. I had worked for that money, too; shocking wheat for twelve hours a day in the August sun is no vacation. But Slim Coleman convinced me that we could run that three hundred into enough to take us both for four years.

I hadn’t even had time to get a haircut⁠—and I did want a haircut; now it was pretty shaggy.

But Slim, diplomat that he is, didn’t even seem to notice my hair. “I’ve got a real deal,” he said, and his deep eyes were shining with enthusiasm. “Have you got any money?”

“Some,” I said cautiously.

“It takes three hundred. Have you got that much?”

I had intended to say no, but Slim has a way of fixing his deep, somber eyes on you that gives ineffable dignity even to a touch. “Okay,” I said hopelessly. “What’s the bite?”

The Bryd was awakened with a rude jolt. It didn’t even have time for a mental yawn. Something terrible was going on in Dale Stevenson’s mind, and the turmoil there made the Bryd most uncomfortable. It shook off the lethargy of its long sleep. It knew instinctively that Dale Stevenson was about to get in trouble and make his mind unsuitable for the Bryd’s occupancy.

The Bryd sighed. These humans were so unstable, so impulsive. The Bryd took a look around.

They⁠—Dale Stevenson and he⁠—were not on Earth. They seemed to be in space somewhere, 5,100 miles from Earth. Well, well, so men finally were breaking the shackles of gravitation. The Bryd became a little more interested.

But Dale Stevenson was reaching for a button that would fire a rocket to position the mirror and burn a path across the biggest city in Europe. Hey! what was going on here, anyway?

He came up out of the Great Sea-Swamp of Venus like old Father Neptune. He was covered with mud and slime. Seaweed hung from his cheap diving-suit. Brine dripped from his arms that hung limp and weary; it ran from his torso and made a dark trail in the sand.

Without even looking back, he stood for a moment as if fighting to keep on his feet, while the brine made a small puddle in the green sand. Finally he unscrewed the helmet and took it off. He turned around slowly and looked back across the two hundred miles of deadly swamp, at the flaming craters of the Red Lava Range from which he had come.

With fingers that would hardly function from weariness he took off his diving-suit and straightened up. His stooping shoulders were free of that weight for the first time in forty days. He was a small man, hardly over four feet tall, and not well formed. It seemed incredible that he had crossed the Great Sea-Swamp on foot.