Tom Godwin - The Cold Equations

The Cold Equations

Tom Godwin

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are

fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

The Survivors was first published by Gnome Press in 1958, and reissued in 1960 by

Pyramid Books under the title Space Prison. "The Harvest" was first published in

Venture in July, 1957. "Brain Teaser" was first published in If in October, 1956.

"Mother of Invention" was first published in Astounding in December, 1953. "—And

Devious the Line of Duty" was first published in Analog in December, 1962. "Empathy"

was first published in Fantastic in October, 1959. "No Species Alone" was first

published in Universe in November, 1954. "The Gulf Between" was first published in

Astounding in October, 1953. "The Cold Equations" was first published in Astounding

in August, 1954.

form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-3601-6

Cover art by Clyde Caldwell

First printing, April 2003

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Godwin, Tom.

The cold equations & other stories / by Tom Godwin ; edited and

compiled by Eric Flint.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-7434-3601-6 (pbk.)

1. Science fiction, American. 2. Space flight—Fiction. I. Title: Cold

equations and other stories. II. Flint, Eric. III. Title.

PS3557.O3175C65 2003

813'.54—dc21 2002043995

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

Preface

by Barry Malzberg

The title story of this volume, "The Cold Equations," is perhaps the most famous and controversial of

all science fiction short stories. When it first appeared in the August 1954 issue of Astounding, it

generated more mail from readers than any story previously published in the magazine. Since then, it has

been reprinted thousands of times (almost all college courses on science fiction routinely include it on

reading lists). It has been the basis of a television movie and a Twilight Zone episode, and prior to that

had been adapted for radio and television many, many times.

Its impact remains. In the late l990's it was the subject of a furious debate in the intellectually

ambitious (or simply pretentious; you decide) New York Review of Science Fiction in which the story

was anatomized as anti-feminist, proto-feminist, hard-edged realism, squishy fantasy for the self-deluded,

misogynistic past routine pathology, crypto-fascist, etc., etc. One correspondent suggested

barely-concealed pederasty.

The debaters' affect over a story more than four decades old was extraordinary, and the debate did

not end so much as it kind of expired from exhaustion. Godwin's adoptive daughter, Diane Sullivan, said

in conclusion that Godwin himself had always felt women were "To be loved and protected" and A.J.

Budrys in a similarly funerary tone noted that " 'The Cold Equations' was the best short story that Godwin

ever wrote and he didn't write it."

But, of course, he did. I'll have more to say about the history of the short story in my afterword (see

below), but for now that's enough. Here, in one volume, are the best writings of Tom Godwin. It begins

with his most popular novel, The Survivors, and closes with his legendary story, "The Cold Equations."

THE SURVIVORS

Editor's note: This is my personal favorite of all of Godwin's writings. Some of my

fondness for this short novel, I'll admit, is perhaps simply nostalgia. The first two

science fiction novels I ever read were Robert Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy and .

. . this one. Between them, the two stories instilled a love of science fiction in a

thirteen-year-old boy which has now lasted for more than four decades. But

leaving that aside, I think this story more than any other captures those themes

which recur constantly in Godwin's fiction: the value of courage and loyalty.

Godwin had a grim side to him, which is reflected in The Survivors as it is in most

of his stories, but—also as in most—it is ultimately a story of triumph. More so, in

some ways, than in any other science fiction novel I've ever read.

Eric Flint

Part 1

For seven weeks the Constellation had been plunging through hyperspace with her eight thousand

colonists; fleeing like a hunted thing with her communicators silenced and her drives moaning and

thundering. Up in the control room, Irene had been told, the needles of the dials danced against the red

danger lines day and night.

She lay in bed and listened to the muffled, ceaseless roar of the drives and felt the singing vibration of

the hull. We should be almost safe by now, she thought. Athena is only forty days away.

Thinking of the new life awaiting them all made her too restless to lie still any longer. She got up, to sit

on the edge of the bed and switch on the light. Dale was gone—he had been summoned to adjust one of

the machines in the ship's X-ray room—and Billy was asleep, nothing showing of him above the covers

but a crop of brown hair and the furry nose of his ragged teddy bear.

She reached out to straighten the covers, gently, so as not to awaken him. It happened then, the thing

they had all feared.

From the stern of the ship came a jarring, deafening explosion. The ship lurched violently, girders

screamed, and the light flicked out.

In the darkness she heard a rapid-fire thunk-thunk-thunk as the automatic guard system slid

inter-compartment doors shut against sections of the ship suddenly airless. The doors were still thudding

shut when another explosion came, from toward the bow. Then there was silence; a feeling of utter quiet

and motionlessness.

The fingers of fear enclosed her and her mind said to her, like the cold, unpassionate voice of a

stranger: The Gerns have found us.

The light came on again, a feeble glow, and there was the soft, muffled sound of questioning voices in

the other compartments. She dressed, her fingers shaking and clumsy, wishing that Dale would come to

reassure her; to tell her that nothing really serious had happened, that it had not been the Gerns.

It was very still in the little compartment—strangely so. She had finished dressing when she realized

the reason: the air circulation system had stopped working.

That meant the power failure was so great that the air regenerators, themselves, were dead. And

there were eight thousand people on the Constellation who would have to have air to live . . .

The Attention buzzer sounded shrilly from the public address system speakers that were scattered

down the ship's corridors. A voice she recognized as that of Lieutenant Commander Lake spoke:

"War was declared upon Earth by the Gern Empire ten days ago. Two Gern cruisers have attacked

us and their blasters have destroyed the stern and bow of the ship. We are without a drive and without

power but for a few emergency batteries. I am the Constellation's only surviving officer and the Gern

commander is boarding us to give me the surrender terms.

"None of you will leave your compartments until ordered to do so. Wherever you may be, remain

there. This is necessary to avoid confusion and to have as many as possible in known locations for future

instructions. I repeat: you will not leave your compartments."

The speaker cut off. She stood without moving and heard again the words: I am the Constellation's

only surviving officer . . .

The Gerns had killed her father.

He had been second-in-command of the Dunbar expedition that had discovered the world of Athena

and his knowledge of Athena was valuable to the colonization plans. He had been quartered among the

ship's officers—and the Gern blast had destroyed that section of the ship.

She sat down on the edge of the bed again and tried to reorient herself; to accept the fact that her life

and the lives of all the others had abruptly, irrevocably, been changed.

The Athena Colonization Plan was ended. They had known such a thing might happen—that was

why the Constellation had been made ready for the voyage in secret and had waited for months for the

chance to slip through the ring of Gern spy ships; that was why she had raced at full speed, with her

communicators silenced so there would be no radiations for the Gerns to find her by. Only forty days

more would have brought them to the green and virgin world of Athena, four hundred light-years beyond

the outermost boundary of the Gern Empire. There they should have been safe from Gern detection for

many years to come; for long enough to build planetary defenses against attack. And there they would

have used Athena's rich resources to make ships and weapons to defend mineral-depleted Earth against

the inexorably increasing inclosure of the mighty, coldly calculating colossus that was the Gern Empire.

Success or failure of the Athena Plan had meant ultimate life or death for Earth. They had taken every

precaution possible but the Gern spy system had somehow learned of Athena and the Constellation.

Now, the cold war was no longer cold and the Plan was dust . . .

* * *

Billy sighed and stirred in the little-boy sleep that had not been broken by the blasts that had altered

the lives of eight thousand people and the fate of a world.

She shook his shoulder and said, "Billy."

He raised up, so small and young to her eyes that the question in her mind was like an anguished

prayer: Dear God—what do Gerns do to five-year-old boys?

He saw her face, and the dim light, and the sleepiness was suddenly gone from him. "What's wrong,

Mama? And why are you scared?"

There was no reason to lie to him.

"The Gerns found us and stopped us."

"Oh," he said. In his manner was the grave thoughtfulness of a boy twice his age, as there always

was. "Will they—will they kill us?"

"Get dressed, honey," she said. "Hurry, so we'll be ready when they let Daddy come back to tell us

what to do."

* * *

They were both ready when the Attention buzzer sounded in the corridors. Lake spoke, his tone

grim and bitter:

"There is no power for the air regenerators and within twenty hours we will start smothering to death.

Under these circumstances I could not do other than accept the survival terms the Gern commander

offered us.

"He will speak to you now and you will obey his orders without protest. Death is the only

alternative."

Then the voice of the Gern commander came, quick and harsh and brittle:

"This section of space, together with planet Athena, is an extension of the Gern Empire. This ship has

deliberately invaded Gern territory in time of war with intent to seize and exploit a Gern world. We are

willing, however, to offer a leniency not required by the circumstances. Terran technicians and skilled

workers in certain fields can be used in the factories we shall build on Athena. The others will not be

needed and there is not room on the cruisers to take them.

"Your occupation records will be used to divide you into two groups: the Acceptables and the

Rejects. The Rejects will be taken by the cruisers to an Earth-type planet near here and left, together

with the personal possessions in their compartments and additional, and ample, supplies. The

Acceptables will then be taken on to Athena and at a later date the cruisers will return the Rejects to

Earth.

"This division will split families but there will be no resistance to it. Gern guards will be sent

immediately to make this division and you will wait in your compartments for them. You will obey their

orders promptly and without annoying them with questions. At the first instance of resistance or rebellion

this offer will be withdrawn and the cruisers will go their way again."

* * *

In the silence following the ultimatum she could hear the soft, wordless murmur from the other

compartments, the undertone of anxiety like a dark thread through it. In every compartment parents and

children, brothers and sisters, were seeing one another for the last time . . .

The corridor outside rang to the tramp of feet; the sound of a dozen Gerns walking with swift military

precision. She held her breath, her heart racing, but they went past her door and on to the corridor's end.

There she could faintly hear them entering compartments, demanding names, and saying, "Out—out!"

Once she heard a Gern say, "Acceptables will remain inside until further notice. Do not open your doors

after the Rejects have been taken out."

Billy touched her on the hand. "Isn't Daddy going to come?"

"He—he can't right now. We'll see him pretty soon."

She remembered what the Gern commander had said about the Rejects being permitted to take their

personal possessions. She had very little time in which to get together what she could carry . . .

There were two small bags in the compartment and she hurried to pack them with things she and

Dale and Billy might need, not able to know which of them, if any, would be Rejects. Nor could she

know whether she should put in clothes for a cold world or a hot one. The Gern commander had said the

Rejects would be left on an Earth-type planet but where could it be? The Dunbar Expedition had

explored across five hundred light-years of space and had found only one Earth-type world: Athena.

The Gerns were almost to her door when she had finished and she heard them enter the

compartments across from her own. There came the hard, curt questions and the command:

"Outside—hurry!" A woman said something in pleading question and there was the soft thud of a blow

and the words: "Outside—do not ask questions!" A moment later she heard the woman going down the

corridor, trying to hold back her crying.

Then the Gerns were at her own door.

She held Billy's hand and waited for them with her heart hammering. She held her head high and

composed herself with all the determination she could muster so that the arrogant Gerns would not see

that she was afraid. Billy stood beside her as tall as his five years would permit, his teddy bear under his

arm, and only the way his hand held to hers showed that he, too, was scared.

The door was flung open and two Gerns strode in.

They were big, dark men, with powerful, bulging muscles. They surveyed her and the room with a

quick sweep of eyes that were like glittering obsidian, their mouths thin, cruel slashes in the flat, brutal

planes of their faces.

"Your name?" snapped the one who carried a sheaf of occupation records.

"It's"—she tried to swallow the quaver in her voice and make it cool and unfrightened—"Irene Lois

Humbolt—Mrs. Dale Humbolt."

The Gern glanced at the papers. "Where is your husband?"

"He was in the X-ray room at—"

"You are a Reject. Out—down the corridor with the others."

"My husband—will he be a—"

"Outside!"

It was the tone of voice that had preceded the blow in the other compartment and the Gern took a

quick step toward her. She seized the two bags in one hand, not wanting to release Billy, and swung

back to hurry out into the corridor. The other Gern jerked one of the bags from her hand and flung it to

the floor. "Only one bag per person," he said, and gave her an impatient shove that sent her and Billy

stumbling through the doorway.

She became part of the Rejects who were being herded like sheep down the corridors and into the

port airlock. There were many children among them, the young ones frightened and crying, and often with

only one parent or an older brother or sister to take care of them. And there were many young ones who

had no one at all and were dependent upon strangers to take their hands and tell them what they must do.

When she was passing the corridor that led to the X-ray room she saw a group of Rejects being

herded up it. Dale was not among them and she knew, then, that she and Billy would never see him

again.

* * *

"Out from the ship—faster—faster—"

The commands of the Gern guards snapped like whips around them as she and the other Rejects

crowded and stumbled down the boarding ramp and out onto the rocky ground. There was the pull of a

terrible gravity such as she had never experienced and they were in a bleak, barren valley, a cold wind

moaning down it and whipping the alkali dust in bitter clouds. Around the valley stood ragged hills, their

white tops laying out streamers of wind-driven snow, and the sky was dark with sunset.

"Out from the ship—faster—"

It was hard to walk fast in the high gravity, carrying the bag in one hand and holding up all of Billy's

weight she could with the other.

"They lied to us!" a man beside her said to someone. "Let's turn and fight. Let's take—"

A Gern blaster cracked with a vivid blue flash and the man plunged lifelessly to the ground. She

flinched instinctively and fell over an unseen rock, the bag of precious clothes flying from her hand. She

scrambled up again, her left knee half numb, and turned to retrieve it.

The Gern guard was already upon her, his blaster still in his hand. "Out from the ship—faster."

The barrel of his blaster lashed across the side of her head. "Move on—move on!"

She staggered in a blinding blaze of pain and then hurried on, holding tight to Billy's hand, the wind

cutting like knives of ice through her thin clothes and blood running in a trickle down her cheek.

"He hit you," Billy said. "He hurt you." Then he called the Gern a name that five-year-old boys were

not supposed to know, with a savagery that five-year-old boys were not supposed to possess.

When she stopped at the outer fringe of Rejects she saw that all of them were out of the cruiser and

the guards were going back into it. A half mile down the valley the other cruiser stood, the Rejects out

from it and its boarding ramps already withdrawn.

When she had buttoned Billy's blouse tighter and wiped the blood from her face the first blast of the

drives came from the farther cruiser. The nearer one blasted a moment later and they lifted together, their

roaring filling the valley. They climbed faster and faster, dwindling as they went. Then they disappeared in

the black sky, their roaring faded away, and there was left only the moaning of the wind around her and

somewhere a child crying.

And somewhere a voice asking, "Where are we? In the name of God—what have they done to us?"

She looked at the snow streaming from the ragged hills, felt the hard pull of the gravity, and knew

where they were. They were on Ragnarok, the hell-world of 1.5 gravity and fierce beasts and raging

fevers where men could not survive. The name came from an old Teutonic myth and meant: The last day

for gods and men. The Dunbar Expedition had discovered Ragnarok and her father had told her of it, of

how it had killed six of the eight men who had left the ship and would have killed all of them if they had

remained any longer.

She knew where they were and she knew the Gerns had lied to them and would never send a ship to

take them to Earth. Their abandonment there had been intended as a death sentence for all of them.

And Dale was gone and she and Billy would die helpless and alone . . .

"It will be dark—so soon." Billy's voice shook with the cold. "If Daddy can't find us in the dark, what

will we do?"

"I don't know," she said. "There's no one to help us and how can I know—what we should do—"

She was from the city. How could she know what to do on an alien, hostile world where armed

explorers had died? She had tried to be brave before the Gerns but now—now night was at hand and

out of it would come terror and death for herself and Billy. They would never see Dale again, never see

Athena or Earth or even the dawn on the world that had killed them . . .

She tried not to cry, and failed. Billy's cold little hand touched her own, trying to reassure her.

"Don't cry, Mama. I guess—I guess everybody else is scared, too."

Everyone else . . .

She was not alone. How could she have thought she was alone? All around her were others, as

helpless and uncertain as she. Her story was only one out of four thousand.

"I guess they are, Billy," she said. "I never thought of that, before."

She knelt to put her arms around him, thinking: Tears and fear are futile weapons; they can never

bring us any tomorrows. We'll have to fight whatever comes to kill us no matter how scared we are. For

ourselves and for our children. Above all else, for our children . . .

"I'm going back to find our clothes," she said. "You wait here for me, in the shelter of that rock, and I

won't be gone long."

Then she told him what he would be too young to really understand.

"I'm not going to cry any more and I know, now, what I must do. I'm going to make sure that there is

a tomorrow for you, always, to the last breath of my life."

* * *

The bright blue star dimmed and the others faded away. Dawn touched the sky, bringing with it a

coldness that frosted the steel of the rifle in John Prentiss's hands and formed beads of ice on his gray

mustache. There was a stirring in the area behind him as the weary Rejects prepared to face the new day

and the sound of a child whimpering from the cold. There had been no time the evening before to gather

wood for fires—

"Prowlers!"

The warning cry came from an outer guard and black shadows were suddenly sweeping out of the

dark dawn.

They were things that might have been half wolf, half tiger; each of them three hundred pounds of

incredible ferocity with eyes blazing like yellow fire in their white-fanged tiger-wolf faces. They came like

the wind, in a flowing black wave, and ripped through the outer guard line as though it had not existed.

The inner guards fired in a chattering roll of gunshots, trying to turn them, and Prentiss's rifle licked out

pale tongues of flame as he added his own fire. The prowlers came on, breaking through, but part of

them went down and the others were swerved by the fire so that they struck only the outer edge of the

area where the Rejects were grouped.

At that distance they blended into the dark ground so that he could not find them in the sights of his

rifle. He could only watch helplessly and see a dark-haired woman caught in their path, trying to run with

a child in her arms and already knowing it was too late. A man was running toward her, slow in the high

gravity, an axe in his hands and his cursing a raging, savage snarl. For a moment her white face was

turned in helpless appeal to him and the others; then the prowlers were upon her and she fell,

deliberately, going to the ground with her child hugged in her arms beneath her so that her body would

protect it.

The prowlers passed over her, pausing for an instant to slash the life from her, and raced on again.

They vanished back into the outer darkness, the farther guards firing futilely, and there was a silence but

for the distant, hysterical sobbing of a woman.

It had happened within seconds; the fifth prowler attack that night and the mildest.

* * *

Full dawn had come by the time he replaced the guards killed by the last attack and made the rounds

of the other guard lines. He came back by the place where the prowlers had killed the woman, walking

wearily against the pull of gravity. She lay with her dark hair tumbled and stained with blood, her white

face turned up to the reddening sky, and he saw her clearly for the first time.

It was Irene.

He stopped, gripping the cold steel of the rifle and not feeling the rear sight as it cut into his hand.

Irene . . . He had not known she was on Ragnarok. He had not seen her in the darkness of the night

and he had hoped she and Billy were safe among the Acceptables with Dale.

There was the sound of footsteps and a bold-faced girl in a red skirt stopped beside him, her glance

going over him curiously.

"The little boy," he asked, "do you know if he's all right?"

"The prowlers cut up his face but he'll be all right," she said. "I came back after his clothes."

"Are you going to look after him?"

"Someone has to and"—she shrugged her shoulders—"I guess I was soft enough to elect myself for

the job. Why—was his mother a friend of yours?"

"She was my daughter," he said.

"Oh." For a moment the bold, brassy look was gone from her face, like a mask that had slipped. "I'm

sorry. And I'll take care of Billy."

* * *

The first objection to his assumption of leadership occurred an hour later. The prowlers had

withdrawn with the coming of full daylight and wood had been carried from the trees to build fires. Mary,

one of the volunteer cooks, was asking two men to carry her some water when he approached. The

smaller man picked up one of the clumsy containers, hastily improvised from canvas, and started toward

the creek. The other, a big, thick-chested man, did not move.

"We'll have to have water," Mary said. "People are hungry and cold and sick."

The man continued to squat by the fire, his hands extended to its warmth. "Name someone else," he

said.

"But—"

She looked at Prentiss in uncertainty. He went to the thick-chested man, knowing there would be

violence and welcoming it as something to help drive away the vision of Irene's pale, cold face under the

red sky.

"She asked you to get her some water," he said. "Get it."

The man looked up at him, studying him with deliberate insolence, then he got to his feet, his heavy

shoulders hunched challengingly.

"I'll have to set you straight, old timer," he said. "No one has appointed you the head cheese around

here. Now, there's the container you want filled and over there"—he made a small motion with one

hand—"is the creek. Do you know what to do?"

"Yes," he said. "I know what to do."

He brought the butt of the rifle smashing up. It struck the man under the chin and there was a sharp

cracking sound as his jawbone snapped. For a fraction of a second there was an expression of stupefied

amazement on his face then his eyes glazed and he slumped to the ground with his broken jaw setting

askew.

"All right," he said to Mary. "Now you go ahead and name somebody else."

* * *

He found that the prowlers had killed seventy during the night. One hundred more had died from the

Hell Fever that often followed exposure and killed within an hour.

He went the half mile to the group that had arrived on the second cruiser as soon as he had eaten a

delayed breakfast. He saw, before he had quite reached the other group, that the Constellation's

Lieutenant Commander, Vincent Lake, was in charge of it.

Lake, a tall, hard-jawed man with pale blue eyes under pale brows, walked forth to meet him as

soon as he recognized him.

"Glad to see you're still alive," Lake greeted him. "I thought that second Gern blast got you along with

the others."

"I was visiting midship and wasn't home when it happened," he said.

He looked at Lake's group of Rejects, in their misery and uncertainty so much like his own, and

asked, "How was it last night?"

"Bad—damned bad," Lake said. "Prowlers and Hell Fever, and no wood for fires. Two hundred

died last night."

"I came down to see if anyone was in charge here and to tell them that we'll have to move into the

woods at once—today. We'll have plenty of wood for the fires there, some protection from the wind,

and by combining our defenses we can stand off the prowlers better."

Lake agreed. When the brief discussion of plans was finished he asked, "How much do you know

about Ragnarok?"

"Not much," Prentiss answered. "We didn't stay to study it very long. There are no heavy metals

here, or resources of any value. We gave Ragnarok a quick survey and when the sixth man died we

marked it on the chart as uninhabitable and went on our way.

"As you probably know, that bright blue star is Ragnarok's other sun. Its position in the advance of

the yellow sun shows the season to be early spring. When summer comes Ragnarok will swing between

the two suns and the heat will be something no human has ever endured. Nor the cold, when winter

comes.

"I know of no edible plants, although there might be some. There are a few species of rodent-like

animals—they're scavengers—and a herbivore we called the woods goat. The prowlers are the dominant

form of life on Ragnarok and I suspect their intelligence is a good deal higher than we would like it to be.

There will be a constant battle for survival with them.

"There's another animal, not as intelligent as the prowlers but just as dangerous—the unicorn. The

unicorns are big and fast and they travel in herds. I haven't seen any here so far—I hope we don't. At the

lower elevations are the swamp crawlers. They're unadulterated nightmares. I hope they don't go to these

higher elevations in the summer. The prowlers and the Hell Fever, the gravity and heat and cold and

starvation, will be enough for us to have to fight."

"I see," Lake said. He smiled, a smile that was as bleak as moonlight on an arctic glacier.

Tom Godwin - The Cold Equations

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