Donald Westlake - SH6 - Here's Looking At You

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2024-11-24 0 0 33.05KB 14 页 5.9玖币

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At long last, the promised sixth and final story in the Starship Hopeful saga has

docked at our space pad. I'll leave it and the other five up for a while. There aren't

enough of the stories to fill out a book, and I won't be doing any more, so this is

where they'll be spending the afterlife. Enjoy.

HERE'S LOOKING AT YOU

by Donald Westlake

From the beginning of Time, man has been on the move, ever outward. First he

spread over his own planet, then across the solar system, then outward to the

Galaxies, all of them dotted, speckled, and measled with the colonies of Man.

Then, one day in the year eleven thousand four hundreds and six (11,406), an

incredible discovery was made in the Master Imperial Computer back on Earth.

Nearly 500 years before, a clerical error had erased from the computer’s memory

more than 1000 colonies, all in sector F.U.B.A.R. 3. For half a millenium, those

colonies, young and struggling when last heard from, had had no contact with the

rest of humanity. The Galaxy Patrol Interstellar Ship Hopeful, Captain Gregory

Standforth commanding, was at once dispatched to re-establish contact with the

Thousand Lost Colonies and return them to the bosom of mankind.

WHEN THE SKY FILLED with the roar of the descending ship, they all

slithered into their holes to wait.

“You know,” Captain Standforth said, unclenching his fingers from the controls

as the ship shuddered its last and sagged onto the ground, “I think I’m beginning to

get the hang of this landing business.”

Groans answered him. Chipper young Lieutenant Billy Shelby, the person who

normally dealt with landings – Captain Standforth was apt to take the term planetfall

literally – managed a cheerful smile and even injected a little perkiness into his voice

as he said, “Much better, sir. Why, this was quite smooth!”

Chief Engineer Hester Hanshaw, blunt in body, mind and mouth, gave Billy a

look. “Not as smooth as you, you little toady.”

Billy’s handsome if not brilliant face clouded. He said, “What’s a toady?”

Astrogator Pam Stokes, who had been lost in study of her ancestral slide rule,

wondering if it had been damaged in the landing, looked up and said, “Thursday, I

think. Back on Earth, that is.”

In the baffled silence this created, Captain Standforth mused, “It’s that tricky

business of not turning the engines off until you actually touch down; that’s the part

I have the trouble with.”

“If we’ve landed on the damn planet,” Ensign Kybee Benson said, struggling

out of the pod that had absorbed the brunt – though not all – of the impact, “let’s

take a look at it.” A social engineer, an expert in comparative societies, Ensign

Benson was responsible for studying each lost colony when it was found and

describing its 500 years of unsung history. Being the only one aboard the Hopeful

likelier to be interested in the planet than in the landing, he was the first to cross the

command deck to the viewscreens, switch them on and look out at a rolling and

nearly treeless savanna that looked much like the Rift Valley in Kenya in August,

before the rains. Each screen showed the landscape from a different direction, all

the views very similar, each with low tan hills far in the background. “Hmmmm,”

said Ensign Benson.

The five other travelers in the Hopeful crowded around: Captain Standforth, tall

and craggy; Pam, beautiful, brainy and blind to passion; Hester, the human fireplug;

Billy, the idealist; and Councilman Morton Luthguster, portly as a plum pudding,

representative of the Galactic Council, who harrumphed and said, “Fine farmland, I

should think.”

“Oh, should you?” Ensign Benson snarled. He despised his shipmates, each

and every. They were here because they were misfits, home base delighted to be rid

of them on this endless journey; but why was he here? Furious by nature, he said

savagely, “We aren’t here for real estate, Councilman. Where’s the colony? Pam?

You steered us here.”

“This is definitely the nexus,” Pam told him, the slide rule flashing in her slender

fingers. “We are on the planet Matrix, fourth from the star Mohonk, gravity and air

compatible with Earth---“

“It’s a big planet,” commented Ensign Benson.

“One point one nine three times the size of Earth,” Pam agreed. “Earth density

to one point---“

“It’s a small colony,” the ensign interrupted.

“Oh, it’s here,” Pam assured him, getting the idea. “This is the place. The

coefficients are---“

Billy, peering at one of the viewscreens, said, “I see something out there. Little

boxes or something.”

Everyone peered at the same screen. Thirty yards away on the tundra were low,

slender structures of some kind. “Then let’s take a look,” Ensign Benson said.

They watched the new creatures emerge from the giant silver ship. One, two,

three, four, five, six. They watched, and absorbed, and studied. Then, for the

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Donald Westlake - SH6 - Here's Looking At You

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