THE HAPPY HERD
BY BRYCE WALTON
Everyone was thoughtful, considerate, kind
and very happy. But where was the right of
dignity or individuality? It was like being
dropped into the middle of a nightmare. The
kind that finds you running naked in a crowd.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Captain told Kane to take his cushion pills, that they werecontacting the pits at La Guardia within half an hour.
"I still can't figure you," the Captain said. "Up there, just you andyour wife for sixteen years. That's a hell of a long time."
Kane smiled. He had been almost completely out of touch with the worldfor sixteen years, and it surprised him a little that anyone thought itremarkable in any way. Particularly the Captain who spent most of histime, too, alone.
But the Captain was genuinely perturbed about it. The authorities hadabandoned the space-station project. Abandoned the Martian project.They had taken away the other three ships from the Moon-run, and therewas no explanation for it at all.
The rest of the Captain's crew, except an old atomics man, had driftedaway and never come back, and the Captain had been unable to find outanything whatsoever about what had happened to them. He had never heardfrom them again. They had never been replaced.
But the Captain couldn't seem to define what it was he was warning Kaneto be wary of down there.
"I haven't left my ship for years, Professor Kane, and that's thetruth. I take on supplies and see to the ore getting into the holds butwhen those machines up there that do the digging and loading wear out,they won't be replaced. Just no interest in space any more. I can tell.
"I stay on the ship, with my wife, see. And the few guys down therearound the field at La Guardia I have to rub up against—why, sir, theytreat me as if I had some kind of contagious disease!
"But they need this ore I'm bringing back here now, so they leave mealone."
"Who leaves you alone?"
"Whoever didn't leave the rest of my crew alone. Whoever sang 'em theold siren song, that's who. Once a spaceman, always a spaceman, sir.And not a one of those men pulled out because he wanted to do it!That's what I'm saying. And I'm telling you to watch out. I'm blastingoff for the Moon again on the 25th. I hope you're aboard."
Kane shrugged as the Captain bowed out, making disgruntled noises inhis throat. He was getting along in years, Kane reasoned, and wasprobably just expressing that fact, externalizing some way or another.Still, what he had said was odd—
The truth was, Kane had been inexcusably out of contact with the world.
The pills dulled his senses and he began to fall asleep on thepneumatic couch. He thought of the years of work on his theoriesconcerning the unified fields in the formulation of spatial matter.He thought of Helen, the good years together before her sudden death,sharing love and work, how complete and full and good it had been.During all those sixteen years he couldn't recall a moment of realboredom.
He hadn't missed life on Earth. When a man has one full love and hiswork, he's isolated no matter where he is, even in the middle of NewYork City.
He had ten notebooks full of notes in his briefcase. It would opentheir eyes, a really basic new theory that would defy the pessimistictheory of entropy, and its assurance