The Quantum Jump, Robert Wicks [the best electronic book reader .txt] 📗

the wreck, moving slowly but steadily.

The third mile brought him to the scene of the crash. A smoking cylinder of fused metal lay in a gully. Parts were strewn along the bottom. A wing, untouched by the fire, was leaning tip down against the edge of [p26] another lava sheet some distance away.

He sat down. Another flare flashed in the sky behind him silhouetting a row of grotesque trees. I’m over here, you fools, he thought. He watched until the flare flickered out, then turned his head back toward the remains of the ship. There wasn’t much of a glow to it now. It would be hard to see unless Astro was right on top of it.

He raised the antenna on the tele-talkie and snapped it on. The screen glowed into life. Towers was stepping through the bulkhead door into the radio room. Just like a television play in installments, Brandon thought. Scene two coming up.

“No sign of him at the scene of the crash,” Towers told Reinhardt.

“If he got out,” observed Reinhardt, “he could be a hundred miles away or more.”

“If he got out,” Towers said in a tone that irritated Brandon.

“I got out,” Brandon said. “And right now I’m walking around your precious planet like a boy scout. Damn this tele-talkie! I’d give a year’s pay if you could see me now, Towers.”

“We may yet spot the escape capsule,” Reinhardt was saying.

“We’re still continuing the search,” put in Towers. “But I don’t mind telling you I’m not wasting much more fuel.”

The radio operator started to say something, hesitated and finally settled for, “yes, sir.”

Brandon swore and snapped off the set. He looked at his walk-around bottle.

“Can’t stay here any longer,” he muttered.

He couldn’t find the capsule. He walked three, perhaps four miles. He stopped and blotted his moist brow with his sleeve. He wasn’t going to find it. Before him stretched an endless carpet of red dust. The light from the two moons was growing dim, as each settled toward different horizons.

He sat down. A cloud of powdery dust settled over his legs. The lightness in his head told him that his oxygen was running out. The weakness in his muscles reminded him that it had been a long time since he had walked in a planet’s gravity. A distant flare lit up the horizon. He choked off a sob, and beat his fist in the red dust. A wave of nausea swept over him. Bitter stomach juices welled up in his throat but he swallowed them down again.

Desperately he turned on the tele-talkie.

“Astro, this is Brandon,” he said.

“Brandon, this is Astro,” Reinhardt said.

Brandon’s body tensed. “Thank God I finally got through to you. Listen, Reinhardt, I must be about three—”

“Brandon, this is Astro,” said Reinhardt in a monotone. He said it again and again and again.

Brandon fell back on the [p27] ground. His breathing was short, strained. His face was bathed in perspiration. The oxygen, he realized, was giving out.

What are the odds, that the air of Sirius Three is breathable, he wondered. One in a hundred? The planet has water and both animal and plant life. Certainly it has sufficient gravity to hold its oxygen. But what other elements—noxious gases might be present. Maybe the odds are closer to one in fifty, he decided.

“But it’s no gamble when you have nothing to lose,” he told the Milky Way.

Ripping off his oxygen mask, he took a deep breath of the alien atmosphere. The dust choked him, his ears rang. Black spots danced before his eyes, then melted into solid blackness.

Brandon could hear Towers’ voice in a vortex of darkness.

“Let’s face it—Brandon is dead. Must have burned with the ship, at least that’s the way the report will read. Get me, Reinhardt?”

“Yes, sir,” the disembodied voice of Reinhardt replied quietly.

“We’re going to set her down on a solid piece of ground near one of the oceans.” There was a pause and Brandon could almost see Colonel Towers drawing up to his full height. “I’m going to be the first man to set foot on a planet of another solar system. Know what that means, Reinhardt?”

“A quantum jump sir?”

“Right. Leap-frogging ahead of the Reds. Wait till they read the name Colonel John Towers—maybe General John Towers—General.”

Brandon opened his eyes. Sirius was turning the sky to gray, trimming a few scattered clouds with gold. As he stared at the sky, Sirius rose with a brassy glare. Near it he could see its white hot dwarf star companion. It was going to be a real scorcher, he decided; worse than any desert on Earth. He sat up stiffly.

On the tele-talkie screen, Reinhardt, alone in the radio room, was calling quietly for Brandon. The bulkhead door swung open and Towers poked his head through.

“Knock that off,” said Towers sternly, “and take your landing station.” As Reinhardt rose to his feet, Brandon reached over and turned off the set.

Brandon took a deep breath. His head spun and for the first time he realized that he was still alive. He gazed across the shimmering desert to a ridge of scrubby hills. Blue mountains rose up beyond them. Great floes of black lava had rolled down onto the desert floor at some distant time. They were spotted with clumps of gray grass even as was the desert. The hills were studded with weird trees standing stiff, branches outstretched, like an army of scarecrows.

The air of Sirius Three was doing strange things to him. Two of the trees seemed to be [p28] moving. He swayed and sat heavily.

As he watched through a haze of red dust whipped up by the morning breeze, the two trees came closer, turned into men wearing desert uniforms and leaned over him.

“Are you okay?” one of them asked.

Brandon said nothing.

“We saw you from our observation station over on the hill,” said the other pointing.

They helped Brandon to his feet and gave him a swig of cool, sweet water from a canteen.

“I’m Captain Brandon, of the Astro One.”

“Astro One?” The man removed his pith helmet to wipe his brow and Brandon noticed the gleaming US insignia on the front of the helmet. “The Astro One left Earth thirteen years ago,” the man said.

“Only four years by RT,” Brandon said.

The man smiled and put his helmet back on his head. “A lot of things have happened since you left. There was a war which we won, and I guess you guys were almost forgotten. And there was a lot of technological development.”

“You mean you had a quantum jump?” asked Brandon parroting Colonel Towers’ favorite expression.

“Odd you would know that,” replied the second man. “It was through quantum mechanics that we learned to approximate the speed of light. While nine years pass on Earth when we make the trip, our RT is mere moments.”

“Good Lord!” Brandon said. “You must have passed us up.”

“Been on this planet for nearly a year,” the first man said. “Got men on dozens of planetary systems throughout the Milky Way. One ship went a thousand light years out. By the time they come back, civilization on Earth will be two thousand years older.”

“Have you got a tele-talkie?” Brandon asked.

“Sure,” said the first man, producing a set one-third the size of Brandon’s.

“Could you tune it to 28.6 microcycles?”

“Sure,” the man said again. He turned a dial with his thumb and handed the unit to Brandon. Brandon depressed the “talk” button. A crystal clear image of Colonel Towers, putting the finishing touches on his full dress uniform, appeared on the screen.

“This is an historic occasion,” Colonel Towers was announcing to his crew. “Open the hatch—and, Reinhardt, be sure to stand by with the motion picture camera.”

“Excuse me, Colonel Towers,” said Brandon quietly.

Towers swung around and looked out at Brandon. The colonel’s face paled.

“I have something to tell you,” said Brandon grinning, “about the quantum jump.”

THE END

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Quantum Jump, by Robert Wicks