A Handful of Darkness Read Online Free Page B

ran downstairs, out on the field. Warm sunlight beat down on them from the sky overhead. From all the unit buildings, naked men and women were pouring silently towards the ship.
    “What a sight!” an officer said. “We’ll never be able to live it down.”
    “But you’ll live at least,” another said.
    “Lawrence!”
    Hall half-turned.
    “Please don’t look around. Keep on going. I’ll walk behind you.”
    “How does it feel, Stella?” Hall asked.
    “Unusual.”
    “Is it worth it?”
    “I suppose so.”
    “Do you think anyone will believe us?”
    “I doubt it,” she said. “I’m beginning to wonder myself.”
    “Anyhow, we’ll get back alive.”
    “I guess so.”
    Hall looked up at the ramp being lowered from the ship in front of them. The first people were already beginning to scamper up the metal incline, into the ship, through the circular lock.
    “Lawrence—”
    There was a peculiar tremor in the Commander’s voice. “Lawrence, I’m—”
    “You’re what?”
    “I’m scared.”
    “Scared!” He stopped. “Why?”
    “I don’t know,” she quavered.
    People pushed against them from all sides. “Forget it. Carry-over from your early childhood.” He put his foot on the bottom of the ramp. “Up we go.”
    “I want to go back!” There was panic in her voice. “I—”
    Hall laughed. “It’s too late now, Stella.” He mounted the ramp, holding on to the rail. Around him, on all sides, men and women were pushing forward, carrying them up. They came to the lock. “Here we are.”
    The man ahead of him disappeared.
    Hall went inside after him, into the dark interior of the ship, into the silent blackness before him. The Commander followed.
    At exactly 15.00 Captain Daniel Davis landed his ship in the centre of the field. Relays slid the entrance lock open with a bang. Davis and the other officers of the ship sat waiting in the control cabin, around the big control table.
    “Well,” Captain Davis said, after a while, “where are they?”
    The officers became uneasy. “Maybe something’s wrong.”
    “Maybe the whole damn thing’s a joke!”
    They waited and waited.
    But no one came.

IMPOSTOR
    “One of these days I’m going to take time off,” Spence Olham said at first-meal. He looked around at his wife. “I think I’ve earned a rest. Ten years is a long time.”
    “And the Project?”
    “The war will be won without me. This ball of clay of ours isn’t really in much danger.” Olham sat down at the table and lit a cigarette. “The newsmachines alter dispatches to make it appear the Outspacers are right on top of us. You know what I’d like to do on my vacation? I’d like to take a camping trip in those mountains outside of town, where we went that time. Remember? I got poison oak and you almost stepped on a gopher snake.”
    “Sutton Wood?” Mary began to clear away the food dishes. “The Wood was burned a few weeks ago. I thought you knew. Some kind of a flash fire.”
    Olham sagged. “Didn’t they even try to find the cause?” His lips twisted. “No one cares any more. All they can think of is the war.” He clamped his jaws together, the whole picture coming up in his mind, the Outspacers, the war, the needle-ships.
    “How can we think about anything else?”
    Olham nodded. She was right, of course. The dark little ships out of Alpha Centauri had by-passed the Earth cruisers easily, leaving them like helpless turtles. It had been one-way fights, all the way back to Terra.
    All the way, until the protec-bubble was demonstrated by Westinghouse Labs. Thrown around the major Earth cities and finally the planet itself, the bubble was the first real defence, the first legitimate answer to the Outspacers—as the newsmachines labelled them.
    But to win the war, that was another thing. Every lab, every project was working night and day, endlessly, to find something more: a weapon for positive combat. His own project, for example. All day long, year after year.
    Olham