Nine Rarities Read Online Free Page A

of my body quietly "—a fine first rate lady of a ship." Quick, to Ayres: "What are you, Ayres?"
     
    Startled, Ayres blinked. "Me, sir?"
     
    The captain stood with his strong, small back to Ayres, inspecting the stars as if they were a celestial regiment under his personal say-so. "Yes. I mean religion," he explained.
     
    "Oh." Ayres pulled his right earlobe with finger and thumb, musing. "I was a first class agnostic. Graduated, or should I say demoted? From an Atheist academy."
     
    The captain kept looking at the stars. "You use the word 'was,' Ayres. You emphasize that word."
     
    Ayres half-smiled. "Sure. I mean— yes, sir. But this is my first trip, sir, so that changes things."
     
    "Does it?"
     
    "Yes it does, sir."
     
    The captain rocked casually on his heels. "How's that, Ayres?"
     
    "You know the tale as well as I, sir. It's an old tale. And a good one, I might add. To put it one way: 'A Baptist is an atheist who took a trip to the Moon.' "
     
    "That holds true for Methodists, Episcopalians and Holy Rollers, doesn't it?"
     
    "It does, sir."
     
    The captain made a noise that sounded like laughter. "We're all the same. Every damned one of us, Ayres. Hard-shelled God-fighters, good and true, when we're home in Brooklyn and Waushawkee. Take away land and gravity, though, and we're babes, undiapered and crying in a long dark night. Hell, there's not a man rocketing today who isn't religious, Ayres!"
     
    "Are you religious, Captain?"
     
    Lamb closed his mouth, looked out the port straight ahead. He raised one small-boned hand, spreading it in a measured movement. "It's always the same, Ayres. The first trip converts us. The very first trip. All you have to do is stand here for fifteen minutes or half an hour looking at space, feeling how insignificant you are flying around like a gnat in the middle of it, looking at those damned wonderful stars, and first thing you know you're down on your knees, crying your eyes out, with a hot stomach, a wild head and a humble attitude forever after."
     
    Lamb pulled back from himself suddenly, snapped around, stalked to a down-ladder, grabbed a rung and glared at Ayres. "And so," he pointed out, "you'll notice that I never look at the stars too long! I've a ship to run—no time for it. And in case you believe all I tell you—go to hell! I should demerit you for questioning a superior!"
     
    Lamb dropped down the rungs like a weight.
     
     
     
    AYRES sat there a moment, trying to computate. After a while he looked up at the star-port. His eyes dilated very dark and wide. He stood up. He walked across the computation room and stood there, staring out. He looked like he was listening to music. His lips moved.
     
    "What did the Cap say? Stand here fifteen minutes or half an hour? Why, hell—" He bent his knees until they touched the deck. "I got the Cap's time beat all hollow!"
     
    Good blood. Good leucocyte. Good Ayres.
     
    Mars come up ahead, the first really intense gravity I had felt since leaving earth and moon behind. It came up like a ruddy drop of dried blood on the void. Mass is the sexual drive of space, and gravity the intensified yearning of that mass, the gravitic libido of one tremendous body for the love, the following of any and all smaller bodies who transgress its void boundaries. I have heard the simple men within me speak of a planet as one speaks of a queen bee. The ultimate gravity toward which all smaller gravities and bodies yearn. Merciless harlot, mating with all, leading all on to destruction. Queen bee followed by the swarms. And now I was part of a swarm, the first of many yet to follow, answering the urge of one gravity, refusing another.
     
    But still the poison was in me. And no way possible for Captain Lamb's crew to know of it. Time ticked on my console-chronometers and swung by, imperceptibly majestic in the moves of stars.
     
    Captain Lamb went down to the engine rooms, examined my heart and my auxiliaries. Bitingly, he commented