The Wings of Night E-Book

Lester Del Rey

• Herausgeber: Wildside Press
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 36

Beschreibung

For the Martian race, working for humans meant a kind of slavery—toiling to extract radioactives from Mars for the benefit of humans back on Earth. They were to be paid barely enough to survive. And the exploitation would continue for generation after generation...

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Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

THE WINGS OF NIGHT, by Lester Del Rey

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 1942 Copyright © 1942 by Street & Smith Publications, Inc., renewed 1970.

Originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942.

Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

THE WINGS OF NIGHT,by Lester Del Rey

“Damn all Martians!” Fats Welch’s thin mouth bit out the words with all the malice of an offended member of a superior race. “Here we are, loaded down with as sweet a high-rate cargo of iridium as ever came out of the asteroids, just barely over the moon, and that injector starts mismetering again. If I ever see that bulbous Marshy—”

“Yeah.” Slim Lane groped back with his right hand for the flexible-shaft wrench, found it, and began wriggling and grunting forward into the mess of machinery again. “Yeah. I know. You’ll make mince meat out of him. Did you ever figure that maybe you were making your own trouble? That maybe Martians are people after all? Lyro Bmachis told you it would take two days to make the overhaul of the injector control hookup, so you knocked him across the field, called his ancestors dirty dogs, and gave him just eight hours to finish repairs. Now you expect his rush job to be a labor of love for you— Oh, skip it, Fats, and give me the screwdriver.”

What was the use? He’d been over it all with Fats a dozen times before, and it never got him anywhere. Fats was a good rocket man, but he couldn’t stretch his imagination far enough to forget the hogwash the Reconstruction Empire was dishing out about the Destiny of Man and the Divine Plan whereby humans were created to exploit all other races. Not that it would do Fats much good if he did. Slim knew the value of idealism—none better.

* * * *

He’d come out of college with a bad dose of it and an inherited fortune big enough for three men, filled with the old crusading spirit. He’d written and published books, made speeches, interviewed administrators, lobbied, joined and organized societies, and been called things that weren’t complimentary. Now he was pushing freight from Mars to Earth for a living, quarter owner of a space-worn freighter. And Fats, who’d come up from a tube cleaner without the help of ideals, owned the other three quarters.

Fats watched him climb out of the hold, “Well?”

“Nothing. I can’t fix it—don’t know enough about electronics. There’s something wrong with the relays that control the time interval, but the indicators don’t show where, and I’d hate to experiment out here.”

“Make it to Earth—maybe?”

Slim shook his head. “I doubt it, Fats. Better set us down on Luna somewhere, if you can handle her that far. Then maybe we can find out what’s wrong before we run out of air.”

Fats had figured as much and was already braking the ship down, working against the spasmodic flutter of the blasts, and swearing at the effects of even the moon’s weak gravity. But the screens showed that he was making progress toward the spot he’d chosen—a small flat plain with an area in the center that seemed unusually clear of debris and pockmarks.

“Wish they’d at least put up an emergency station out here,” he muttered.

“They had one once,” Slim said. “But nobody ever goes to Luna, and there’s no reason for passenger ships to land there; takes less fuel for them to coast down on their fins through Earth’s atmosphere than to jet down here. Freighters like us don’t count, anyway. Funny how regular and flat that place is; we can’t be over a mile up, and I don’t see even a meteor scar.”

“Luck’s with us, then. I’d hate to hit a baby crater and rip off a tube or poke a hole in the shell.” Fats glanced at the radio altimeter and fall indicator. “We’re gonna hit plenty hard. If— Hey, what the deuce!”