Photo courtesy of divyanshs on Flickr.
The Face of the Deep
By Fred Saberhagen, first published in If: Worlds of Science Fiction, September, 1966.
part 6
Some deep part of his mind had concluded that it was better for him, in his present situation, not to think about Time. He saw no reason to argue with this decision, and so he soon lost rack of hours and days — weeks?
He exercised and shaved, he ate and drank and eliminated. The boat’s recycling system worked very well. He happened to have aboard a device that would let him freeze himself into suspended animation — but no thanks, at least not yet. The possibility of rescue was in his thoughts, mixing hope and his fears of Time.
He knew that on the day he fell down here there was no ship built capable of coming after him and pulling him out. But ships were always being improved. Suppose he could hang on here for a few weeks, or months, while a few years passed outside. He knew he was important to many important people, and that an attempt to save him would be made if it looked at all possible.
From being awed, almost paralyzed by his surroundings, he passed through a stage of exaltation and then quickly reached — boredom. The mind had its own business and turned itself away from all these eternal blazing miracles. He slept a good deal.
In a dream he saw himself standing alone in space. He viewed himself at the distance where the human figure dwindles almost to a speck in the gaze of the unaided human eye. With an almost invisible arm, himself-in-the-distance waved good-by and then went walking away, headed out toward the white stars. The striding leg movements were at first barely perceptible and then became nothing at all as the figured dwindled, losing existence against the face of the deed…
With a yell he woke up. A space boat had nudged against his crystal hull and was now bobbing a few feet away. It was a solid metal ovoid, of a model he recognized, and the numbers and letters on its hull were familiar to him.
He had made it. He had hung on. The ordeal was over.
The little hatch of the rescue boat opened, and two suited figures emerged, one after the other from its sheltered interior. At once these figures became silver-blurred as the berserker’s machines had been, but these men’s features were visible through their faceplates, their eyes looking straight at Karlsen. They smiled in steady encouragement, never taking their eyes from his.
Not for an instant.
They rapped on his door and kept smiling while he put on his spacesuit. But he made no move to let them in; instead he drew his gun.
They frowned. Inside their helmets their mouths formed words: Open up! He flipped on his radio, but if they wre sending , nothing was coming through in this space. They kept on gazing steadily at him.
Wait, he signaled with an upraised hand. He got a slate and stylus from his chair and wrote them a message.
LOOK AROUND AT THE SCENERY FOR A WHILE.
He was sane, but maybe they though him mad. As if to humor him, they began to look around them. A new set of dragon’s-head prominences were rising ahead, beyond the stormy horizon at the rim of the world. The frowning men looked ahead of them at dragons, around them at buzzsaw rainbow whirls of stone; they looked down into the sullen depths of the inferno, they looked up at the stars’ poisonous blue-white spears sliding visibly over the void.
Then both of them, still frowning uncomprehendingly, looked right back at Karlsen.
In this Sunday series of posts I will be “re-publishing” pulp science fiction short stories that have long since gone out of print. When possible I will seek out author’s and estates for permission.
