Rocket to Limbo

And then they were all moving about the decaying ship, hoping against hope that their eyes had been playing tricks, searching for a sign of life, something to restore their hope. They moved through the twisted wreckage numbly, like ghosts of a time long past, searching for something they could no longer hope to find.

No food, no warmth. No hope of repairing engines

smashed into fragments and buried under centuries of silt.

Nothing there but the half-buried skeleton of a ship long despaired of, almost forgotten.

They dragged Klein out of the wreckage laughing and giggling and screaming and fighting them with hysterical fury until Fox struck him hard across the face. He sagged, then, and crumpled into the snow, and sat staring dully at nothing and shaking his head.

When Fox turned to the others tears were streaming down his face. “Get those sick men on their feet, and get back on the rope again. Were going to go on.”

Numbly, Lars and Lambert went back across the snowfield to the half-delirious Kennedy and Mars torn. Their ship on the ridge had been a mirage, even worse than a mirage, for it had indeed existed, taunting them and drawing them on to the last moment. No one had dreamed that it could be the wrong ship. But now they knew that it was. Somehow, missing its course in that valiant journey so long ago, the Argonaut had found another star, another planet, and a grave. What had happened? How long had the journey taken? Only the decaying wreckage could hint at the answer.

The group of men who had labored up the mountain to find the lost Planetfall with its food and generators and its hope of escape from this gray death-planet had found a tomb instead.

They grouped around Walter Fox, Lars and Lambert supporting the sick men. Jerry Klein sat like a statue as a film of snow gathered on his arms and hands. Tom Lorry stood huddled near the wreckage, still staring, his face blank with exhaustion and despair.

“There’s nothing here,” Marstom said dully.

“No, there’s not,” Fox said.

“No food. No medicine.” “Nothing.”

“No hope of salvaging this—” Marstom’s lips curled bitterly “—this pile of trash.”

“None.”

“But there’s got to be!” Marstom choked. “You said it was up here, the Planetfall. You said there’d be food, that we could get warm.”

“This isn t the Planetfall,” Fox snapped. “We were wrong.”

“You mean we were fools,” Tom Lorry growled. “If this isn’t the Planetfall, then where is it? We know it was here. You found the food bag. If it didn’t crash here, what happened to it?” ^!

“I don’t know.”

“Or our ship, what about it? Where did it go?”

“That’s what we’ve got to find out,” said Fox. “We’ll never find out sitting here and freezing. We’ve got to move on.”

“What’s the use?” said Marstom. He broke into a paroxysm of coughing, his thin shoulders shaking. “This is as good a place to freeze as any.”

“You’ve forgotten the thing in the valley,” Fox said fiercely, “the thing Kennedy saw. That valley is just over the ridge here. Kennedy saw something.”

“There’s nothing there,” Marstom snarled. “Kennedy was sick, we’ve all been sick, crazy. There’s nothing to go on for. This is the end right here.”

“Get up,” said Fox. “We’re going up there. Get on your feet and get moving.”

Nobody moved. Lars stared at the ground, his fingers numb, his whole body deathly tired. Marstom was right, something whispered in his ear. It was a lie, a delusion, that thing in the valley beyond the ridge. This was the end, right here.

And then, like a fury, Walter Fox was on his feet, cursing and shouting at them, his voice cutting like a whiplash, his face white, his eyes glittering like gray diamonds. “You idiots!” he shouted. “Are you going to just lie down and die?” He leaped on Jerry Klein, grabbed him by the collar and jerked him up to his feet. “Get up, do you hear me? Up, on your feet. You see the way up there, up over that saddle there—get going!” He gave Jerry a shove, and turned to jerk Tom Lorry’s shoulder, dragging him by physical force as the second officer shook his head. “I’m in command here,” Fox shouted, “and as long as I’m in command when I say we go on, we go on! You think you’re just quitting on me? I’ll drag you on my back first! Come on, move—nobody’s ever quit a mission on me before, and you’re not going to start a trend now!”

He whirled on Lars and Lambert. “What are you doing just standing there? Get those two men. Carry them, drag them, I don’t care what, but get moving. We’re going to find that ship if we have to walk every mile of this miserable planet.”