One in 300

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One

 

in Three Hundred

 

J. T. McINTOSH

 

 

It would have been difficult to find a
more unremarkable man than Lieu-
tenant Bill Easson; straightforward,
conscientious . . . a nice guy. But in
Simsville he was God.
Earth was doomed. And just ten
people out of every 3000 were to he
chosen to start a new colony on Mars.
Each lieutenant hand-picked the ten
he was piloting through space in that
last struggle to survive. Each had not
only the power of life and death; his
choice also determined the kind of
colony that might survive. As the time
grew nearer, violent mobs released
the unbearable tension through may-
hem and murder, and the ten names
on Bill's list changed and changed
again.
Bill Easson knew he had to face
three problems: Stay alive when fa-
natics might destroy him -- their one
chance for life. Get his people out of
Simsville when 2990 men, women,
and children would be ready to kill
them in a last drive for seli-preserva-
tion. And, the most difficult, pilot
those people to Mars in an untested,
hastily built ship when he himself was
inexperienced. The authorities had
given him about a 60 per cent chance

 

 

 

 

 

JACKET DESIGN BY MEL HUNTER

 

 

BOOK CLUB

 

EDITION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One in Three Hundred

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By J. T. McIntosh

 

 

 

 

One in Three Hundred

 

 

 

 

{logo}

 

 

 

 

Doubleday & Company, Inc.

 

 

Garden City, New York

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ALL OF THE CHARACTERS IN THIS BOOK ARE FICTITIOUS,

 

AND ANY RESEMBLANCE

 

TO ACTUAL PERSONS, LIVING OR DEAD, IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 54-9186

 

 

COPYRIGHT, 1954, BY JAMES MACGREGOR

 

 

COPYRIGHT, 1953, 1954, BY FANTASY HOUSE, INC.

 

 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 

 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contents

 

 

One Three Hundred 9

 

One in a Thousand 63

 

One Too Many 131

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One in Three Hundred

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

 

 

I ignored the half-human thing that ran at my heels like a dog crying,
"Please! Please! Please!" I ignored it, except when I had to strike its
arm from mine, because that was the only thing to do.

 

 

I was twenty-eight, Lieutenant Bill Easson, and a more unremarkable young
man it would have been difficult to find. But now, through no fault of
my own, I was a god.

 

 

I'm not going to try to tell the whole story of those last three weeks.
That would fill a library. So if you're looking for some big thing you
know about and find it isn't even mentioned, or wonder how I'm going to
explain this or that, and find I don't, remember I had a job to do and
had no time to stand and stare.

 

 

When I reached the main street of Simsville (pop. 3261) I was soon rid
of the poor wretch at my heels. Two loungers swept him away when they
recognized me. I don't know what they did with him. I didn't ask.
I never saw him again.

 

 

Pat Darrell joined me, automatically. She didn't even say, "Hullo."

 

 

A little over two weeks before, when I came to Simsville, she had been the
first person to speak to me. "It's all right," she had assured me at once,
"I'm just naturally friendly. I don't want what everyone else wants.
At least, I don't expect to get it. So you can write that off, for a start."

 

 

Naturally I had been suspicious, believing this to be a new play for
the same old stake. Everybody wants to live. And what I brought with me,
no more and no less, was the power of life and death.

 

 

But I had found that Pat meant exactly what she said. She was the most
sincere person I ever met. She had come to accept long since the fact
that she just wasn't lucky. She never won anything. When she told me
this I asked curiously, "Even beauty competitions?"

 

 

"Second," she murmured briefly, as if that explained everything.
In a way it did.

 

 

As we walked, Fred Mortenson favored us with a jaunty wave from the other
side of the street. Mortenson was Pat's opposite. He knew he was going
to live; it wasn't worth even considering anything else. He had been lucky
so often with so many things that there just couldn't be anything wrong
this time, the most important of all.

 

 

Mortenson was right; so was Pat.

 

 

Our choice must be representative, they had told us. No one wanted a
new world with everyone exactly the same age, so that in a few years'
time there would only be people of forty and young children, and later
only old people and youngsters just reaching nubility. So we had been
instructed to pick out a representative selection of ten people who
seemed to deserve to live.

 

 

Our instructions were as casual as that. Some people were never able to
grasp the idea. They frowned and talked about psych records and medical
histories, and started back in righteous horror when one of us told them
what they could do with their records and histories. These people were
back-seat drivers. They weren't doing the thing, but of course they knew
how it should have been done.

 

 

I had decided on my list early, prepared to revise it as various things
happened, as they no doubt would. It seemed the best way to work --
I could watch the people I had chosen and confirm their selection or
change my mind. The list had changed rapidly in the first few days,
but not much since then.

 

 

Mortenson was on it. Pat wasn't.

 

 

The Powells were on it too, though no one knew that but me. Naturally
I kept my plans to myself. We saw the Powells just before we entered
Henessy's, and stopped to pass the time of day.

 

 

Marjory Powell told me it was a nice day. I agreed gratefully. The Powells,
Pat, and Sammy Hoggan were the only people in the village who could treat
me as an ordinary human being. Jack Powell was one of those tall, quiet
characters with an easy grin. Marjory, without being ugly, was so
unbeautiful that she had been able to resign all claims of that kind
long ago and concentrate on being a person.

 

 

Pat liked them, and so did I. We stood and talked contentedly, and only
the knowledge that anyone I spent a lot of time with was marked out for
active hatred and jealousy made me take Pat's arm after a few minutes
and propel her into the bar.

 

 

The Powells didn't seem much affected by the shadow that hung over the world.
Their outlook was that the thing was going to come anyway, and they might as
well carry on with their usual occupations and hope for the best.

 

 

The atmosphere in Henessy's changed perceptibly when we went in. That
happened everywhere.

 

 

Old Harry Phillips was there, and Sammy Hoggan, inevitably. They waved
cheerfully to Pat and me. The others merely glowered, like children told
to be on their best behavior and immediately thrown on their worst.

 

 

We joined Sammy. Though he had taken the disaster badly, there were a lot
of worse ways he might have taken it. He never talked about it. He was
going to be drunk for the rest of his life. He was the kind of drinker
who merely sat without change of expression and pickled his kidneys.

 

 

"Hallo, friends," he said. "O tempora! O mores! Ave atque vale."

 

 

"I understood the first two words," Pat admitted cautiously.

 

 

"That's all my Latin, honey, so you'll understand anything else I may say."

 

 

I was going to buy him a drink, but he begged me not to. "I'm just hoping
Henessy doesn't get some sense and realize money doesn't matter any more,"
he told us. "Because if he doesn't, I'll soon come to the end of this jag.
I haven't much money left."

 

 

This wasn't surprising, the way he had been drinking ever since I arrived
in town. But Pat frowned.

 

 

"You want to come to the end of the jag?" she repeated. "Then why don't
you stop?"

 

 

"To the simple," Sammy sighed, "all things are simple." He killed his drink
without noticing it. "No offense, honey. But it's like this. If I'd only
had a few dollars on me four weeks ago, I'd only have been able to take
a short dive into the rotgut. But I was out of luck. I had enough to
keep me going for four weeks."

 

 

"Four weeks?" I demanded. "Then . . . ?"

 

 

It was seven weeks since it passed beyond doubt that the end of the world,
which had been prophesied so often, was really fixed this time. Two weeks
and two days since I started the job of picking out the ten people in
Simsville who were to live.

 

 

With the occasionally uncanny directness of the very drunk, Sammy read
my thoughts. "You think I'm drinking because the world's coming to an
end?" he asked. He burst out laughing. "God, no. Let it end any time it
wants to. Four days now, isn't it? Suits me."

 

 

He could talk clearly and soberly when he was sitting down, and raise his
glass steadily. But as he got up he was at once obviously very drunk. He
staggered away to take some of the weight off his kidneys.

 

 

Henessy brought our drinks indifferently. He had no hopes of being one of
the ten. He looked on his profession with gloomy disdain. Who would take
a bartender to Mars? So, like the Powells, he went on in his own way:
business as usual. But I liked the Powells. For some reason I couldn't
like Henessy.

 

 

Harry joined us. Harry was notable for his craggy features, his fatalistic
philosophy, his imperturbability, and his beautiful granddaughter. Bessie
Phillips, at eight, was such a lovely child and had such a sunny nature
that I hadn't been able to keep her off my list. I couldn't condemn Bessie
to death. If I'd been asked to justify every selection (but I wouldn't be),
Bessie was the only one I'd have to rationalize about. I could produce
reasons, just as anyone else rationalizing can produce reasons, but
the real one was simply that I wanted to take Bessie and I could. Some
other lieutenant would include an old lady because she looked like his
mother. Someone else would have good reasons to explain why he was taking
along one particular fourteen-year-old boy and not one of thirty or forty
others; the last he'd produce, if he had to produce any, would be that the
boy reminded him of the kid brother who died under the wheels of a truck.

 

 

Wrong? Sure, if you're still laboring under the idea that the way to do
this was selection on the basis of psych records and medical histories,
or that the chance of survival should be thrown open to competitive
examination.