The Collection (51 page)

It turned out to be a small patch of jungle, as patches went
on Kruger III. One of what seemed countless millions of such patches. And maybe
it really was millions; Kruger III was larger than Jupiter. Actually it might
take more than a lifetime to cover it all. He knew that, but he didn't let
himself think about it. It might be bad if he once let himself doubt that he
would ever find the wreckage of the only ship that had ever preceded him here.
Or if he let himself doubt that, once he found the ship, he would find the
parts he needed to make his own spacer operative again.

This patch of jungle was a mile square but it was so dense
that he had to sleep once and eat several times before he had finished it. He
killed two more lions and one tiger. And when he had finished, he walked around
the circumference of it, blazing each of the largest of the trees along the
outer rim so he wouldn't repeat by searching this particular jungle again. The
trees were soft; his pocket knife took off the red bark down to the pink core
as easily as it would have taken the skin off a potato.

Then out across the dull brown plain again.

"Not that one, Dorothy. Maybe the next. The one over
there, just on the horizon. Maybe it's there."

Violet sky, red sun, brown plain, brown bushes

"The green hills of Earth, Dorothy. Oh how you'll love
them—"

The brown endless plain.

The never-changing violet sky.

Was there a sound up there? There couldn't be. There never
had been. But he looked up, and saw it.

A tiny black speck high in the violet. Moving. A spacer.
It had to be a spacer. There were no birds on Kruger III. And birds didn't
trail jets of fire behind them—

He knew what to do; he'd thought of it a million times, how
he could signal a spacer if one ever came in sight. He yanked his sol-gun from
the holster, aimed it straight in the violet air, and pulled the trigger. It
didn't make a big flash, from the distance of the spacer, but it made a
green
flash. If the pilot were only looking, or if he would only look before he got
out of sight, he couldn't miss a green flash on a world with no other green.

He pulled the trigger again.

And the pilot of the spacer
saw
. He cut and fired his
jets three times—the standard answer to a signal of distress—and began to
circle.

McGarry stood there trembling. So long a wait, and so sudden
an end to it. He put his hand on his left shoulder and touched the little
five-legged pet that felt, to his fingers as well as to his naked shoulder, so
like a woman's hand.

"Dorothy," he said. "It's—" He ran out
of words.

The spacer was circling in for a landing now. McGarry looked
down at himself, suddenly ashamed at the way he would look to his rescuer. His
body was naked except for the belt that held his holster and from which dangled
his knife and a few other tools. He was dirty and he probably smelled. And
under the dirt his body looked thin and wasted, almost old; but that was due,
of course, to diet deficiencies; a few months of proper food—Earth food —would
take care of that.

Earth! The green hills of Earth!

He ran now, stumbling sometimes in his eagerness, toward
the point where he saw the spacer landing. It was low now, and he could see
that it was a one-man job, as his had been. But that was all right; a one-man
spacer can carry two in an emergency, at least as far as the nearest habitated
planet where he could get other transportation back to Earth. To the green
hills, the green fields, the green valleys

He prayed a little and swore a little as he ran. There were
tears running down his cheeks.

He was there, waiting, as the door opened and a tall slender
young man in the uniform of the Space Patrol stepped out

"You'll take me back?"

"Of course," said the young man. "Been here
long?"

"Five years!" McGarry knew he was crying now, but
he couldn't stop.

"Good Lord!" said the young man. "I'm Lieutenant
Archer, Space Patrol. Of course I'll take you back, man. We'll leave as soon as
my jets cool enough for a take-off. I'll take you as far as Carthage, on
Aldebaran II, anyway; you can get a ship out of there for anywhere. Need
anything right away? Food? Water?"

McGarry shook his head dumbly. His knees felt weak. Food,
water—what did such things matter now?

The green hills of Earth! He was going back to them.
That
was what mattered, and all that mattered. So long a wait, so sudden an ending.
He saw the violet sky suddenly swimming then it went black as his knees buckled
under him.

He was lying flat and the young man was holding a flask to
his lips and he took a long draught of the fiery stuff it held. He sat up and
felt better. He looked to make sure that the spacer was still there and he felt
wonderful.

The young man said, "Buck up, old timer; we'll be off
in half an hour. You'll be in Carthage in six hours. Want to talk, till you get
your bearing again? Want to tell me all about it, everything that's
happened?"

They sat in the shadow of a brown bush, and McGarry told him
about it. Everything about it. The landing, his ship smashed past repair. The
five-year search for the other ship he'd read had crashed on the same planet
and which might have intact the parts he needed to repair his own ship. The
long search. About Dorothy, perched on his shoulder, and how she'd been
something to talk to.

But, somehow, the face of Lieutenant Archer was changing as
McGarry talked. It grew even more solemn, even more compassionate.

"Old-timer," Archer said gently, "what year
was it when you came here?"

McGarry saw it coming. How can you keep track of time on a
planet whose sun and seasons are unchanging? A planet of eternal day, eternal
summer.

He said flatly, "I came here in forty-two. How much have
I misjudged, Lieutenant? How old am I —instead of thirty, as I've
thought?"

"It's twenty-two seventy-two, McGarry. You came here
thirty years ago. You're fifty-five. But don't let that worry you too much.
Medical science has advanced. You've still got a long time to live."

McGarry said it softly. "Fifty-five. Thirty
years."

Lieutenant Archer looked at him pityingly. He said,
"Old-timer, do you want it all in a lump, all the rest of the bad news?
There are several items of it. I'm no psychologist, but I think maybe it's best
for you to take it now, all at once, while you can throw in the scale against
it the fact that you're going back. Can you take it, McGarry?"

There couldn't be anything worse than he'd learned
already—the fact that thirty years of his life had been wasted here. Sure, he
could take the rest of it—as long as he was getting back to Earth, green Earth.

He stared up at the violet sky, the red sun, the brown
plain. He said quietly, "I can take it, Lieutenant. Dish it out."

"You've done wonderfully for thirty years, McGarry. You
can thank God for the fact that you believed Marley's spacer crashed on Kruger
III. It wasn't Kruger III; it was Kruger IV. You'd never have found it here,
but the search, as you say, kept you—reasonably sane." He paused a moment.
His voice was gentle when he spoke again. "There isn't anything on your
shoulder, McGarry. This Dorothy has been a figment of your imagination. But
don't worry about it; that particular delusion has probably kept you from
cracking up completely."

Slowly McGarry put his hand to his left shoulder. It
touched—his shoulder. Nothing else.

Archer said, "My God, man, it's marvelous that you're
otherwise
okay. Thirty years alone; it's almost a miracle. And if your one delusion
persists, now that I've told you it is a delusion, a psychiatrist back at
Carthage or on Mars can fix you up in a jiffy.”

McGarry said dully, "It doesn't persist. It isn't there
now. I—I'm not even sure, Lieutenant, that I ever did believe in Dorothy. I
think I made her up on purpose, to talk to, so I'd remain sane except for that.
She was—she was like a woman's hand, Lieutenant. Or did I tell you that?"

"You told me. Want the rest of it now, McGarry?"

McGarry stared at him. "The rest of it? What rest can
there be? I'm fifty-five instead of thirty. I've spent thirty years—since I was
twenty-five—hunting for a spacer I'd never have found because it was on another
planet. I've been crazy—in one way, but only one—most of that time. But none of
that matters, now that I can go back to Earth."

Lieutenant Archer was shaking his head slowly. "Not
back to Earth, old-timer. To Mars, if you wish, the beautiful brown and yellow
hills of Mars. Or, if you don't mind heat, to purple Venus. But not to Earth,
old-timer. Nobody lives there now."

"Earth—is—gone? I don't—"

"Not gone, McGarry. It's there. But it's black and
barren, a charred ball. The war with the Arcturians, twenty years ago. They
struck first, and got Earth. We got them, we won, we exterminated them, but
Earth was gone before we started. I'm sorry, old-timer, but you'll have to
settle for somewhere else."

McGarry said, "No Earth." There was no expression
in his voice. No expression at all.

Archer said, "That's it, old-timer. But Mars isn't so
bad. You'll get used to it. It's the center of the solar system now, and there
are four billion Earthmen on it. You'll miss the green of Earth, sure, but
it's not so bad."

McGarry said, "No Earth." There was no expression
in his voice. No expression at all.

Archer nodded. "Glad you can take it that way,
old-timer. It must be rather a jolt. Well, I guess we can get going. The tubes
ought to have cooled by now. I'll check and make sure."

He stood up and started toward the little spacer.

McGarry's sol-gun came out of its holster. McGarry shot him,
and Lieutenant Archer wasn't there anymore. McGarry stood up and walked over to
the little spacer. He aimed the sol-gun at it and pulled the trigger. Part of
the spacer was gone. Half a dozen shots and it was completely gone. Little
atoms that had been the spacer and little atoms that had been Lieutenant Archer
of the Space Patrol may have danced in the air, but they were invisible.

McGarry put the gun back into its holster and started
walking toward the red splotch of jungle on the far horizon.

He put his hand up to his shoulder and touched Dorothy and
she was there, as she'd been there for four of the five years he'd been on
Kruger III. She felt, to his fingers and to his shoulder, like a woman's hand.

He said, "Don't worry, Dorothy. We'll find it. Maybe
this is the jungle it landed in. And when we find it—"

He was near the edge of the jungle now, the red jungle, and
a tiger came running out to meet him and eat him. A mauve tiger with six legs
and a head like a barrel. McGarry aimed his sol-gun and pulled the trigger, and
there was a bright green flash, brief but beautiful—oh, so beautiful—and then
the tiger wasn't there anymore.

McGarry chuckled softly. "Did you see that, Dorothy?
That was green, the color there isn't any of on any planet but the one we're
going to. The most beautiful color in the universe, Dorothy. Green! And I know
where there's a world that's mostly green, the only one that is, and we're
going there. It's the most beautiful place in the universe, Dorothy, and it's
the world I came from. You'll love it."

She said, "I know I will, Mac." Her low, throaty
voice was familiar to him. It was not odd that she had answered him; she had
always answered him. Her voice was as familiar as his own. He reached up and
touched her, resting on his naked shoulder. She felt like a woman's hand.

He turned and looked back over the brown plain studded with
brown bushes, the violet sky above, the crimson sun. He laughed at it. Not a
mad laugh, a gentle one. It didn't matter because soon he'd find the spacer he
was looking for and in it the parts that would repair his own spacer so he
could go back to Earth.

To the green hills, the green valleys, the green fields.

Once more he patted the hand upon his shoulder and then turned
back. Gun at ready, he entered the red jungle.

The little man with the sparse gray hair and the
inconspicuous bright red suit stopped on the corner of State and Randolph to
buy a micronews, a Chicago
Sun-Tribune
of March 21st, 1999. Nobody
noticed him as he walked into the corner superdrug and took a vacant booth. He
dropped a quarter into the coffee-slot and while the conveyor brought him his
coffee, he glanced at the headlines on the tiny three-by-four-inch page. His
eyes were unusually keen; he could read those headlines easily without
artificial aid. But nothing on the first page or the second interested him;
they concerned international matters, the third Venus rocket, and the latest
depressing report of the ninth moon expedition. But on page three there were
two stories concerning crime, and he took a tiny micrographer from his pocket
and adjusted it to read the stories while he drank his coffee.

Bela Joad was the little man's name. His right name, that
is; he'd gone by so many names in so many places that only a phenomenal memory
could have kept track of them all, but he had a phenomenal memory. None of
those names had ever appeared in print, nor had his face or voice ever been
seen or heard on the ubiquitous video. Fewer than a score of people, all of
them top officials in various police bureaus, knew that Bela Joad was the
greatest detective in the world.

He was not an employee of any police department, drew no
salary nor expense money, and collected no rewards. It may have been that he
had private means and indulged in the detection of criminals as a hobby. It may
equally have been that he preyed upon the underworld as he fought it, that he
made criminals support his campaign against them. Whichever was the case, he
worked for no one; he worked against crime. When a major crime or a series of
major crimes interested him, he would work on it, sometimes consulting
beforehand with the chief of police of the city involved, sometimes working
without the chief's knowledge until he would appear in the chief's office and
present him with the evidence that would enable him to make an arrest and
obtain a conviction.