Only when he had laid it on the bed did he breathe naturally again — it wasn't Hereafter in its vile blue envelope; this one was a gentle pink. It did contain a magazine though, just about the size of Hereafter, a bulky magazine with lots of pages. Its title was Senility— and the black letters were drawn in such a way that they looked as though they were made of cracked and crumbling stone — and underneath it said The Magazine of Geri-ART-trics. There was a picture of a feeble old man in a wheelchair with a blanket around his shoulders, sucking water through a curved glass tube. Inside was more. Ads for toilet chairs and hemorrhoid cushions, crutches and crank beds, articles on "Learn Braille When the Eyesight Goes," and "Happy Though Bedridden.” and "Immobile for Twenty-five Years." A letter dropped out of the magazine and he half-read phrases here and there.
Welcome to the family. . the magazine of geri-ART-trics that teaches you the art of growing old. . many long years ahead of you. . empty years. . what happiness to find a copy in your mailbox every month. . speaking book edition for the blind. . Braille for the blind and deaf. . every month. .
There were tears in his eyes when he looked up. It was dark, a rainy and cold April morning with the wind rattling the window. Raindrops ran down the glass like great, cold tears.
The Gods Themselves Throw Incense
One instant the spaceship Yuri Gagarin was a thousand-foot-long projectile of gleaming metal, the next it was a core of flame and expanding gas, torn fragments and burning particles. Seventy-three people died at that moment, painlessly and suddenly. The cause of the explosion will never be determined since all the witnesses were killed while the pieces of wreckage that might have borne evidence were hurtling away from each other towards the corners of infinity. If there had been any outside witness, there in space, he would have seen the gas cloud grow and disperse while the pieces of twisted metal, charred bodies, burst luggage and crushed machines moved out and away from each other. Each had been given its own velocity and direction by the explosion and, though some fragments traveled on a parallel course for a time, individual differences in speed and direction eventually showed their effect until most fragments of the spatial debris rushed on alone through the immensity of space. Some of the larger pieces had companions: a book of radio-frequency codes orbited the ragged bulk of the ship's reactor, held in position by the gravitic attraction of its mass. Farther away the gape-mouthed, wide-eyed corpse of the assistant purser clutched the soft folds of a woman's dress in its frozen hands. But the unshielded sun scorched the fibers of the cloth while the utter dryness of space desiccated it, until it powdered and tore and centrifugal force pushed it slowly away. It was obviously impossible for anyone to have survived the explosion, but the blind workings of chance that kill may save as well.
There were three people in the emergency capsule and one, the woman, was still unconscious, having struck her head when the ship erupted. One of the two men was in a state of shock, his limbs hanging limply while his thoughts went round and round incessantly like a toy train on a circular track. The other man was tearing at the seal of a plastic flask of vodka.
"All the American ships carry brandy," he said as he stripped off a curl of plastic, then picked at the cap with his nails. "British ships stock whiskey in their medical kits, which is the best idea, but I had to pull this tour on a Russian ship. So look what we get—" His words were cut off as he raised the flask to his mouth and drank deeply.
"Thirty thousand pounds in notes," Damian Brayshaw said thickly. "Thirty thousand pounds. . good God. . they can't hold me responsible." One heel drummed sluggishly against the padded side of the capsule and moved him away from it a few inches. He drifted slowly back. Even though his features were flaccid with shock, and his white skin even paler now, with a waxen hue, it could be seen that he was a handsome man. His hair, black and cut long, had burst free of its careful dressing and hung in lank strands down his forehead and in front of his eyes. He raised his hand to brush at it, but never completed the motion.
"You want a drink, chum?" the other man asked, holding out the flask-. "I think you need it, chum, knock it back."
"Brayshaw. . Damian Brayshaw," he said, as he took the bottle. He coughed over a mouthful of the raw spirit and for the first time his attention wandered from the lost money, and he noticed the other's dark green uniform with the gold tabs on the shoulders. "You're a spaceman… a ship's officer."
"Correct. You've got great eyesight. I'm Second Lieutenant Cohen. You can call me Chuck. I'll call you Damian."
"Lieutenant Cohen, can you tell—"
"Chuck."
"— can you tell me what happened? I'm a bit confused." His actions matched his words as his eyes roamed over the curved, padded wall of the closed deadlight, to the wire-cased bulb then back down to the row of handles labeled with incomprehensible Cyrillic characters.
"The ship blew up," Lieutenant Cohen said tonelessly, but his quick pull at the flask belied the casualness of his words. Years of service in space had carved the deep wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and grayed the barely seen stubble of his shaven head, yet no amount of service could have prepared him to accept casually the loss of his ship. "Have some more of this," he said, passing over the vodka flask. "We have to finish it. Blew up, that's all I knew, just blew up. I had the lock of this capsule open, inspection check, I got knocked halfway through it. You were going by, so I grabbed you and pushed you in, don't you remember?"
Damian hesitated in slow thought, then shook his head no.
"Well, I did. Grabbed you, then the girl, she was lying on the deck out cold. Just as I stuffed her in I heard the bulkhead blowing behind me so I climbed in right on top of her. Vacuum sucked the inner hatch shut even before I could touch it."
"The others. .?"
"Dead, Damian boy, every single one. Sole survivors, that's us."
Damian gasped. "You can't be sure," he said.
"I'm sure. I watched from the port. Torn to pieces. Blew up. The blast scaled off the chunk of ship we were in just long enough for us to get into this can. Even then there wouldn't have been enough time if I hadn't had the lid open and knew the drill. Don't expect those kind of odds to pay off twice in a lifetime."
"Will anyone find us?" There was a faint tremor in his voice. Chuck shrugged.
"No telling. Give me back the booze before you squeeze the bottle out of shape."
"You can send a message, there must be a radio in this thing."
Chuck gasped happily after a throat-destroying drink and held the almost empty flask up to the light. "Save a little to bring the girl around. You must have been out on your feet, Damian lad, you lay right there all the time watching me send the SOS. I stopped just as soon as I tried the receiver."
"I don't remember. It must have been the shock — but why did you stop transmitting? I don't understand."
Chuck bent and pulled at one of the handles below them. The padded lid lifted to reveal the controls of a compact transceiver. He flipped a switch and a waterfall-like roar filled the tiny space, then was silenced as he turned it off and closed the lid. Damian shook his head.
"What does that mean?" he asked. "Solar flare. Storm on the sun. We can never push a signal through that kind of interference. All we can do is hold our water until it stops. Say, it looks like our girlfriend is coming around."
They both turned to look at her where she lay on the padded wall of the capsule, Damian's eyes widening as he realized for the first time just how attractive she was. Her hair was deep, flaming red, lovely even in the tangled disarray that framed her face. Only the ugly bruise on her forehead marred the pink smoothness of her skin, and her figure was lush, clearly defined by the tight-bodiced, full-skirted dress. The skirt had ridden up, almost to her waist, revealing graceful and supple legs and black-lace sequined undergarments.