"So, who wants to go?" Shelley asked again, and all were silent.
"We could always tie a tether line to someone, he could push out, and if he runs into a problem we could reel him back in."
"Well, sister," Richard said reproachfully, "what do you mean 'him'? I thought after that dose of liberation at our last visit, you would be more than eager to prove yourself yet again."
"Just remember, buster, it was I who saved you from an operation that might have improved your personality."
"And you never did tell us, sister Ellen, just how sisterly you and Carrie got. My, my, I would have loved to have seen that show."
"You rotten son of a bitch!" Ellen stood up with such vigor that she tumbled from her seat and catapulted clear into the forward cabin.
Her shrieks filled the air and it was some seconds before the rest of them realized that the shrieks were not screams of rage but of terror.
They pushed forward and Ian felt his heart skip over into a near palpitation as he looked toward the forward window. A mummified face was looking in the window from the outside. But this mummy was grinning and its eyes were rolling. It brought up a space-suited hand and waved.
"Guess that settles the question of whether we go to the neighbors or the neighbors come here," Richard said. "I better get a bottle, it looks like he needs a drink."
"Crack one for me, as well," Ellen said hoarsely. "I need it."
"Elijah, they called me Elijah Crump." He spoke slowly, each word formed distinctly and with effort, as if every syllable was a physical form that had to be worked over before expelled.
With quiet ceremony Richard drifted forward and of fered a drink container, but first he shook it lightly. The tinkle of ice could be heard.
"Richard, should you?" Ellen asked.
Elijah looked at him, a glint of suspicion in his eyes.
"Are you from Sagit?"
" Sagit?" Ian asked.
"He must mean Delta Sagittarius," Shelley interjected, and pointed back to the front of the ship where the one star now dominated the sky before them.
"Yes, Delta Sagittarius." He stumbled over Sagittarius but they knew what he had said. "Curious name, what does it mean? We never did know."
Ian wrestled with so many questions. He had almost leaped upon Elijah the moment he had cleared the airlock, so eager was he to find out why. Why? There were so many whys, but he had to be patient. Elijah was not the typical image of what one expected to come floating in for a friendly visit.
First off, his suit was downright dangerous. It was of an ancient pattern, last seen in Earth environment a mil lennium ago. Patched and repatched in a crazy-quilt pat tern that looked like the efforts of a hallucinating seamstress. He was clothed in a set of coveralls that had been worked on in the same way, worn and threadbare from a thousand cleanings, matching the appearance of the man who wore them.
Elijah was lean, gaunt, and stretched out thin, his fingers long and sensitive, his high forehead fringed with a thin wisp of snow-white hair that matched the long flowing beard framing his face. Eagerly his eyes darted from one to the other of them, drinking in the sight of them; yet his look was also one of suspicion and fear.
"I haven't spoken to anyone in, how long is it?… " He lapsed into silence again, then noticed the drink still being offered by Richard.
Tentatively he took the container in his hand and brought the straw to his lips.
Tears came to his eyes.
"Bless you," he whispered. "I remember now, it's… it's called alcohol."
"Gin, my man," Richard replied cheerfully, "and the best to be had in this part of the cosmos."
"You were saying that you hadn't spoken to anyone," Ian interjected, fearful that Richard would start in on a comparative study of alcohol that would drag their guest into a numbing oblivion. "How long has it been?"
Elijah nodded his head slowly, took another sip and savored it.
"I remember a name for it, we called it godt. I had a chronometer aboard, back there." He gestured vaguely back toward the airlock. "It broke after measuring fifty- one godt."
"That's Old Russian for years," Ian whispered in quiet amazement.
Elijah took another sip and smiled gravely at them. "I have survived upon that hulk alone. The other survivors died within the first year, and I was left alone. Alone after the destruction. It's been at least fifty years," he whis pered, "since I have talked to another man." Elijah started to laugh.
"Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony."
Ian sat enrapt, but it was Shelley who interrupted.
"I've heard a fragment of that."
"Coleridge, The Ancient Mariner."
"We've only a fragment," she continued. "The rest is believed lost."
"I know it all, right in here," Elijah said, pointing to his head. His voice rose up with a deep sonorous tone that echoed through the ship.
"I closed my lids, and kept them close,
And the balls like pulses beat;
For the sky and the sea, and the sea, and the sky
Lay like a load on my weary eye,
And the dead were at my feet."
He stopped and looked at them.
"I'm sorry, I was alone, you see. Never a voice to respond, never a soul to listen as I shouted my words to the universe."
Ian could hardly respond, stunned by the magnitude of what he was observing. Fifty years alone, lost in the endless reaches of the universe! "What happened?" he asked tentatively.
Elijah took another sip and there was a wild glint in his eye.
"'For I alone have lived to tell thee this tale!' "
"What?"
"You don't realize, my friends, that I've waited two score and ten years to utter those simple words, 'for I alone have lived to tell thee this tale,' can't you see? Can't you see what this means?" His voice broke and he started to sob.
Ian looked across at Richard and the others.
"Not now, Ian, don't push him yet. It can wait," Rich ard said softly. "It can wait, let him have his drink."
Richard gently took Elijah by the arm and led him astern.
"A nation, no, a race," he shouted, "and down from across the millennium I am all that is left of my world, for I am Lazarus returned from the realm of the dead to tell thee all!"
"I was working in the backup reactor housing when they hit us." Ian turned with a start of fear. It was his watch, and as the others slept he had settled back to watch Elijah's slowly tumbling realm and the sharp, cold light of Delta Sag. He had never heard Elijah's quiet approach.
Ian beckoned for Elijah to join him in the Co's chair. He was no longer wearing the bizarrely patched coveralls, and he was freshly shaved and washed. Elijah looked at Ian and smiled softly. Ian was shocked to notice that most of his teeth were missing.
Elijah looked out the starboard window and stared at the slowly turning reactor unit.
"That was my entire world, nay, my entire universe. Main corridor eighty-three meters, fifty-two point one centimeters from main bulkhead to bulkhead. Shall I tell you how many tiles were set in the floor? How many were cracked and what each crack looked like? How about screws securing each air vent? I spent eternity floating, nameless, voiceless, eternally alone. Ah, such will be my eternity in Hell for having endlessly cursed the name of God in my madness."
Elijah looked back to Ian and smiled again. "I'm not mad, Ian Lacklin, not mad at all. Perhaps I am saner than any man alive, for I have learned the power of waiting, but I shall not make you wait. First I will tell you all, then you can tell me what I desire. Will you tell me of the paradise of my grandsires, where you walk upon the outside of your world and all is green and blue skies above? But first I will tell you."