THE FIRE and THE SWORD
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Nothing could have seemed pleasanter than that
peaceful planet. Then why was a non-suicidal
man driven to suicide there? Yet it made sense.
Why do people commit suicide?
Templin tightened his safety belt and lay back on the accelerationbunk. The lights in the cabin dimmed to a dull, red glow that meant thetime for takeoff was nearing. He could hear noises from deep withinthe ship and the tiny whir of the ventilator fan, filling the air withthe sweetish smell of sleeping gas. To sleep the trip away was betterthan to face the dull monotony of the stars for days on end.
Oh, they kill themselves for lots of reasons. Maybe ill health orfinancial messes or family difficulties. An unhappy love affair. Ormore complex ones, if you went into it deeper. The failure to achievean ambition, failure to live up to one's own ideals. Weltschmerz,perhaps.
He could smell the bitter fragrance of tobacco smoke mingling withthe gas. Eckert had lit a cigarette and was calmly blowing the smokeat the neon "No Smoking" sign, which winked on and off in mechanicaldisapproval.
He turned his head slightly so he could just see Eckert in the bankfacing him. Eckert, one of the good gray men in the Service. The oldreliables, the ones who could take almost anything in their stridebecause, at one time or another, they had had to.
It was Eckert who had come into his office several days ago and toldhim that Don Pendleton had killed himself.
Only Pendleton wasn't the type. He was the kind who have everythingto live for, the kind you instinctively know will amount to somethingsomeday. And that was a lousy way to remember him. The clichés alwayscome first. Your memory plays traitor and boils friendship down to thestatus of a breakfast food testimonial.
The soft red lights seemed to be dancing in the darkness of the cabin.Eckert was just a dull, formless blur opposite him. His cigarette wasout.
Eckert had come into his office without saying a word and had watchedhis scenery-window. It had been snowing in the window, the white flakesmaking a simple pattern drifting past the glass. Eckert had fiddledwith the controls and changed it to sunshine, then to a weird mixtureof hail amid the brassy, golden sunlight.
And then Eckert had told him that Pendleton had taken the short way out.
He shouldn't get sentimental. But how the hell else should he rememberPendleton? Try to forget it and drink a toast to him at the next classreunion? And never, never be so crude as to speculate why Pendletonshould have done it? If, of course, he had....
The cabin was hazy in the reddish glow, the sleeping gas a heavyperfume.
Eckert and he had talked it out and gone over the records. Pendletonhad come of good stock. There had been no mental instability in hisfamily for as far back as the genetic records went. He had been raisedin a middle-class neighborhood and attended a local grammar schoolwhere he had achieved average grades and had given his instructors thenormal amount of trouble. L