A Hero’s Life by James Blish

cycle; it was diffuse, but it alone among the planets had the

mass. The wave front of that unimaginable catastrophe would

boil Earth’s seas in their beds; it might alsothe probability

was about ~s -triggerr a nova outburst from the Sun,

though nobody would stay alive to be grateful very long if it

didn’t.

Since Sweeney knew this, he had to assume that it was com-

mon knowledge, and that Earth would use chemical explosives

only on Ganymede. But would it? Common knowledge and

Sweeney had had precious little contact so far.

Still, it hardly mattered. If Earth bombed the colony, it

would be all up with him, regardless. Even the limited com-

panionship, the wordless love, the sense that he might yet be

born, all would be gone. He would be gone. So might the

little world.

But if he signalled Meikiejon and the computer, ha would

be taken alive away from Mike, away from RuUman, away

from the colony, away and away. He would stay his own

dead self. He might even have a new chance to learn that same

endless lesson about the shapes loneliness can take; or, Earth

might work a miracle and turn him into a live, Jay-positive

human being. –

The wind rose and rose. The congruent furies of the storms

inside and outside Sweeney mounted together. Their con-

gruence made a classic example, had he been able to rec-

ognize it, of the literary device called “the pathetic fallacy”

but Sweeney had never read any fiction, and recognizing na-

ture in the process of imitating art would have been of no use

to him anyhow.

He did not even know that, when the crisis of the exterior