“On page 158,” Maggie said, “Specktowsky says, ‘The soul of brevity–the short time we are alive–is wit. And as regards the art of prayer, wit runs inversely proportional to length.’
Belsnor said, “Let’s simply say, ‘Walker-on-Earth, help us find spare transmitter parts.’
“The thing to do,” Maggie Walsh said, “is to ask Mr. Tallchief to word the prayer, inasmuch as he was so successful in his recent previous prayer. Evidently he knows how to phrase properly.”
“Get Tallchief,” Babble said. “He’s probably moving his possessions from his noser to his living quarters. Somebody go find him.”
“I’ll go,” Seth Morley said. He rose, made his way out of the briefing chamber and into the evening darkness.
“That was a very good idea, Maggie,” he heard Babble saying, and other voices joined his. A chorus of agreement went up from those gathered in the briefing room.
He continued on, feeling his way cautiously; it would be so easy to get lost in this still unfamiliar colony site. Maybe I should have let one of the others go, he said to himself. A light shone in the window of a building ahead. Maybe he’s in there, Seth Morley said to himself, and made his way toward the light.
Ben Tallchief finished his drink, yawned, picked at a place on his throat, yawned once again and clumsily rose to his feet. Time to start moving, he said to himself. I hope, he thought, I can find my noser in the dark.
He stepped outdoors, found the gravel path with his feet, began moving in the direction which he supposed the nosers to be. Why no guide lights around here? he asked himself, and then realized that the other colonists had been too preoccupied to turn the lights on. The breakdown of the transmitter had ensnared the attention of every one of them, and justly so. Why aren’t I in there? he asked himself. Functioning as part of the group. But the group didn’t function as a group anyhow; it was always a finite number of self-oriented individuals squalling with one another. With such a bunch he felt as if he had no roots, no common source. He felt nomadic and in need of exercise; right now something called to him: it had called him from the briefing room and back to his living quarters, and now it sent him trudging through the dark, searching for his noser.
A vague area of darkness moved ahead of him, and, against the less-dark sky, a figure appeared. “Tallchief?”
“Yes,” he said. “Who is it?” He peered.
“Morley. They sent me to find you. They want you to compose the prayer, since you had such good luck a couple of days ago.”
“No more prayers for me,” Tallchief said, and clamped his teeth in bitterness. “Look where that last prayer got me– stuck here with all of you. No offense, I just mean–” He gestured. “It was a cruel and inhuman act to grant that prayer, considering the situation here. And it must have known it.”
“I can understand your feeling,” Morley said.
“Why don’t you do it? You just recently met the Walker; it would be smarter to use you.”
“I’m no good at prayers. I didn’t summon the Walker; it was his idea to come to me.”
“How about a drink?” Tallchief said. “And then maybe you could give me a hand with my stuff, moving it to my quarters and like that.”
“I have to move my own stuff.”
“That’s an outstanding cooperative attitude.”
“If you had helped me–”
Tallchief said, “I’ll see you later.” He continued on, groping and flailing in the darkness, until all at once he stumbled against a clanking hull. A noser. He had found the right area; now to pick out his own ship.
He looked back. Morley had gone; he was alone.
Why couldn’t the guy have helped me? he asked himself. I’m going to need another person for most of the cartons. Let’s see, he pondered. If I can turn on the landing lights of the noser I’ll be able to see. He located the locking wheel of the hatch, spun it, tugged the hatch open. Automatically the safety lights came on; now he could see. Maybe I’ll just move in my clothes, bathroom articles and my copy of The Book, he decided. I’ll read The Book until I get ready to go to sleep. I’m tired; piloting the noser here took everything out of me. That and the transmitter failing. Utter defeat.
Why did I ask him to help me? he wondered. I don’t know him, he hardly knows me. Getting my stuff moved is my own problem. He has problems of his own.
He picked up a carton of books, began to lug it away from the parked noser in the general direction–he hoped–of his living quarters. I’ve got to get a flashlight, he decided as he waddled along. And hell, I forgot to turn on the landing lights. This is all going wrong, he realized. I might as well go back and join the others. Or I could move this one carton and then have another drink, and possibly by that time most of them would have come out of the briefing room and could help me. Grunting and perspiring, he made his way up the gravel path toward the dark and inert structure which provided them with their living quarters. No lights on. Everyone was still involved in pasting together an adequate prayer. Thinking about that he had to laugh. They’ll probably haggle about it all night, he decided, and laughed again, this time with angry disgust.
He found his own living quarters, by virtue of the fact that the door hung open. Entering, he dropped the carton of books to the floor, sighed, stood up, turned on all the lights . . . standing there he surveyed the small room with its dresser and bed. The bed did not please him; it looked small and hard. “Christ,” he said, and seated himself on it. Lifting several books from the carton he rummaged about until he came onto the bottle of Peter Dawson scotch; he unscrewed the lid and drank somberly from the bottle itself.
Through the open door he gazed out at the nocturnal sky; he saw the stars haze over with atmospheric disturbances, then clear for a moment. It is certainly hard, he thought, to make out stars through the refractions of a planetary atmosphere.
A great gray shape merged with the doorway, blotting out the stars.
It held a tube and it pointed the tube at him. He saw a telescopic sight on it and a trigger mechanism. Who was it? What was it? He strained to see, and then he heard a faint pop. The gray shape receded and once more stars appeared. But now they had changed. He saw two stars collapse against one another and a nova form; it flared up and then, as he watched, it began to die out. He saw it turn from a furiously blazing ring into a dim core of dead iron and then he saw it cool into darkness. More stars cooled with it; he saw the force of entropy, the method of the Destroyer of Forms, retract the stars into dull reddish coals and then into dust-like silence. A shroud of thermal energy hung uniformly over the world, over this strange and little world for which he had no love or use.
It’s dying, he realized. The universe. The thermal haze spread on and on until it became only a disturbance, nothing more; the sky glowed weakly with it and then flickered. Even the uniform thermal disbursement was expiring. How strange and goddam awful, he thought. He got to his feet, moved a step toward the door.
And there, on his feet, he died.
They found him an hour later. Seth Morley stood with his wife at the far end of the knot of people jammed into the small room and said to himself, _To keep him from helping with the prayer_.
“The same force that shut down the transmitter,” Ignatz Thugg said. “They knew; they knew if he phrased the prayer it would go through. Even without the relay.” He looked gray and frightened. All of them did, Seth Morley noticed. Their faces, in the light of the room, had a leaden, stone-like cast. Like, he thought, thousand-year-old idols.
Time, he thought, is shutting down around us. It is as if the future is gone, for all of us. Not just for Tallchief.
“Babble, can you do an autopsy?” Betty Jo Berm asked. “To a certain extent.” Dr. Babble had seated himself beside Tallchief ‘s body and was touching him here and there. “No visible blood. No sign of an injury. His death could be natural, you all realize; it might be that he had a cardiac condition. Or, for example, he might have been killed by a heat gun at close range . . . but then, if that’s the case, I’ll find the burn marks.” He unfastened Tallchief’s collar, reached down to explore the chest area. “Or one of us might have done it,” he said. “Don’t rule that out.”