They were ugly, obscene.Brandon swore under his breath. Climb the rungs and have a look."Logan's eyes had a green shine to them, eager and intent. "There's a new body up in the air-lock, Brandon. Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher StoweLogan's way of laughing was bad. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
"Scared to go upstairs? Scared it might be your son we just picked up?"Brandon reached Logan in about one stride, and while the Morgue Ship slipped on through space, he clenched the coroner's blue uniform with the small bones inside it and hung it up against the wall, pressing inward until Logan couldn't breathe. "Just keep quiet."Logan sucked his cigarette. And Logan was like a little machine that never stopped talking."Leave me alone." Brandon rose up, tall and thinned by the years, looking as old as a pocked meteor. Besides that, there were scores of cold shelves of bodies freezing quietly, and the insistent vibration of the coroner tables, machinery spinning under them.
I don't need your tongue."Logan's eyes were losing their shine, were getting blind and glazed. Let me search for my own son's body in my own way. He waved his short arms, flapping.Brandon kept him there, crucified on a fist."I told you. He tried to speak and could only grunt like a stuck pig.
Never did anything for Earth against Mars."Brandon said the words in slow motion. "Got yellow—neon-tubing—for your spine. Brandon watched the little face of Logan over the crouched, gasping body, with red color and anger shooting up into it with every passing second."Coward!" he threw it out of himself, Logan did. Logan bumped softly against metal flooring, his mouth hungry for air, his nostrils flaring for breath.
"He was so damn ashamed of you he went and signed up for space combat. "Does it hurt, the truth? Your son'd be proud of you, okay. The blood pumps under the skirts of the tables pulsed across the warm silence.
Had to get a nice easy job on a morgue ship—"Lines appeared in Brandon's gaunt cheeks, his eyes were closed, the lids pale. You wouldn't join the Space Warriors to fight. "So, to make up for it, you signed on a Morgue Ship.
"You hunted radium in the asteroids with a mineral tug. I was in the other war.""You're a liar," Brandon retorted. I got a right to running this ship. "Who are you tryin' to convince?" He was on his feet now. They deserve burial."The bitterness of Logan struck even deeper. They can't go flying on forever in their own orbits.
"Unless," he added, "they give me a little money."Brandon turned away, feeling ill. I'll burn anybody gets in my way." He thought it over. "So what? Least I'm no coward.
Every time a new body was found he feared and yet hoped it would be Richard. Numbly he realized it was not his son. Its posture was one of easy slumber, relaxed and not speaking ever again.Brandon took in his breath. His climbing feet made a soft noise in the cold metal silence.The body lay in the cold air-lock's center, as thousands had lain before. His palms let wet shining prints on the rungs.
"Where in hell'd you get that?"Lying there, the face of the body was like snow framed by the ebon-black of the hair. Quick."Logan climbed lazily up, emitting grunts and smoke."Look here," said Brandon, kneeling again by the body.Logan looked and didn't believe it. He walked unsteadily to the rungs."Logan," he called down the hole in a numbed voice. His heart pounded briefly, and when he got up again he acted like he had been struck in the face. He went to his knees and with efficient darts of his eyes, he covered the vital points of this strange uniform with the young body inside it. Richard who was now floating off somewhere toward some far eternity.Brandon's eyes dilated.
"Three hundred years old," he said."Yes." The Numerals 51 were enough for Brandon. "Three hundred years old," he whispered it. But, most important of all, was the cut of the silver metal uniform, the grey leather belt and the bronze triangle over the silent heart with the numerals 51 on it.Logan held onto the rungs. There were slender fingers reclining against the hips.
I—" Brandon caught his breath."This man," said Brandon, wonderingly, "committed suicide.""There's not a mark of decompression, centrifugal force, disintegrator or ray-burn on him. Something happened, three hundred years ago, and he's been drifting, alone, ever since. Most corpse faces aren't—pretty.
He shoulda been messed up by meteors."A strange prickling crept over Brandon. "But this is the first time I ever seen a stiff from one of them. Why should a Scientist of the 51 Circle commit suicide?""They had wars back there, too," said Logan.
The—myth—says that if the Martians had been only a month later—the weapon would have been out of blueprint and into metal."Brandon stopped talking and looked at the long-boned, easily slumbering Scientist."And now he shows up. The 51 Scientists destroyed themselves and their Base when the Martians came. But before that super weapon was completed, Earth fell beneath Mar's assault. There was a rumor that they were experimenting with some new universal power weapon.""Who knows? Maybe. I memorized their uniforms, and this bronze badge.
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