Astounding Science Fiction (UK Edition) — page 53: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

KINDNESS 51 of his race. One by one he studied this— his fortune, now, and his home! On the table, a book was dropped casu- ally, and there was a sheet of paper propped against it, with something that might have been a girl’s rough handwriting on it. Curiosity carried him closer, until he could make it out, through the dust that clung even after he shook it. Dad: , Charley Summers found a wrecked ship of those things, and came for me. We'll be living high on 13. Come on over, if your jets will make it, and meet your son-in-law. There was no date, nothing to indicate whether “Dad” had returned, or what had happened to them. But Danny dropped it reverently back on the table, looking out across the landing strip as if to see a worn old ship crawl in through the brief twilight that was falling over the tiny world. “Those things” could only be the new race, after the War; and that meant that here was the final outpost of his people. The note might be ten years or half a dozen centuries old —but his people had been here, fighting on and managing to live, after Earth had been lost to them. If they could, so could he! And unlikely though it seemed, there might possibly be more of them out there somewhere. Perhaps the race was still sur- viving in spite of time and trouble and even homo intelligens. His eyes were moist as he stepped back from the door and the darkness outside to begin cleaning his new home. If any were there, he’d find them. And if not—well, he was still a member of a great and daring race that could never know defeat so long as a single man might live. He would never forget that. Back on Earth, Bryant Kenning nodded slowly to the small group as he put the communicator back, and his eyes were a bit sad in spite of the smile that lighted his face. “The Director’s scout is back, and he did chose “The Dane’s’. Poor kid, I’d begun to think we waited too long, and that he never would make it. Another six months—and he’d have died like a flower out of the sun! Yet I was sure it would work when Miss Larsen showed me that story, with its mythical planetoid-paradises. A rather clever story, if you like pseudo- history; I hope the one I prepared was its — equal.” “For historical inaccuracy, fully its equal.” But the amusement in old Pro- fessor Kirk’s voice did not reach his lips. “Well, he swallowed our lies and ran off with the ship we built him. I hope he’s happy, for a while at least.” Miss Larsen folded her things together and prepared to leave. “Poor kid! He was sweet, in a pathetic sort of way. I wish that girl had turned out better; maybe this wouldn’t have been necessary then. See me home, Jack?” The two older men watched Larsen and Thorpe leave, and silence and tobacco smoke filled the room. Finally Kenning shrugged, and turned to face the professor. “By now he’s found the note. I wonder if it was a good idea, after all? When I first came across it in that story, I was thinking of Jack’s preliminary report on Number Sixty-seven, but now I don’t know; she’s an unknown quantity, at best. Any- how, I meant it for kindness.” “Kindness. Kindness to repay with a few million credits and a few thousands of hours of work—plus a lie here and there— for all that we owe the boy’s race!” The professor’s voice was tired, as he dumped the contents of his pipe into a snuffer, and strode over slowly toward the great window that looked out on the night sky. “I wonder, sometimes, Bryant, what kindness Neander- thaler found when the last one came to die. Or whether the race that will follow us when the darkness falls on us will have something better than such kindness.” The novelist shook his head slowly, and there was silence again as they looked out across the world and toward the stars. % comiclbooks.c©