The Green Hills of Earth

�Control aye aye!�

�Spilling jet three � emergency.�

�Is this Macdougal?�

�Macdougal is dead. This is Rhysling, on watch. Stand by to record.�

There was no answer; dumbfounded the Skipper may have been, but he could not interfere in a power room emergency. He had the ship to consider, and the passengers and crew. The doors had to stay closed.

The Captain must have been still more surprised at what Rhysling sent for record. It was:

�We rot in the molds of Venus,
We retch at her tainted breath.
Foul are her flooded jungles,
Crawling with unclean death.�

Rhysling went on cataloguing the Solar System as he worked, � � harsh bright soil of Luna � ,� � � Saturn's rainbow rings � ,� � � the frozen night of Titan � ,� all the while opening and spilling the jet and flushing it clean. He finished with an alternate chorus �

�We've tried each spinning space mote
And reckoned its true worth:
Take us back again to the homes of men
On the cool, green hills of Earth.�

�then, almost absentmindedly remembered to tack on his revised first verse:

�The arching sky is calling,
Spacemen back to their trade,
All hands! Stand by! Free falling!
And the lights below us fade�...
Out ride the sons of Terra,
Far drives the thundering jet,
Up leaps the race of Earthmen,
Out, far, and onward yet � �

The ship was safe now and ready to limp home shy one jet. As for himself, Rhysling was not so sure. That �sunburn� seemed sharp, he thought. He was unable to see the bright, rosy fog in which he worked but he knew it was there. He went on with the business of flushing the air out through the outer valve, repeating it several times to permit the level of radioaction to drop to something a man might stand under suitable armor. While he did this he sent one more chorus, the last bit of authentic Rhysling that ever could be:

�We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.�

Logic of Empire

�Don't be a sentimental fool, Sam!�

�Sentimental, or not,� Jones persisted, �I know human slavery when I see it. That's what you've got on Venus.�

Humphrey Wingate snorted. �That's utterly ridiculous. The company's labor clients are employees, working under legal contracts, freely entered into.�

Jones' eyebrows raised slightly. �So? What kind of a contract is it that throws a man into jail if he quits his job?�

�That's not the case. Any client can quit his job on the usual two weeks notice � I ought to know; I � �

�Yes, I know,� agreed Jones in a tired voice. �You're a lawyer. You know all about contracts. But the trouble with you, you dunder-headed fool, is that all you understand is legal phrases. Free contract � nuts! What I'm talking about is facts, not legalisms. I don't care what the contract says � those people are slaves!�

Wingate emptied his glass and set it down. �So I'm a dunder-headed fool, am I? Well, I'll tell you what you are, Sam Houston Jones � you are a half-baked parlor pink. You've never had to work for a living in your life and you think it's just too dreadful that anyone else should have to. No, wait a minute,� he continued, as Jones opened his mouth, �listen to me. The company's clients on Venus are a damn sight better off than most people of their own class here on earth. They are certain of a job, of food, and a place to sleep. If they get sick, they're certain of medical attention. The trouble with people of that class is that they don't want to work � �

�Who does?�

�Don't be funny. The trouble is, if they weren't under a fairly tight contract, they'd throw up a good job the minute they got bored with it and expect the company to give 'em a free ride back to Earth. Now it may not have occurred to your fine, free charitable mind, but the company has obligations to its stockholders � you, for instance! � and it can't afford to run an interplanetary ferry for the benefit of a class of people that feel that the world owes them a living.�

�You got me that time, pal,� Jones acknowledged with a wry face, � � that crack about me being a stockholder. I'm ashamed of it.�

�Then why don't you sell?�

Jones looked disgusted. �What kind of a solution is that? Do you think I can avoid the responsibility of knowing about it just unloading my stock?�

�Oh, the devil with it,� said Wingate. �Drink up.�

�Righto,� agreed Jones. It was his first night aground after a practice cruise as a reserve officer; he needed to catch up on his drinking. Too bad, thought Wingate, that the cruise should have touched at Venus �

�All out! All out! Up aaaall you idlers! Show a leg there! Show a leg and grab a sock!� The raucous voice sawed its way through Wingate's aching head. He opened his eyes, was blinded by raw white light, and shut them hastily. But the voice would not let him alone. �Ten minutes till breakfast,� it rasped. �Come and get it, or we'll throw it out!�

He opened his eyes again, and with trembling willpower forced them to track. Legs moved past his eyes, denim clad legs mostly, though some were bare � repulsive hairy nakedness. A confusion of male voices, from which he could catch words but not sentences, was accompanied by an obligate of metallic sounds, muffled but pervasive � shrrg, shrrg, thump! Shrrg, shrrg, thump! The thump with which the cycle was completed hurt his aching head but was not as nerve stretching as another noise, a toneless whirring sibilance which he could neither locate nor escape.

The air was full of the odor of human beings, too many of them in too small a space. There was nothing so distinct as to be fairly termed a stench, nor was the supply of oxygen inadequate. But the room was filled with the warm, slightly musky smell of bodies still heated by bedclothes, bodies not dirty but not freshly washed. It was oppressive and unappetizing � in his present state almost nauseating.

He began to have some appreciation of the nature of his surroundings; he was in a bunkroom of some sort. It was crowded with men, men getting up, shuffling about, pulling on clothes. He lay on the bottom-most of a tier of four narrow bunks. Through the interstices between the legs which crowded around him and moved past his face he could see other such tiers around the walls and away from the walls, stacked floor to ceiling and supported by stanchions.

Someone sat down on the foot of Wingate's bunk, crowding his broad fundament against Wingate's ankles while he drew on his socks. Wingate squirmed his feet away from the intrusion. The stranger turned his face toward him. �Did I crowd 'ja, bud? Sorry.� Then he added, not unkindly, �Better rustle out of there. The Master-at-Arms'll be riding you to get them bunks up.� He yawned hugely, and started to get up, quite evidently having dismissed Wingate and Wingate's affairs from his mind.

�Wait a minute!� Wingate demanded hastily.

�Huh?�

�Where am I? In jail?�

The stranger studied Wingate's bloodshot eyes and puffy, unwashed face with detached but unmalicious interest. �Boy, oh boy, you must 'a' done a good job of drinking up your bounty money.�

�Bounty money? What the hell are you talking about?�

�Honest to God, don't you know where you are?�

�No.�

�Well�...�� The other seemed reluctant to proclaim a truth made silly by its self-evidence until Wingate's expression convinced him that he really wanted to know. �Well, you're in the Evening Star, headed for Venus.�

A couple of minutes later the stranger touched him on the arm. �Don't take it so hard, bud. There's nothing to get excited about.�

Wingate took his hands from his face and pressed them against his temples. �It's not real,� he said, speaking more to himself than to the other. �It can't be real � �

�Stow it. Come and get your breakfast.�