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Title: Killer
Author: James E. Gunn
Illustrator: Kelly Freas
Release date: June 25, 2026 [eBook #78948]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Space Publications, Inc, 1953
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78948
Credits: Tom Trussel (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Luminist Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KILLER ***
KILLER
by James E. Gunn
Illustrated by Freas
[Illustration]
=He came to me from the stars, spewed out from his own world by his
hates. I found him, I gave him all he could ask for, and I made him
mine. But in the end, there was still his hate, and the killer drive
within him....=
He was a killer. He came to me from a distance so great that it
was meaningless. He descended to me riding on a tail of flame. We
loved--how could we help it? But I knew him too well, and he did not
know me well enough. And that is the stuff of tragedy.
_Green_, was his first thought, pleased and incredulous. _Beautiful,
beautiful green!_
It was implausibility and wonder. It was the impossible happy ending
to the long chase and the longer hopelessness. It was the haven after
the fleeing into space with metal bloodhounds hot on a trail of fading
ions in the empty vaults, after the hurried Jump and the fantastic
mechanical failure which turned an alien universe into a hungry mouth,
snapped shut, after the expectoration into sane space like a rejected
seed. It began with death and ended with life.
For green is the color of life. Green is the color of growing things,
of energy becoming useful, of plants doing the countless things that
make life possible for animals. Green is the color of Earth.
_Another chance_, he thought. _Unless this is dream or delusion or a
cosmic jest--another chance. I’m black-and-blue from pinching myself--I
don’t feel crazy--though after a week of Nowhere who can be sure?
Unless some vital little thing is out of balance down there--A jewel
like that? Twin sister to Earth. Surely fate would not go this far and
then leave out some little essential_....
The green world turned lazily in the yellow light of the Go-type sun.
“What are you waiting for, Sam,” he said aloud, “an invitation? Kick
her down and find out!”
There was only enough fuel for one landing. The Jumper had eaten up a
lot when it went crazy, and the yacht had only a quarter fuel load when
he took it. It was here or nothing.
_I’d rather die with my feet on the ground. If I’m lucky--maybe
something alive I can communicate with in time. I thought I’d die in
there with no one to talk to. Just to be with something else alive_--
And that was rather strange, because it was murder that brought him
here.
Sam Newman had been a commercial pilot. It was a good job, but contrary
to public opinion, pilots are not fabulously overpaid. What with
automatics and navigational tapes and such, the skill of the early
pilots is no longer essential. The computers do the work, and pilots
are mostly supernumeraries. But the glamor has not yet vanished, and
competition is keen.
Yet, that Sam had got as far as he had was something of a triumph. His
appointment to the Academy had been due to a political concession which
established a quota for poor children. Sam had worked for it, and his
eventual position as pilot of a passenger liner was proof of how hard
he worked.
Then had come Fran and love--the two together, inseparable. Sam had had
a long time to think about it. But still he couldn’t decide whether
they had really been in love or only in love with the feeling of being
in love. What had attracted him to Fran was obvious: her dark-haired
beauty, her slim, curved figure, and her casual acceptance of things he
had always coveted, like position, security, luxury. For Fran had been
wealthy.
What had attracted her to him was, in a sense, the same things. He had
been called handsome; he was tall and well-built and blond. He was
everything that Fran was not--ambitious, imaginative, intense like the
keen, shining edge of a knife.
Differences had attracted them, and differences split them apart when
marriage threw them into constant companionship. His pride rebelled at
the use of her money, and she could not understand. He was ill-at-ease
in her world, and she seemed condescending in his. What had seemed
entrancingly different under the silver light of romance became ugly
and irritating under the merciless, glaring sun of living together. And
finally came the quarrels and the arguments and the jealousy--on his
part, anyway. Fran was casual in other things--why not in morals? God
knows, she had opportunity enough when he was away.
And whispers reached his ears and nasty rumors and Fran only shrugged
her slim shoulders and looked down at him from an unassailable pinnacle
of sophistication. Innocence of inherited position or excuse for
license? She was spoiled, he knew, spoiled with liberty that did not
understand “I shouldn’t.”
* * * * *
Then the blind, red day when the crewmen had snickered as he passed
on his way down the ramp, when he had learned what everyone seemed
to know--that she was divorcing him, when he had faced her with his
suspicions and accusations and she had laughed, laughed as his face
grew hot and red and heavy and his hands reached for her throat and
squeezed, squeezed until the laughter was all gone, and the beauty and
the life....
He took the yacht down by hand. He did not trust the automatics,
and besides, it was the last time, the last trip, and he wanted to
do it himself. The way the ship responded to the light pressure of
his fingers on the keys gave him an acute feeling of pleasure. He
brought it down only a mile or so from the ocean, where a broad river
emptied into it; rivers and seas are natural places of habitation. He
brought it down lightly, gently, on its tail absorbers so that the
ship hesitated for a moment and then sagged as the power cut off, and
everything was quiet. He sat there with his hands on the keys for a
moment, and he would have liked to have taken her up again and landed
it once more, but the needle of the fuel gauge flickered at empty.
There was only enough to provide light and heat for a few months.
Fran’s yacht had come to her last port.
Sam sighed and lifted his hands from the keys and dropped them into his
lap. The hands clutched each other for a moment, and then relaxed. They
were good hands for piloting a ship and bad hands for loving. They were
killers, but now there was to be no use for either function any more.
Sam got up and walked to the port. He hesitated and then punched the
button. There was no use testing the air. If it was poisonous he might
as well find it out now; the air regenerators in the ship would not
last long.
The heavy disc swung outward, slowly, with a slight squeal. The air
came in. It was warm, fresh with the odor of green, growing things. Sam
breathed deeply once and again. It was good air, life-giving air. He
let down the ladder and climbed down its tubular metal rungs. He stood
on the soil of this alien planet and filled his lungs once more as he
looked around.
The grass beneath his feet was short and springy, more like
well-cared-for lawn than wild meadow. Here and there flowers sprang up.
They seemed familiar, but he was no botanist. The trees nearby--weren’t
they elms? Overhead the sky was blue, the soft, mild blue of summer,
with small, drifting white clouds.
Sam felt strangely uneasy, as if he had walked into a room expecting
it to be unfamiliar and found he knew it almost by heart. Parallel
evolution? Nowhere had the explorations found anything so much like
Earth--or, rather, like Earth should look like. If so, then perhaps
there were--men. Sam longed for someone to talk to. Anyone. He
shrugged. He had been lucky so far; he should not press it.
He took out a pocket compass. The needle trembled and then swung into a
fixed position. There was his north, and the ocean lay to the east of
him, the river to the northeast and farther away. Sam struck out toward
the ocean.
There was something wrong. Sam sensed it and then knew it without
being able to pin it down. A moment later it came to him. It was so
quiet; there was no life, no sound except the lazy rustle of leaves
in the light breeze. _There should be birds_, he thought, _and bees_.
A few steps farther on he caught sight of both. _They must have been
frightened by the landing of the ship._
He had been walking among the trees for several minutes. It was easy
to keep moving steadily in the direction he had set for himself; the
trees were well spaced, and there was no brush or debris of dead leaves
and branches--only the crisp green turf beneath his feet. Fragmentary
thoughts skipped through his mind.
_No signs of inhabitants ... nothing artificial ... unless this
impossibly perfect turf ... or the trees_ ... Sam had the uneasy
feeling that something was watching him--perhaps with an emotion
stronger than curiosity. He walked on a few steps and spun around.
There was nothing but the trees and the turf and the birds and the
bees. Slowly his hand let the gun slide back into the holster at his
hip. _Nerves? But surely there should be some animal life._
Sam started. He had turned back toward the ocean, and scarcely
twenty-five feet away a half-grown fawn, spotted white and brown,
lifted its head from the turf it had been cropping daintily. He walked
toward it, and the fawn held its ground, looking at him without fear.
He put his hand on the fawn’s neck, and the fawn nestled toward him and
its coat was silky.
Wonderingly, Sam rubbed its neck and shoulders gently, and the fawn
looked at him with brown eyes, big and trustful. Sam gave it a final
pat and walked on. Behind him the fawn hesitated for a moment and then
started to trot along behind.
After a few minutes Sam reached the coast. It was as peaceful and
beautiful as a South Sea island. The trees stopped and a little farther
on the grass stopped and white sand stretched down to a gently foaming
surf and blue water. Sam stood looking at it for a long time, his hand
resting on the fawn’s head.
He sat down and took off his shoes. He walked through the warm sand to
the edge of the water. He knelt and put his hand into the surf. It was
just cool enough to be invigorating. Sam stood up abruptly and sprinted
through the surf down the gently shelving beach until the water was
deep enough to swim in. It was foolhardy. Even around South Sea islands
there are sharks. But somehow Sam couldn’t distrust this world. He swam
and floated in the water for half an hour. Finally he waded toward the
shore again. The fawn was curled up on the sand, sleeping peacefully in
the sun beside his pile of discarded clothing.
* * * * *
When Sam came out of the surf, dripping, the fawn awakened and slowly
got to its feet. The sun and breeze dried Sam’s body quickly, and he
began to put his clothing back on.
“Well, boy,” Sam said softly, “this is something, eh? All we need now
is another castaway. Maybe a beautiful blonde, huh?”
The fawn lifted its head and snuffled through velvet nostrils. Then it
turned its head toward the line of trees. Sam looked too. Out from the
trees came the beautiful blonde. And she was perfect. The light breeze
lifted her long ashen hair and pulled it back from the clean-cut lines
of her face. Her blue eyes were clear and friendly, and the corners of
her generous mouth were quirked up a little. The thin summer dress she
wore clung to the planes and curves of her body.
Sam stared and swallowed.
“Hello,” I said, as if we had met on an Earth beach which was countless
millions of parsecs away.
* * * * *
“He--hello,” Sam said, and swallowed again. “You speak English!”
I smiled. “I should. I came from Earth.”
“But how--” he stammered. “I can’t believe--it’s--”
“I started my Jump just outside the orbit of Mars exactly ten days
ago,” I said. “But the Jumper failed or something. I came out here and
landed. I’ve been here three days.”
“The same thing happened to me,” Sam said. “Then it couldn’t have been
mechanical failure--I’ve heard theorists talk about space warps....”
“We might as well introduce ourselves. My name is Louise.” I held out a
hand to him.
He took it. His hand was hot and strong. “Sam--Sam Newman. That was my
mother’s name.”
“Sam?” I asked. “Or Newman.”
“Newman--I mean Louise.”
I laughed. “I’m glad we’ve got that straightened out.”
“Last name?”
I shrugged. “What does it matter?”
“But your ship,” Sam said. “Where is it?”
“Back there.” I waved a hand toward the trees. “Miles. I thought of the
advantages of the ocean too late.”
“Any fuel?”
I shook my head. “That’s why I left. I thought I might find some
inhabitants here, if anywhere, so I started out. Then, today, I saw
your ship land.”
Sam’s jaw dropped. “You saw me land? But why--?”
“I wanted a little time to think, to make up my mind,” I said. “I’ve
been watching, trying to decide. If you had been some men I’ve seen--or
even some I’ve known--well, a planet is a pretty big place. And
loneliness is preferable to a lot of things.”
Sam shuddered. “God!” he said. “You might have--” The thought that he
had been on trial struck him with a sudden sickness. “You might have
decided to go away....”
“Would that have been a tragedy?” I made it light.
“Louise”--Sam’s voice was husky and low--“trite as it seems, you were
the answer to a prayer. Just before you stepped out from the trees, I
thought that just one thing was needed to make this paradise complete.
You.”
“But you didn’t know me,” I objected.
Sam’s voice was so soft I could scarcely hear it. “I’ve known you all
my life.”
I knew how he felt. I felt the same way. I knew what it was to
be alone, completely alone, waiting throughout eternity for one
personality to shatter your loneliness and bring life into an aching
void.
“You said you’d been watching me,” Sam said. “I thought I felt eyes on
me back there in the trees.”
I nodded, smiling. “I know. I thought you were going to shoot me.”
Sam’s jaw tightened and the muscles rippled. “The second shot would
have been for me.” He looked down at his feet. He noticed that his
feet were bare and his shirt was open. He closed the shirt hastily and
looked up at me. “You’ve been watching. Then you saw--” He turned red.
“That’s when I made up my mind,” I said, laughing. “I decided that no
man who loved swimming and animals could be altogether bad.”
Sam looked down. The fawn was rubbing against his leg, looking at
Louise. Sam knelt. “Louise,” he said, “this is Bambi. Bambi, this is
Louise.”
“Hello, Bambi,” I said.
Then, for a little while, we didn’t say anything. We stood there in
the silence and it wasn’t embarrassed but somehow thoughtful and
peaceful with the only sound the soft surf breaking against the silver
shore. For one person is all the loneliness there can ever be, but
two persons--a man and a woman--is loneliness shared, which isn’t
loneliness at all but a world, entire and complete.
Sam looked up finally. “No inhabitants?”
I shook my head. “Only us. We’re the inhabitants.”
Sam got to his feet and held out his hand to me. I took it and we
turned and walked to where the grass met the sand. We sat down and Sam
put on his shoes and we looked at the sea and the surf and the sky.
“We’re all alone,” I said. “Forever and ever.”
We talked and fell silent, but we never said anything more important
than that and the things we said were unimportant because we were both
thinking the same thing and we were both hoping it would be tender and
sweet and wonderful and lasting. And it was.
The sun went down and the stars came out and the night was just a
little cooler than the day but not uncomfortable. Neither of us thought
of food. When it got very dark we lay warm beside each other looking up
at the stars. Sam couldn’t recognize any of the constellations or any
of the stars.
“No one will ever find us.” He said it with a kind of joy, trying to
hide it from me that he was glad, as if he could ever hide anything
from me. He rolled over on his side to look at me. “Louise--were
you--married or anything?”
I shook my head. “Not married or anything.”
* * * * *
I put a finger over his lips. “It doesn’t matter,” I said softly.
“Nothing matters that happened before. I don’t want to know. We were
born again here, and all the past is gone--so far away that we could
never find it if we searched a million lifetimes. It never happened.
There’s just--us.”
He kissed me and there was no passion in it--only wonder and happiness.
“Louise--” His voice was almost lost in his throat. “I love you,
Louise.”
“I love you, Sam.”
But when he slept, the name he muttered was “Fran.”
In the morning life begins again. In the morning we walked back to his
ship. Food was no problem. Fruits and berries were plentiful--apples
and peaches and pears and plums and cherries--every day we discovered
something new but familiar. From the ship’s stores we got canned meats
and vegetables--we never saw any other animals than Bambi, although Sam
insisted that obviously there must be others. Bambi wandered in and out
of camp, but he was always there when Sam wanted him. Sam liked to play
with him, and Bambi enjoyed it.
The first day Sam built a shelter--a bower was what he called it--at
the edge of the clearing where the ship was, under the trees. I didn’t
want to sleep in the ship or even go inside it.
“That’s the past,” I told Sam. “It’s as dead and meaningless as a
monument. The sooner we forget what it is and what it stands for the
happier we’ll be.”
Sam agreed with me. The next time he went to the ship for food he
returned without his gun. He built the bower, and he took a long time
at it, lacing limbs together and thatching it with leaves to keep off
the occasional showers. He was good with his hands, and he liked to
keep busy.
That night he slept peacefully.
The second day we explored a little and looked over our supplies. We
had the ship’s stores and fruit was plentiful, but there was nothing
growing that would keep. Sam worried about it.
“If it gets colder we might be in for something,” he said. “We could
weather one winter in the ship, I suppose, but the next--”
I shook my head. “I don’t think it will get any colder. I think it will
always be like this.”
He talked about wobbles and ecliptics and temperate zones, but it
didn’t mean anything. The weather wasn’t changing, and it wasn’t going
to. I was sure of that.
He stirred a little in his sleep that night.
* * * * *
The morning of the third day we went to look for my ship. I tried to
talk Sam out of it, but I knew it wasn’t any use. There might be fuel
left, he said, maybe even enough to make an exploratory trip, and we
could use the supplies. Maybe we could even locate some inhabitants.
All that day we walked away from the ocean, and we saw nothing
new--nothing at all. Trees identical with those that grew around our
camp, spaced out on soft green turf. No animals. We walked slowly but
steadily, eating fruit picked on our way. Sam began to get restless.
Sometimes he would peer far ahead or swing around and stare back the
way we had come.
Toward evening we were walking up the side of a low hill. Suddenly Sam
stopped. He looked toward me, his eyes vague and thoughtful.
“You know,” he said, his voice low and tense-sounding in the quietness,
“I have a strange feeling that maybe we’ll come to a place where all
this ends, where it stops being and there’s nothing. Like maybe we’ll
climb to the top of this hill and we’ll look down and there won’t be
any trees and turf or anything. Like it’s being created before us,
rolled out like a green carpet, and just beyond where we can see, it’s
something else entirely, something unimaginable.”
“You and all the other horizon-chasing explorers.”
I smiled and a moment later he smiled and shook his head and took my
hand and we climbed to the top of the hill. As far as we could see
there were the same trees and turf.
We slept under the sky that night, and Sam muttered but it never turned
into words.
* * * * *
The next day we reached a point farther than the distance Sam estimated
I could have walked, and we searched in circles the rest of that day
and the next. In the middle of one I finally stopped and shook my head
bewilderedly.
“They all look the same,” I said. “I don’t know where I put it down.
Let’s give it up, Sam. It isn’t important now. Later we can map this
area with landmarks and things and search for it, but I want to get
back to our--home. Funny, isn’t it? We’ve only been here a week, and
already there’s a place I think of as home.”
Sam argued. He really wanted to search some more, but he finally gave
in. We started back.
* * * * *
At our camp, life fell into a regular pattern. We woke. We ate. We
swam in the impossibly blue sea by the silver sands. We fished. We
ate and talked. We made love. We slept. It should have been paradise,
and it was. But Sam was restless. He needed something to do, and here
there was nothing that needed doing. He began to talk about building a
sailboat, and he did work at it now and then, but he never seemed to
get very far with it. And in the night he had begun to moan and say one
name over and over again.
One evening we were sitting together after our meal. The sun was still
shining through the trees and I knew it was building up in him and
there was nothing I could do but hope.
“Fran,” he said, “I think we should search--” He stopped. _Fran_, he
thought. _What a stupid thing to say. What a horrible thing to say._
He glanced at me to see if I had noticed, and I sat there with the sun
on me, not moving, not looking at him, feeling his eyes. _And yet_, he
thought, _there is a resemblance. The dark hair, the mouth_ ... _The
dark hair!_ He cast his mind back and I saw myself in his mind as he
had seen me when I stepped forth from the trees with blue eyes and a
generous mouth and ash-blonde hair. And it was something I couldn’t
help because he wanted it so hard.
He moved away from me a little. His thoughts churned. _Dark hair!_ He
looked around him slowly and suddenly scrambled to his feet and ran to
the ship and climbed up the ladder. I knew what he had gone for and I
waited for him to come back and I hoped. Because there was nothing left
but hope.
When he came back he had his gun hanging at his hip again.
“Stand up,” he said harshly. He towered above me, his feet spread
apart, his face dark and angry.
I stood up. “What are you?” he said.
“I--”
“I’ll tell you what you aren’t. Human, for instance. You aren’t human!”
His mouth curled as if he had tasted something disgusting and horrible.
“No wonder we couldn’t find your ship. There wasn’t any ship. You
belong here. You’re a native. You can change. You can change the color
of your hair and the shape of your mouth. Maybe you can change more
than that. And I’ve been making love to you and I’ve been in love with
you and I didn’t know--What are you?”
His voice had been rising steadily. Now it cracked and broke in a
thousand brittle pieces.
“You,” he said. “The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. And maybe you
aren’t even female. Maybe they don’t have male and female here.”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “I’m female.”
He didn’t hear me.
“It’s all been a game--a horrible, deadly game. What’s real and what
isn’t? You aren’t. I know that. Where are the rest of your kind? What
kind of foul monster have I been making love to? _What are you?_”
His voice ended in a shriek. He pulled out his gun and whirled, peering
into the woods, pointing it here and there, the fat barrel trembling.
“Come out!” he sobbed. “Come out, damn you! Come out!”
“There’s only me,” I said quietly. “I’m whatever you want me to be.”
He didn’t hear me. He didn’t understand me. Nothing could penetrate
the thunder of blood pounding through his brain. But suddenly he swung
around to face me again, suddenly aware that his back had been exposed
to me.
“God!” he said. “God! And I thought this was paradise!”
He shook and the gun trembled and his finger tightened on the trigger.
I knew what was coming, and I shrank back with horror. The trees
trembled and the ground writhed.
“It was, Sam,” I whispered. “It was.”
“Change, damn you!” he shouted. “_Change! I want to see you as you
really are!_”
His thoughts--mad, violent, powerful--wrenched at me, twisted me,
tortured me. I changed. Hatred, terror, and horror were in his eyes as
he stared at me and thought he saw me, and I could not tell him that
he saw only what he had willed to see. I could not tell him that I did
only what he willed me to do.
“God.” He whispered. “God.”
I came toward him, my clawed hands outstretched. His finger tightened
convulsively on the trigger. A wave of heat crisped my body, but it was
nothing to the pain in my mind. He could not stop me, of course. He
could not stop me with his gun, and it was too late for anything else.
I was close to him now, and my hands were reaching for his throat and
squeezing, squeezing....
The last thing he ever heard--I know he heard it--was a low whisper
that might only have been the wind sighing through the trees.
“I love you, Sam.”
He was dead. He was gone. And now that he was gone the reality that
had been created for him--that he had created out of his desires--went
back to another reality, no more real and perhaps not as much. With the
fulfillment of his desire the trees melted back into the ground and the
turf was no longer grass and I drew back into myself too the part of me
Sam had called Louise and there was nothing but unending stretches of
flat, featureless plain which from a great distance looked green.
One thing remained. Not far from where the blue sea lapped the edges
of the plain stood a tall, slim spire, like a monument. Nearby was a
mound, at one end of it a small, flat slab of stone. On the stone were
three words:
SAM NEWMAN
_Killer_
Transcriber’s note:
This etext was produced from Rocket Stories, September 1953 (Vol. 1,
No. 3). Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.
Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but
minor inconsistencies have been retained as printed.
The illustration has been moved to better fit the eBook format.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
public domain.
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