Citizen in Spase. Stories / Гражданин в Космосе. Рассказы. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Goodman had no intention of being realistic. He immediately repaired to Eddie’s Moonlight Bar, where, between drinks, he began to contemplate the attractions of a grass shack in the green hell of Venus.

An erect, hawk-faced old man entered the bar. Goodman could tell he was a spacer by his gravity-bound gait, his pallor, his radiation scars and his far-piercing gray eyes.

“A Tranai Special, Sam,” the old spacer told the bartender.

“Coming right up, Captain Savage, sir,” the bartender said.

“Tranai?” Goodman murmured involuntarily.

“Tranai,” the captain said. “Never heard of it, did you, sonny?”

“No, sir,” Goodman confessed.

“Well, sonny,” Captain Savage said, “I’m feeling a mite wordy tonight, so I’ll tell you a tale of Tranai the Blessed, out past the Galactic Whirl.”

The captain’s eyes grew misty and a smile softened the grim line of his lips.

“We were iron men in steel ships in those days. Me and Johnny Cavanaugh and Frog Larsen would have blasted to hell itself for half a load of terganium. Aye, and shanghaied Beelzebub[29] for a wiper if we were short of men. Those were the days when space scurvey took every third man, and the ghost of Big Dan McClintock haunted the spaceways. Moll Gann still operated the Red Rooster Inn out on Asteroid 342-AA, asking five hundred Earth dollars for a glass of beer, and getting it too, there being no other place within ten billion miles. In those days, the Scarbies were still cutting up along Star Ridge and ships bound for Prodengum had to run the Swayback Gantlet. So you can imagine how I felt, sonny, when one fine day I came upon Tranai.”

Goodman listened as the old captain limned a picture of the great days, of frail ships against an iron sky, ships outward bound, forever outward, to the far limits of the Galaxy.

And there, at the edge of the Great Nothing, was Tranai.

Tranai, where The Way had been found and men were no longer bound to The Wheel! Tranai the Bountiful, a peaceful, creative, happy society, not saints or ascetics, not intellectuals, but ordinary people who had achieved Utopia.

For an hour, Captain Savage spoke of the multiform marvels of Tranai. After finishing his story, he complained of a dry throat. Space throat, he called it, and Goodman ordered him another Tranai Special and one for himself. Sipping the exotic, green-gray mixture, Goodman too was lost in the dream.

Finally, very gently, he asked, “Why don’t you go back, Captain?”

The old man shook his head. “Space gout. I’m grounded for good. We didn’t know much about modern medicine in those days. All I’m good for now is a landsman’s job.”

“What job do you have?”

“I’m a foreman for the Seakirk Construction Corporation,” the old man sighed. “Me, that once commanded a fifty-tube clipper. The way those people make concrete. …Shall we have another short one in honor of beautiful Tranai?”

They had several short ones. When Goodman left the bar, his mind was made up. Somewhere in the Universe, the modus vivendi[30] had been found, the working solution to Man’s old dream of perfection.

He could settle for nothing less.

The next day, he quit his job as designer at the East Coast Robot Works and drew his life savings out of the bank.

He was going to Tranai.

He boarded the Constellation Queen for Legis II and took the Galactic Splendor to Oume. After stopping at Machang, Inchang, Pankang, Lekung and Oyster – dreary little places – he reached Tung-Bradar IV. Without incident, he passed the Galactic Whirl and finally reached Bellismoranti, where the influence of Terra ended.

For an exorbitant fee, a local spaceline took him to Dvasta II. From there, a freighter transported him past Seves, Olgo and Mi, to the double planet Mvanti. There he was bogged down for three months and used the time to take a hypnopedic course in the Tranaian language. At last he hired a bush pilot to take him to Ding.

On Ding, he was arrested as a Higastomeritreian spy, but managed to escape in the cargo of an ore rocket bound for G’moree. At G’moree, he was treated for frostbite, heat poisoning and superficial radiation burns, and at last arranged passage to Tranai.

He could hardly believe it when the ship slipped past the moons Doe and Ri, to land at Port Tranai.

* * *

After the airlocks opened, Goodman found himself in a state of profound depression. Part of it was plain letdown, inevitable after a journey such as his. But more than that, he was suddenly terrified that Tranai might turn out to be a fraud.

He had crossed the Galaxy on the basis of an old spaceman’s yarn. But now it all seemed less likely. Eldorado was a more probable place than the Tranai he expected to find.

He disembarked. Port Tranai seemed a pleasant enough town. The streets were filled with people and the shops were piled high with goods. The men he passed looked much like humans anywhere. The women were quite attractive.

But there was something strange here, something subtly yet definitely wrong, something alien. It took a moment before he could puzzle it out.