Galactic Dreams

“Those two conversations you had over the emergency phone were, of course, taped and the playback concealed in the ship so there would be no time lag. Psych scripted them on-the basis of fitting any need and apparently they worked. The second one was supposed to be the final touch of realism, in case you should start being doubtful. Then we used a variation of deep freeze that suspends about ninety-nine per cent of the body processes; it hasn’t been revealed or published yet. This along with anticoagulents in the razor cut on Tony’s chin covered the fact that so much time had passed.”

“What about the ship?”

Hal asked. “We saw it — and it was only half-completed.”

“Dummy,” the colonel said. “Put there for the public’s benefit and all foreign intelligence services. Real one had been finished and tested weeks earlier. Getting the crew was the difficult part. What I said about no team finishing a practise exercise was true. You two men had the best records and were our best bets.

“We’ll never have to do it this way again, though. Psych says that the next crews won’t have that trouble; they’ll be reinforced by the psychological fact that someone else was there before them. They won’t be facing the complete unknown.”

The colonel sat chewing his lip for a moment, then forced out the words he had been trying to say since Tony and Hal had regained consciousness.

“I want you to understand … both of you … that I would rather have gone myself than pull that kind of thing on you. I know how you must feel. Like we pulled some kind of a ….”

“Interplanetary practical joke,” Tony said. He didn’t smile when he said it.

“Yes, something like that,” the colonel rushed on. “I guess it was a lousy trick — but don’t you see, we had to? You two were the only ones left, every other man had washed out. It had to be you two, and we had to do it the safest way.

“And only myself and three other men know what was done; what really happened on the trip. No one else will ever know about it, I can guarantee you that.”

Hal’s voice was quiet, but cut through the room like a sharp knife.

“You can be sure Colonel, that we won’t be telling anybody about it.”

When Colonel Stegham left, he kept his head down because he couldn’t bring himself to see the look in the eyes of the first two explorers of Mars.

AT LAST, THE TRUE STORY OF FRANKENSTEIN

And here, before your very eyes, is the very same monster built by my much admired great-great grandfather, Victor Frankenstein, built by him from pieces of corpses out of the dissecting rooms, stolen parts of bodies freshly buried in the grave, and even chunks of animals from the slaughterhouse. Now look!”

The tailcoated man on the platform swung his arm out in a theatrical gesture and the heads of the close-packed crowd below swung to follow it. The dusty curtains flapped aside and the monster stood there, illuminated from above by a sickly green light.

There was a concerted gasp from the crowd and a shiver of motion.

In the front row, pressed against the rope barrier, Dan Bream mopped his face with a soggy handkerchief and smiled. It wasn’t such a bad monster, considering that this was a cheapjack carnival playing the small town southern circuit. It had a dead white skin, undampened by sweat even in this steam bath of a tent, glazed eyes, stitches and seams showing where the face had been patched together. Plus the two metal plugs projecting from the temples just like in the movie.

“Raise your right arm!”

Victor Frankenstein the fifth commanded, his brusque German accent giving the words a Prussian air of authority. The monster’s body did not move but slowly-with the jerking motion of a badly operating machine — the creature’s arm came up to shoulder height and stopped.

“This monster, built from pieces from the dead, cannot die, and if a piece gets too worn out I simply stitch on a new shtick with the secret formula passed down from father to son from my great-great grandfather. It cannot die nor feel pain, as you can see.”

This time the gasp was even louder and some of the audience turned away while others watched with eager eyes. The barker had produced a foot long and wickedly sharp needle-which he then pushed firmly through the monster’s biceps until it protruded on both sides. No blood stained it and the creature made no motion, as though completely unaware that anything had been done to its flesh.

“… impervious to pain, extremes of heat and cold, possessing the strength often men ….”