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-      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?, by Kenneth O'Hara
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-<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30086 ***</div>
-
-<div class="figl"><img src="images/001.png" width="178" height="550" alt="" title="" /></div>
-
-<div class="hd1"><p><big><i>The body tanks had to be replenished and the ship had to
-be serviced&mdash;and the crew was having a Lotus dream in its
-bed of protoplasm. But Kelly knew how to arouse them....</i></big></p></div>
-
-<h1><i><span class="sp1">Has Anybody<br />
-Here Seen<br />
-Kelly?</span></i></h1>
-
-<h2>By Kenneth O'Hara</h2>
-
-<p class="hd1">Illustrated by Paul Orban</p>
-
-<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">The Crew</span> pulsed with contentment,
-and its communal
-singing brought a pleasant kind of
-glow that throbbed gently in the
-control room.</p>
-
-<p>"'Has anybody here seen Kelly ... K-E-double-L-Y?'"</p>
-
-<p>"Shut up and dig my thought!"
-Kelly's stubborn will insisted. "I'm
-going on out for a while!"</p>
-
-<p>The delicate loom of the Crew's
-light pattern increased its frequency
-a little and the song stopped. "Better
-not," the Crew said.</p>
-
-<p>"But why not?"</p>
-
-<p>"No need."</p>
-
-<p>"We could be running into something
-bad," Kelly thought.</p>
-
-<p>"No danger now, Kelly. Checking
-the ship is just a waste of time."</p>
-
-<p>"How can you waste what you
-have so damn much of?" Kelly
-thought.</p>
-
-<p>"Do not leave us again, Kelly.
-We love you and you are the most
-interesting part of the Crew when
-you're with it."</p>
-
-<p>"The ship ought to be checked.
-Our bodies ought to be looked at."</p>
-
-<p>"We know there is no danger
-any more, Kelly. Do not go. There
-are so many interesting experiences
-we have not even begun to share
-yet. We are only half way through
-your life and we have not even
-started to experience your impressions
-of your colorful and complex
-Earth culture. And we have not
-even started on the adult lives of
-Lakrit or Lljub. Come back with
-your Crew, Kelly."</p>
-
-<p>"But no one's checked the ship
-for over a year!"</p>
-
-<p>"Please do not worry about the
-ship, Kelly. In fifty years nothing
-has gone wrong. We can trust the
-ship thoroughly now, it will take
-care of us."</p>
-
-<p>"<i>It</i> will take care of <i>us</i>! That's
-a helluva way to look at it!"</p>
-
-<p>"There can be no danger now,
-Kelly. In fifty years we have encountered
-every conceivable danger,
-every imaginable kind of world
-or possible menace."</p>
-
-<p>"Have we?" Kelly thought.
-"Every danger from outside maybe,
-and I'm not even sure of that. But
-how about danger from inside?"</p>
-
-<p>"Inside?"</p>
-
-<p>"Us. How about apathy for instance?
-Apathy's a real danger. You
-talk about this space-can like it was
-a big metal mother! Listen, I'm
-supposed to see that this tub holds
-together. At least until we get back
-somewhere near enough to the
-Solar system so we'll feel we've
-been somewhere else!"</p>
-
-<p>"But, Kelly&mdash;"</p>
-
-<p>"I'm getting out for a while, I
-tell you!"</p>
-
-<p>"All right," the Crew sighed. The
-light loom faded a bit, down to a
-self-indulgent glow. "Hurry back to
-us, Kelly."</p>
-
-<p>"I'll give some thought to it."</p>
-
-<p>So Kelly concentrated on the increasingly
-painful and difficult task
-of tearing his consciousness free of
-the big glob of protoplasm in the
-tank, and getting it back into his
-body that hibernated in the bunkroom.</p>
-
-<p>As usual the switch was too painful.
-It stretched and stretched and
-finally snapped in an all too familiar
-explosion of shocking light.</p>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">His bones</span> creaked. His skin
-rustled as he sat up and
-looked around. There was the old
-feeling that there was dust over
-everything when there was no dust.
-There was all that emptiness sweeping
-away into the endless silence
-and he thought again, as he always
-did, how comforting and cozy it
-was being a part of the Crew.</p>
-
-<p>But someone had to check the
-ship. It was only machinery after
-all, and machinery could wear out,
-sooner or later. And he wasn't at
-all sure, as he kept insisting, that
-they had encountered all the possible
-dangers.</p>
-
-<p>It might seem that in fifty years
-you could run into everything. But
-fifty years was no time at all out
-here where time had no real meaning
-any more.</p>
-
-<p>His body squeaked as he took a
-few tentative steps about the bunkroom.
-One did not actually forget
-how to walk. It was just awkward
-as the devil. And the blood, the entire
-autonomic system, tended to
-slow down. It seemed reluctant to
-step up general metabolism.</p>
-
-<p>Apathy. Sure it was a danger.
-This time, Kelly decided, I'll do
-something about it. He was the engineer
-and he had signed on the
-great odyssey to keep the ship going.
-But the Crew was part of the
-ship. Was not there an obligation
-even greater to keep the Crew going?</p>
-
-<p>The four others lived but almost
-imperceptibly in some very low
-state of slowed metabolism there in
-the bunkroom and Kelly looked at
-them. The faithful and the wonderful
-ones. The ones with whom he
-had shared so many dangers and
-awful silences that the five of them
-had been able to evolve the idea of
-the protoplasm in the tank and
-merge their consciousness in it.</p>
-
-<p>Kew, the Venusian, in her bowl
-of self-renewing nitrate. Lakrit from
-a Jovian satellite, a fluorine fellow
-of distinction inside a sphere of
-gaseous sulphur. A crystalline character
-with a sense of humor named
-Lljub, whose form gave off a paled
-glint as it nourished itself on silicates.
-And a highly intelligent but
-humble six-foot-long sponge labeled
-Urdaz stuck in a foundation of
-chemical sediment at the bottom of
-a tank of reprocessing salt water.</p>
-
-<p>Each with their own special kind
-of appendages and sensitivities,
-each able to move his special closed-system
-about through the ship by
-means of clever types of mobility.</p>
-
-<p>But basically, in outward form,
-they were too alien to have much
-in common. Only as intelligences,
-as life forces, could they share a
-common bed. And it had evolved
-to that in fifty years. A bed of protoplasm
-in a shock-absorbent tank.</p>
-
-<p>Kelly looked at them warmly and
-thought about how it had worked
-out. The strange thing was that it
-did have a lot of good things to
-recommend it. Or had had them.
-It had solved the problem of intimate
-communication and driven
-back the tides of loneliness. It had
-lessened the dangers of mental and
-physical illnesses in the material
-bodies and assured a prolongation
-of the life of each body, which was
-important in itself, for this trip had
-proven to be a lot longer than
-even the most pessimistic had anticipated.</p>
-
-<p>The Crew, pulsing in its tank,
-Kelly thought oddly, is a new life
-form. One that had evolved to meet
-the exigencies of deep space which
-had proven to be alien to any
-adaptability common to any world
-that rotated through it.</p>
-
-<p>But maybe they were too damn
-happy, Kelly thought. Too contented.
-If they ran into a real
-emergency now, the ship would be
-finished. The Crew in the tank
-was, itself, incapable of action of
-any overt kind. It could not manipulate
-anything. It could only be
-happy.</p>
-
-<p>And the bodies here in the bunkroom
-could not rally fast enough
-to meet a sudden crisis.</p>
-
-<p>And they had agreed that the
-first law was survival.</p>
-
-<p>But to survive this way might
-well mean destruction in another.</p>
-
-<p>So Kelly walked and thought
-about it, and weighed the precarious
-balance.</p>
-
-<p>He slipped through the silent
-ship and to the control room. He
-peered into the viewscope. Some
-galaxy or other spun its giant pinwheel
-outward toward some destiny
-of its own. The high noon of the
-endlessness had been unfamiliar for
-years. He checked the ship's instruments.
-The Crew in the big tank
-simmered and throbbed in its introspective
-bliss, utterly oblivious to
-Kelly now.</p>
-
-<p>Kelly saw the red dwarf a few
-hundred million kilos away. Three
-planets ground their familiar path
-around it. The second in distance
-had a breathable oxygen, according
-to the scopes, but little else to
-recommend it.</p>
-
-<p>Kelly straightened up. He had no
-idea when the plan had really
-started forming, but now it was
-formed. When Kelly made up his
-mind to a thing, there was no other
-course but to conclude it. He knew
-what he had to do.</p>
-
-<p>Somehow, even as part of the
-Crew, some part of Kelly had been
-able to keep that forming plan a
-secret. Which was a lucky miracle,
-for if the Crew had known his intentions
-it would certainly not have
-let him out this time.</p>
-
-<p>Even if you wanted out, Kelly
-reasoned, the Crew would keep you
-in. And maybe after long enough
-you did not care to get out. But
-once out, he wondered, could it
-keep you out if it decided to blackball
-a man for one reason or another?</p>
-
-<p>Like wrecking the ship?</p>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">In the chrome</span> strip above
-the control panel, Kelly saw his
-face grinning strangely back at him,
-a bearded, hollowed, paled face
-with an unfamiliar glitter in the
-eyes. Every time he had left the
-Crew to enter and reactivate his
-own body, that body had seemed a
-little less familiar. This time it
-seemed to be almost entirely someone
-else.</p>
-
-<p>He stared at the face in the
-chrome, then whispered the hell
-with that and he flipped the controls
-over to manual. He sat down.
-Behind him, the Crew whispered in
-its tank, protoplasm developed in
-the labs and quivering now with
-some unified sensation that was
-purely subjective and blissfully unconcerned
-with what happened outside
-itself.</p>
-
-<p>"It's sick," Kelly concluded, with
-an emphatic clamp of his jaws.
-"It's not right!"</p>
-
-<p>True, sharing the intimate sensations
-of alien life forms like Kew,
-the female Venusian, had been exciting.
-Especially the sex experiences
-which, in a flower of Kew's
-type, was certainly something.
-There were interesting things to
-being a part of the Crew all right.
-But the main purpose, survival, had
-been forgotten. Now being the Crew
-was an end in itself. Kelly could
-imagine the Crew business going on
-and on until finally even the material
-bodies in the bunkroom would
-be forgotten entirely and allowed to
-rot away to dust about which the
-Crew would no longer care.</p>
-
-<p>And that was very bad. It should
-not have worked out this way. But
-it was not too late to do something,
-shake them out of the Lotus
-dream.</p>
-
-<p>He checked the scopes again.
-Now the second planet revealed
-plenty of breathable atmosphere
-settled in the lower valleys. He
-headed straight for it.</p>
-
-<p>The Crew was soon going to get
-one devil of a jolt!</p>
-
-<p>He put the ship into a close orbit
-around the planet. It seemed nothing
-but a fearsome forest of oxydized
-spikes rising in corrosive silence,
-with here and there a lean
-slash of valley. There was no indication
-of life, no vegetation visible
-or revealed by the scopes. One of
-the valleys had a thin mouth of
-water stretching down the length
-of its face. Kelly set the speed and
-the controls and ran for the bunkroom
-and the shock-absorbent
-cushions. He strapped himself in
-and waited.</p>
-
-<p>It was done. As long as the thing
-had gone so far, Kelly decided, the
-truth should never be revealed because
-that would lessen the therapeutic
-value of his action. He would
-wreck the ship. Not too badly. Not
-so badly that all of the bodies, distinct,
-separate individual bodies
-again, couldn't put the ship back
-together, as in the old days. And
-that would keep them in their
-bodies gladly for a while where they
-belonged! Where the good Lord
-had intended for them to stay.</p>
-
-<p>They would not be rocked away
-to apathy in a phony metal mother
-womb, thinking the ship was going
-to take care of <i>them</i>!</p>
-
-<p>The more Kelly thought about it,
-the better he felt. He stretched inside
-the straps. He felt his slightly
-atrophied muscles luxuriate over
-the tissues and bones of his big
-frame.</p>
-
-<p>Any body, no matter what its
-shape, should be proud of itself.
-That was Kelly's belief, and this
-thing that had happened seemed
-somewhat blasphemous. Without
-bodies and their complex sensory
-recording apparatus, the rich consciousness
-enjoyed by the Crew
-could not exist, would never have
-been created at all. The Crew was
-living off the largesse of experience
-built up by their bodies. The Crew
-was just narcotized enough that it
-did not realize that the body banks
-had to be replenished.</p>
-
-<p>Metal shrieked.</p>
-
-<p>Kelly yelled feebly. He fought,
-he grappled with the threatening
-blackout like a man fighting an invisible
-opponent on an endless
-flight of stairs.</p>
-
-<p>The grinding rolling terror of the
-sound, the ripping, twisting, tearing
-scream of it cried on and on. Kelly
-knew one thing then.</p>
-
-<p>He had not figured it right. His
-calculations were off. <i>The ship had
-hit too damn hard.</i></p>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Later</span>, when he managed to get
-the straps off and tried to move,
-he fell painfully onto the tilted
-deck. One of his eyes felt sticky.
-He rubbed at it and his hand was
-smeared with blood.</p>
-
-<p>He shuffled around in a stumbling
-circle. Minor damages could
-have been repaired. But this&mdash;the
-ship was peeled open in glaring
-strips like a breakfast cannister. A
-cold wind moaned through the ship
-that was now nothing but a metal
-sieve. A hazy light filtered down
-and ran off the metal like cold flour
-rust.</p>
-
-<p>Kelly fell to his knees. "Kew," he
-whispered. "Lljub, Urdaz&mdash;Lakrit...."</p>
-
-<p>The Venusian flower lady was
-sliced down the middle like a cabbage,
-and the nitrate bowl was
-shattered and Kew was dead in a
-pool of fading green blood.</p>
-
-<p>Smashed into the bulkhead was
-Lakrit's sulphuric bathtub, and his
-atmosphere had already filtered
-away with the wind to wherever it
-was going. Lljub's pale glow was
-out for good, and his crystalline
-heart was as opaque as a dead eye.
-Only a few pieces of Urdaz's tank
-were visible, and Urdaz himself had
-already turned to a powdery food
-that the wind ate slowly in long
-trailing streamers.</p>
-
-<p>"What&mdash;what in the name of
-God have I done?" Kelly whispered.</p>
-
-<p>All dead&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>No! He slammed at the bulkhead
-until the warped metal gave
-and he ran to the control room.
-The Crew&mdash;the Crew&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>He stared at the tank.</p>
-
-<p>Through a jagged opening in the
-ship's walls, the wind whined and
-plucked at Kelly's red hair. The
-wind was colder now. He kept on
-looking at the tank. He reached out
-and touched the big transparent
-curve of it and then jerked his hand
-back with a whimper in his breath.</p>
-
-<p>There was nothing in the tank,
-nothing but a blob of slowly drying
-slime. He pressed his nose to the
-tank. "Crew&mdash;" he whispered.</p>
-
-<p>There was no life in the slime.
-When he pounded on the tank, the
-stuff collapsed in upon itself in
-withering flatness.</p>
-
-<p>Kelly yelled. The cold wind
-froze at his teeth. It sucked at his
-breath and dried at the interior of
-his mouth. He ran and climbed.
-The jagged periphery of the opening
-sliced at his flesh. But he did
-not feel it, and he fell twenty feet,
-without feeling that either, down
-the side of the ship. He started
-crawling over the hard naked belly
-of the rock.</p>
-
-<p>He got to his feet. He ran stumbling
-down an incline of shale worn
-round and shiny by the wind that
-had blown here just as it blew now,
-and would blow for God alone
-possibly knew how long. He fell
-and rolled to the edge of the water.</p>
-
-<p>He looked into it. He felt of it.
-He jerked his hand away. The stuff
-was icy. But it was worse than icy.
-It was dead. It was dead water. It
-was without any bottom, and without
-any life in it anywhere. You
-could tell by looking into it. The
-wind moved over the top of it as
-though the water were glass, and
-the water was the color of a slightly
-transparent naked blue steel.</p>
-
-<p>There was no life here. Maybe
-there had been once, who knew
-when, who could guess how long
-ago. But there was none now and
-even the water had forgotten it.</p>
-
-<p>Kelly cried out as he stood up.
-"What have I done?" He raised
-his arms at the hazy red sun lying
-over the spires of towering stone
-and metal like a bloated balloon
-scraping precariously over rusty
-spikes. "God, what have I done?"</p>
-
-<p>The cry echoed tinnily on the
-rocks and fled on the wind.</p>
-
-<p>Kelly ran for a long way, falling
-and stumbling and getting up
-again. Kelly had always had one
-primary drive, and that was to keep
-going, no matter what. So now he
-tried to keep going.</p>
-
-<p>But there was no life on this
-planet. He had known that before.
-Some strange kinds of intelligence
-could tolerate some unpleasant
-worlds. But nothing would live
-here.</p>
-
-<p>Nothing <i>could</i> live here.</p>
-
-<p>"That's your fate," Kelly thought.
-He sat down and stared at the walls
-of rock and metal all around. "Your
-fate, Kelly. Your punishment, your
-well deserved hell."</p>
-
-<p>That was what it was. Retribution.
-And knowing that, he tried
-not to care. He tried to be glad and
-face what he deserved.</p>
-
-<p>If that were not the answer, then
-why had only Kelly been spared to
-face emptiness and silence and no
-life, all alone?</p>
-
-<p>The irony of it was that he would
-go on as long as possible keeping
-himself alive in his own hell. There
-was food aplenty in the ship,
-enough to last as long as hell cared
-to have him.</p>
-
-<p>He turned and started walking
-back toward the ship that seemed
-some five miles away. At that instant,
-the ship disappeared in an
-abrupt explosion that twisted the
-rocks, and a mushroom cloud flowered
-gently above the lake as Kelly
-fell trembling on his belly and
-hugged the ground and pushed his
-face into the shale, while the wind
-tore and screamed around him and
-particles of flint ripped his clothes
-and slashed at his flesh.</p>
-
-<hr />
-
-<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">He did not</span> bother walking
-much farther toward where
-the ship had been. There was only
-a crater there now which would
-offer him nothing in the way of sustaining
-his very personal and thoroughly
-private hell.</p>
-
-<p>He walked. The effort became
-more difficult and finally he was on
-his hands and knees, crawling. The
-wind sucked at his ripped clothes,
-and felt like cold sharp steel in his
-raw wounds. But slowly and deliberately
-he continued to crawl.</p>
-
-<p>Kelly had always had the idea
-that a man should keep going and
-so now he kept on going. Even if
-there was no place to go, and you
-could not remember particularly
-where you had been, you kept on
-moving and fighting and slugging
-along until you could no longer
-move.</p>
-
-<p>He lay there looking up at the
-hazy rust of the sky with the naked
-spires pointing up into it for no
-reason at all, because there was
-nothing up there.</p>
-
-<p>He had been there and he knew.
-Nothing up there but space, black
-and without a beginning or end. He
-had not even checked the records
-of the ship so that now, lying here,
-he did not even know how far away
-from Earth he was. At the speed
-they had traveled, a ship went a
-long way in fifty years. But the ship,
-the records, everything was lost.</p>
-
-<p>And no one would ever know
-now how far they had come.</p>
-
-<p>Or gone. What was the difference,
-anyway?</p>
-
-<p>But Kelly had no difficulty in remembering
-<i>why</i> they had come.</p>
-
-<p>They had come into space because
-that was how it was with
-those who fought their way up to
-being the dominate life form of
-whatever world they had lived on
-and grown and died on. If you
-were the kind who went into space,
-you went because space was there.</p>
-
-<p>Who needed a better reason than
-that?</p>
-
-<p>"Kew," he whispered. "Lakrit,
-Lljub, Urdaz, listen now&mdash;I thought
-I was doing the right thing&mdash;maybe
-my idea was right&mdash;but I just made
-a mistake in the calculations. I just
-made a helluva mistake&mdash;"</p>
-
-<p>The wind sighed over the naked
-rock and the rusted metal and the
-rock and the dead blue water.</p>
-
-<p>He turned and pushed his head
-against the rock, and his body
-curled up against the bitter wind.
-"You've got to forgive me," he
-said.</p>
-
-<p>"'<i>Has anybody here seen Kelly?
-K-E-double-L-Y?</i>'"</p>
-
-<p>He shivered and kept his eyes
-closed. It was part of the wind. He
-did not want to go out that way,
-hearing crazy voices in the wind.</p>
-
-<p>"'Has anybody here seen
-Kelly&mdash;?'"</p>
-
-<p>He raised his head and blinked
-and the wind drove tears down his
-cheeks.</p>
-
-<p>"Am I just hearing something
-that's going crazy inside my head?"
-He peered around. There was nothing,
-nothing anywhere of course,
-nothing where nothing had ever
-been, and nothing else but nothing
-could ever be.</p>
-
-<p>"You're wrong, Kelly. Your
-Crew's here."</p>
-
-<p>Kelly raised himself painfully to
-an elbow. "Where&mdash;<i>where</i>?"</p>
-
-<p>"Right here, Kelly. We had a
-difficult time locating you. Sure, we
-forgive you. You were trying to do
-what was right. We know that."</p>
-
-<p>"There's nothing&mdash;nothing&mdash;"
-Kelly said.</p>
-
-<p>"You're wrong. The Crew's here
-and we're waiting."</p>
-
-<p>He stared at the rock. He put his
-face against it and pushed his
-hands to it. There was a kind of
-dull glow in it, a faint hint of
-warmth in the rock.</p>
-
-<p>"How can this be?" Kelly said.</p>
-
-<p>"This is the life here, Kelly. Perhaps
-there is life everywhere in the
-most impossible seeming places.
-And where life is, Kelly, we can
-live with it and be welcomed by it.
-Here, this rock is life, and it has
-taken us in. It has been here a long
-time. And it will be here for a much
-longer time."</p>
-
-<p>"Rock," Kelly said.</p>
-
-<p>"But hurry and come back."</p>
-
-<p>"But no one will ever know.
-How long&mdash;how long can we wait?"</p>
-
-<p>"Who can answer that, Kelly?
-But maybe they will find the Crew
-someday."</p>
-
-<p>Kelly looked up once at the completely
-unfamiliar distances growing
-darker. Sometime, he thought,
-they'll come from wherever Earth
-is and find the Crew of the ship,
-find a rock here waiting the ages
-out.</p>
-
-<p>"Hurry, Kelly!"</p>
-
-<p>His head dropped against the
-rock. His hands slid down it, and a
-smile moved over his lips and froze
-there as the wind whispered over it.</p>
-
-<p class="rgt"><b>&middot;&middot;&middot; THE END</b></p>
-
-<div class="trn"><div class="figt"><a href="images/002-2.jpg"><img src="images/002-1.jpg" width="136" height="200" alt="" title="" /></a></div>
-
-<p><big><b>Transcriber's Note:</b></big></p>
-
-<p>This etext was produced from <i>If Worlds of Science Fiction</i> July 1954.
-Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
-copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
-typographical errors have been corrected without note.</p></div>
-
-<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30086 ***</div>
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30086 ***</div>
+
+<div class="figl"><img src="images/001.png" width="178" height="550" alt="" title="" /></div>
+
+<div class="hd1"><p><big><i>The body tanks had to be replenished and the ship had to
+be serviced&mdash;and the crew was having a Lotus dream in its
+bed of protoplasm. But Kelly knew how to arouse them....</i></big></p></div>
+
+<h1><i><span class="sp1">Has Anybody<br />
+Here Seen<br />
+Kelly?</span></i></h1>
+
+<h2>By Kenneth O'Hara</h2>
+
+<p class="hd1">Illustrated by Paul Orban</p>
+
+<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">The Crew</span> pulsed with contentment,
+and its communal
+singing brought a pleasant kind of
+glow that throbbed gently in the
+control room.</p>
+
+<p>"'Has anybody here seen Kelly ... K-E-double-L-Y?'"</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up and dig my thought!"
+Kelly's stubborn will insisted. "I'm
+going on out for a while!"</p>
+
+<p>The delicate loom of the Crew's
+light pattern increased its frequency
+a little and the song stopped. "Better
+not," the Crew said.</p>
+
+<p>"But why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"No need."</p>
+
+<p>"We could be running into something
+bad," Kelly thought.</p>
+
+<p>"No danger now, Kelly. Checking
+the ship is just a waste of time."</p>
+
+<p>"How can you waste what you
+have so damn much of?" Kelly
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not leave us again, Kelly.
+We love you and you are the most
+interesting part of the Crew when
+you're with it."</p>
+
+<p>"The ship ought to be checked.
+Our bodies ought to be looked at."</p>
+
+<p>"We know there is no danger
+any more, Kelly. Do not go. There
+are so many interesting experiences
+we have not even begun to share
+yet. We are only half way through
+your life and we have not even
+started to experience your impressions
+of your colorful and complex
+Earth culture. And we have not
+even started on the adult lives of
+Lakrit or Lljub. Come back with
+your Crew, Kelly."</p>
+
+<p>"But no one's checked the ship
+for over a year!"</p>
+
+<p>"Please do not worry about the
+ship, Kelly. In fifty years nothing
+has gone wrong. We can trust the
+ship thoroughly now, it will take
+care of us."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>It</i> will take care of <i>us</i>! That's
+a helluva way to look at it!"</p>
+
+<p>"There can be no danger now,
+Kelly. In fifty years we have encountered
+every conceivable danger,
+every imaginable kind of world
+or possible menace."</p>
+
+<p>"Have we?" Kelly thought.
+"Every danger from outside maybe,
+and I'm not even sure of that. But
+how about danger from inside?"</p>
+
+<p>"Inside?"</p>
+
+<p>"Us. How about apathy for instance?
+Apathy's a real danger. You
+talk about this space-can like it was
+a big metal mother! Listen, I'm
+supposed to see that this tub holds
+together. At least until we get back
+somewhere near enough to the
+Solar system so we'll feel we've
+been somewhere else!"</p>
+
+<p>"But, Kelly&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm getting out for a while, I
+tell you!"</p>
+
+<p>"All right," the Crew sighed. The
+light loom faded a bit, down to a
+self-indulgent glow. "Hurry back to
+us, Kelly."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll give some thought to it."</p>
+
+<p>So Kelly concentrated on the increasingly
+painful and difficult task
+of tearing his consciousness free of
+the big glob of protoplasm in the
+tank, and getting it back into his
+body that hibernated in the bunkroom.</p>
+
+<p>As usual the switch was too painful.
+It stretched and stretched and
+finally snapped in an all too familiar
+explosion of shocking light.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">His bones</span> creaked. His skin
+rustled as he sat up and
+looked around. There was the old
+feeling that there was dust over
+everything when there was no dust.
+There was all that emptiness sweeping
+away into the endless silence
+and he thought again, as he always
+did, how comforting and cozy it
+was being a part of the Crew.</p>
+
+<p>But someone had to check the
+ship. It was only machinery after
+all, and machinery could wear out,
+sooner or later. And he wasn't at
+all sure, as he kept insisting, that
+they had encountered all the possible
+dangers.</p>
+
+<p>It might seem that in fifty years
+you could run into everything. But
+fifty years was no time at all out
+here where time had no real meaning
+any more.</p>
+
+<p>His body squeaked as he took a
+few tentative steps about the bunkroom.
+One did not actually forget
+how to walk. It was just awkward
+as the devil. And the blood, the entire
+autonomic system, tended to
+slow down. It seemed reluctant to
+step up general metabolism.</p>
+
+<p>Apathy. Sure it was a danger.
+This time, Kelly decided, I'll do
+something about it. He was the engineer
+and he had signed on the
+great odyssey to keep the ship going.
+But the Crew was part of the
+ship. Was not there an obligation
+even greater to keep the Crew going?</p>
+
+<p>The four others lived but almost
+imperceptibly in some very low
+state of slowed metabolism there in
+the bunkroom and Kelly looked at
+them. The faithful and the wonderful
+ones. The ones with whom he
+had shared so many dangers and
+awful silences that the five of them
+had been able to evolve the idea of
+the protoplasm in the tank and
+merge their consciousness in it.</p>
+
+<p>Kew, the Venusian, in her bowl
+of self-renewing nitrate. Lakrit from
+a Jovian satellite, a fluorine fellow
+of distinction inside a sphere of
+gaseous sulphur. A crystalline character
+with a sense of humor named
+Lljub, whose form gave off a paled
+glint as it nourished itself on silicates.
+And a highly intelligent but
+humble six-foot-long sponge labeled
+Urdaz stuck in a foundation of
+chemical sediment at the bottom of
+a tank of reprocessing salt water.</p>
+
+<p>Each with their own special kind
+of appendages and sensitivities,
+each able to move his special closed-system
+about through the ship by
+means of clever types of mobility.</p>
+
+<p>But basically, in outward form,
+they were too alien to have much
+in common. Only as intelligences,
+as life forces, could they share a
+common bed. And it had evolved
+to that in fifty years. A bed of protoplasm
+in a shock-absorbent tank.</p>
+
+<p>Kelly looked at them warmly and
+thought about how it had worked
+out. The strange thing was that it
+did have a lot of good things to
+recommend it. Or had had them.
+It had solved the problem of intimate
+communication and driven
+back the tides of loneliness. It had
+lessened the dangers of mental and
+physical illnesses in the material
+bodies and assured a prolongation
+of the life of each body, which was
+important in itself, for this trip had
+proven to be a lot longer than
+even the most pessimistic had anticipated.</p>
+
+<p>The Crew, pulsing in its tank,
+Kelly thought oddly, is a new life
+form. One that had evolved to meet
+the exigencies of deep space which
+had proven to be alien to any
+adaptability common to any world
+that rotated through it.</p>
+
+<p>But maybe they were too damn
+happy, Kelly thought. Too contented.
+If they ran into a real
+emergency now, the ship would be
+finished. The Crew in the tank
+was, itself, incapable of action of
+any overt kind. It could not manipulate
+anything. It could only be
+happy.</p>
+
+<p>And the bodies here in the bunkroom
+could not rally fast enough
+to meet a sudden crisis.</p>
+
+<p>And they had agreed that the
+first law was survival.</p>
+
+<p>But to survive this way might
+well mean destruction in another.</p>
+
+<p>So Kelly walked and thought
+about it, and weighed the precarious
+balance.</p>
+
+<p>He slipped through the silent
+ship and to the control room. He
+peered into the viewscope. Some
+galaxy or other spun its giant pinwheel
+outward toward some destiny
+of its own. The high noon of the
+endlessness had been unfamiliar for
+years. He checked the ship's instruments.
+The Crew in the big tank
+simmered and throbbed in its introspective
+bliss, utterly oblivious to
+Kelly now.</p>
+
+<p>Kelly saw the red dwarf a few
+hundred million kilos away. Three
+planets ground their familiar path
+around it. The second in distance
+had a breathable oxygen, according
+to the scopes, but little else to
+recommend it.</p>
+
+<p>Kelly straightened up. He had no
+idea when the plan had really
+started forming, but now it was
+formed. When Kelly made up his
+mind to a thing, there was no other
+course but to conclude it. He knew
+what he had to do.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow, even as part of the
+Crew, some part of Kelly had been
+able to keep that forming plan a
+secret. Which was a lucky miracle,
+for if the Crew had known his intentions
+it would certainly not have
+let him out this time.</p>
+
+<p>Even if you wanted out, Kelly
+reasoned, the Crew would keep you
+in. And maybe after long enough
+you did not care to get out. But
+once out, he wondered, could it
+keep you out if it decided to blackball
+a man for one reason or another?</p>
+
+<p>Like wrecking the ship?</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">In the chrome</span> strip above
+the control panel, Kelly saw his
+face grinning strangely back at him,
+a bearded, hollowed, paled face
+with an unfamiliar glitter in the
+eyes. Every time he had left the
+Crew to enter and reactivate his
+own body, that body had seemed a
+little less familiar. This time it
+seemed to be almost entirely someone
+else.</p>
+
+<p>He stared at the face in the
+chrome, then whispered the hell
+with that and he flipped the controls
+over to manual. He sat down.
+Behind him, the Crew whispered in
+its tank, protoplasm developed in
+the labs and quivering now with
+some unified sensation that was
+purely subjective and blissfully unconcerned
+with what happened outside
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>"It's sick," Kelly concluded, with
+an emphatic clamp of his jaws.
+"It's not right!"</p>
+
+<p>True, sharing the intimate sensations
+of alien life forms like Kew,
+the female Venusian, had been exciting.
+Especially the sex experiences
+which, in a flower of Kew's
+type, was certainly something.
+There were interesting things to
+being a part of the Crew all right.
+But the main purpose, survival, had
+been forgotten. Now being the Crew
+was an end in itself. Kelly could
+imagine the Crew business going on
+and on until finally even the material
+bodies in the bunkroom would
+be forgotten entirely and allowed to
+rot away to dust about which the
+Crew would no longer care.</p>
+
+<p>And that was very bad. It should
+not have worked out this way. But
+it was not too late to do something,
+shake them out of the Lotus
+dream.</p>
+
+<p>He checked the scopes again.
+Now the second planet revealed
+plenty of breathable atmosphere
+settled in the lower valleys. He
+headed straight for it.</p>
+
+<p>The Crew was soon going to get
+one devil of a jolt!</p>
+
+<p>He put the ship into a close orbit
+around the planet. It seemed nothing
+but a fearsome forest of oxydized
+spikes rising in corrosive silence,
+with here and there a lean
+slash of valley. There was no indication
+of life, no vegetation visible
+or revealed by the scopes. One of
+the valleys had a thin mouth of
+water stretching down the length
+of its face. Kelly set the speed and
+the controls and ran for the bunkroom
+and the shock-absorbent
+cushions. He strapped himself in
+and waited.</p>
+
+<p>It was done. As long as the thing
+had gone so far, Kelly decided, the
+truth should never be revealed because
+that would lessen the therapeutic
+value of his action. He would
+wreck the ship. Not too badly. Not
+so badly that all of the bodies, distinct,
+separate individual bodies
+again, couldn't put the ship back
+together, as in the old days. And
+that would keep them in their
+bodies gladly for a while where they
+belonged! Where the good Lord
+had intended for them to stay.</p>
+
+<p>They would not be rocked away
+to apathy in a phony metal mother
+womb, thinking the ship was going
+to take care of <i>them</i>!</p>
+
+<p>The more Kelly thought about it,
+the better he felt. He stretched inside
+the straps. He felt his slightly
+atrophied muscles luxuriate over
+the tissues and bones of his big
+frame.</p>
+
+<p>Any body, no matter what its
+shape, should be proud of itself.
+That was Kelly's belief, and this
+thing that had happened seemed
+somewhat blasphemous. Without
+bodies and their complex sensory
+recording apparatus, the rich consciousness
+enjoyed by the Crew
+could not exist, would never have
+been created at all. The Crew was
+living off the largesse of experience
+built up by their bodies. The Crew
+was just narcotized enough that it
+did not realize that the body banks
+had to be replenished.</p>
+
+<p>Metal shrieked.</p>
+
+<p>Kelly yelled feebly. He fought,
+he grappled with the threatening
+blackout like a man fighting an invisible
+opponent on an endless
+flight of stairs.</p>
+
+<p>The grinding rolling terror of the
+sound, the ripping, twisting, tearing
+scream of it cried on and on. Kelly
+knew one thing then.</p>
+
+<p>He had not figured it right. His
+calculations were off. <i>The ship had
+hit too damn hard.</i></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Later</span>, when he managed to get
+the straps off and tried to move,
+he fell painfully onto the tilted
+deck. One of his eyes felt sticky.
+He rubbed at it and his hand was
+smeared with blood.</p>
+
+<p>He shuffled around in a stumbling
+circle. Minor damages could
+have been repaired. But this&mdash;the
+ship was peeled open in glaring
+strips like a breakfast cannister. A
+cold wind moaned through the ship
+that was now nothing but a metal
+sieve. A hazy light filtered down
+and ran off the metal like cold flour
+rust.</p>
+
+<p>Kelly fell to his knees. "Kew," he
+whispered. "Lljub, Urdaz&mdash;Lakrit...."</p>
+
+<p>The Venusian flower lady was
+sliced down the middle like a cabbage,
+and the nitrate bowl was
+shattered and Kew was dead in a
+pool of fading green blood.</p>
+
+<p>Smashed into the bulkhead was
+Lakrit's sulphuric bathtub, and his
+atmosphere had already filtered
+away with the wind to wherever it
+was going. Lljub's pale glow was
+out for good, and his crystalline
+heart was as opaque as a dead eye.
+Only a few pieces of Urdaz's tank
+were visible, and Urdaz himself had
+already turned to a powdery food
+that the wind ate slowly in long
+trailing streamers.</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;what in the name of
+God have I done?" Kelly whispered.</p>
+
+<p>All dead&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>No! He slammed at the bulkhead
+until the warped metal gave
+and he ran to the control room.
+The Crew&mdash;the Crew&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He stared at the tank.</p>
+
+<p>Through a jagged opening in the
+ship's walls, the wind whined and
+plucked at Kelly's red hair. The
+wind was colder now. He kept on
+looking at the tank. He reached out
+and touched the big transparent
+curve of it and then jerked his hand
+back with a whimper in his breath.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing in the tank,
+nothing but a blob of slowly drying
+slime. He pressed his nose to the
+tank. "Crew&mdash;" he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>There was no life in the slime.
+When he pounded on the tank, the
+stuff collapsed in upon itself in
+withering flatness.</p>
+
+<p>Kelly yelled. The cold wind
+froze at his teeth. It sucked at his
+breath and dried at the interior of
+his mouth. He ran and climbed.
+The jagged periphery of the opening
+sliced at his flesh. But he did
+not feel it, and he fell twenty feet,
+without feeling that either, down
+the side of the ship. He started
+crawling over the hard naked belly
+of the rock.</p>
+
+<p>He got to his feet. He ran stumbling
+down an incline of shale worn
+round and shiny by the wind that
+had blown here just as it blew now,
+and would blow for God alone
+possibly knew how long. He fell
+and rolled to the edge of the water.</p>
+
+<p>He looked into it. He felt of it.
+He jerked his hand away. The stuff
+was icy. But it was worse than icy.
+It was dead. It was dead water. It
+was without any bottom, and without
+any life in it anywhere. You
+could tell by looking into it. The
+wind moved over the top of it as
+though the water were glass, and
+the water was the color of a slightly
+transparent naked blue steel.</p>
+
+<p>There was no life here. Maybe
+there had been once, who knew
+when, who could guess how long
+ago. But there was none now and
+even the water had forgotten it.</p>
+
+<p>Kelly cried out as he stood up.
+"What have I done?" He raised
+his arms at the hazy red sun lying
+over the spires of towering stone
+and metal like a bloated balloon
+scraping precariously over rusty
+spikes. "God, what have I done?"</p>
+
+<p>The cry echoed tinnily on the
+rocks and fled on the wind.</p>
+
+<p>Kelly ran for a long way, falling
+and stumbling and getting up
+again. Kelly had always had one
+primary drive, and that was to keep
+going, no matter what. So now he
+tried to keep going.</p>
+
+<p>But there was no life on this
+planet. He had known that before.
+Some strange kinds of intelligence
+could tolerate some unpleasant
+worlds. But nothing would live
+here.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing <i>could</i> live here.</p>
+
+<p>"That's your fate," Kelly thought.
+He sat down and stared at the walls
+of rock and metal all around. "Your
+fate, Kelly. Your punishment, your
+well deserved hell."</p>
+
+<p>That was what it was. Retribution.
+And knowing that, he tried
+not to care. He tried to be glad and
+face what he deserved.</p>
+
+<p>If that were not the answer, then
+why had only Kelly been spared to
+face emptiness and silence and no
+life, all alone?</p>
+
+<p>The irony of it was that he would
+go on as long as possible keeping
+himself alive in his own hell. There
+was food aplenty in the ship,
+enough to last as long as hell cared
+to have him.</p>
+
+<p>He turned and started walking
+back toward the ship that seemed
+some five miles away. At that instant,
+the ship disappeared in an
+abrupt explosion that twisted the
+rocks, and a mushroom cloud flowered
+gently above the lake as Kelly
+fell trembling on his belly and
+hugged the ground and pushed his
+face into the shale, while the wind
+tore and screamed around him and
+particles of flint ripped his clothes
+and slashed at his flesh.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">He did not</span> bother walking
+much farther toward where
+the ship had been. There was only
+a crater there now which would
+offer him nothing in the way of sustaining
+his very personal and thoroughly
+private hell.</p>
+
+<p>He walked. The effort became
+more difficult and finally he was on
+his hands and knees, crawling. The
+wind sucked at his ripped clothes,
+and felt like cold sharp steel in his
+raw wounds. But slowly and deliberately
+he continued to crawl.</p>
+
+<p>Kelly had always had the idea
+that a man should keep going and
+so now he kept on going. Even if
+there was no place to go, and you
+could not remember particularly
+where you had been, you kept on
+moving and fighting and slugging
+along until you could no longer
+move.</p>
+
+<p>He lay there looking up at the
+hazy rust of the sky with the naked
+spires pointing up into it for no
+reason at all, because there was
+nothing up there.</p>
+
+<p>He had been there and he knew.
+Nothing up there but space, black
+and without a beginning or end. He
+had not even checked the records
+of the ship so that now, lying here,
+he did not even know how far away
+from Earth he was. At the speed
+they had traveled, a ship went a
+long way in fifty years. But the ship,
+the records, everything was lost.</p>
+
+<p>And no one would ever know
+now how far they had come.</p>
+
+<p>Or gone. What was the difference,
+anyway?</p>
+
+<p>But Kelly had no difficulty in remembering
+<i>why</i> they had come.</p>
+
+<p>They had come into space because
+that was how it was with
+those who fought their way up to
+being the dominate life form of
+whatever world they had lived on
+and grown and died on. If you
+were the kind who went into space,
+you went because space was there.</p>
+
+<p>Who needed a better reason than
+that?</p>
+
+<p>"Kew," he whispered. "Lakrit,
+Lljub, Urdaz, listen now&mdash;I thought
+I was doing the right thing&mdash;maybe
+my idea was right&mdash;but I just made
+a mistake in the calculations. I just
+made a helluva mistake&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The wind sighed over the naked
+rock and the rusted metal and the
+rock and the dead blue water.</p>
+
+<p>He turned and pushed his head
+against the rock, and his body
+curled up against the bitter wind.
+"You've got to forgive me," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Has anybody here seen Kelly?
+K-E-double-L-Y?</i>'"</p>
+
+<p>He shivered and kept his eyes
+closed. It was part of the wind. He
+did not want to go out that way,
+hearing crazy voices in the wind.</p>
+
+<p>"'Has anybody here seen
+Kelly&mdash;?'"</p>
+
+<p>He raised his head and blinked
+and the wind drove tears down his
+cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I just hearing something
+that's going crazy inside my head?"
+He peered around. There was nothing,
+nothing anywhere of course,
+nothing where nothing had ever
+been, and nothing else but nothing
+could ever be.</p>
+
+<p>"You're wrong, Kelly. Your
+Crew's here."</p>
+
+<p>Kelly raised himself painfully to
+an elbow. "Where&mdash;<i>where</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"Right here, Kelly. We had a
+difficult time locating you. Sure, we
+forgive you. You were trying to do
+what was right. We know that."</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing&mdash;nothing&mdash;"
+Kelly said.</p>
+
+<p>"You're wrong. The Crew's here
+and we're waiting."</p>
+
+<p>He stared at the rock. He put his
+face against it and pushed his
+hands to it. There was a kind of
+dull glow in it, a faint hint of
+warmth in the rock.</p>
+
+<p>"How can this be?" Kelly said.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the life here, Kelly. Perhaps
+there is life everywhere in the
+most impossible seeming places.
+And where life is, Kelly, we can
+live with it and be welcomed by it.
+Here, this rock is life, and it has
+taken us in. It has been here a long
+time. And it will be here for a much
+longer time."</p>
+
+<p>"Rock," Kelly said.</p>
+
+<p>"But hurry and come back."</p>
+
+<p>"But no one will ever know.
+How long&mdash;how long can we wait?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who can answer that, Kelly?
+But maybe they will find the Crew
+someday."</p>
+
+<p>Kelly looked up once at the completely
+unfamiliar distances growing
+darker. Sometime, he thought,
+they'll come from wherever Earth
+is and find the Crew of the ship,
+find a rock here waiting the ages
+out.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry, Kelly!"</p>
+
+<p>His head dropped against the
+rock. His hands slid down it, and a
+smile moved over his lips and froze
+there as the wind whispered over it.</p>
+
+<p class="rgt"><b>&middot;&middot;&middot; THE END</b></p>
+
+<div class="trn"><div class="figt"><a href="images/002-2.jpg"><img src="images/002-1.jpg" width="136" height="200" alt="" title="" /></a></div>
+
+<p><big><b>Transcriber's Note:</b></big></p>
+
+<p>This etext was produced from <i>If Worlds of Science Fiction</i> July 1954.
+Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
+copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
+typographical errors have been corrected without note.</p></div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30086 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>