Space Chantey

His soaring vaunt escaped the blooming ears of us,

He's gone, he's dead, he's dirt, he disappears from us! Be this the death of highest thrust of human all?

The flaming end of bright and shining crewmen all?Destroyed? His road is run? It's but a bend of it;

Make no mistake, this only seems

I will be double-damned to a better Hell than Hellpepper Planet if I will have my ending here in peace! Peace be not the end of my epic! An epic is already failed if it have an ending. I don't care how it ended the first time — it will not end the same now!

The place itself, and ne'er a good word spoke of it,

You shiver when you even make a joke of it.Though some go cocky, gaily in hand-basket there,

The most fare sadly in a clammy casket there…Undying pain and gaping loss, no doubt of it.

A wide way leading in and no way out of it!But none have told the blackest horror shrouded there —

Tall teeming terror‚ but it sure is crowded there.

These men were the salt of the skies, the one out of ten who had determinedly stayed alive through the whole war, very often hurt, absolutely refusing to be killed.

There are skies we have not seen yet! There are whole realms still unvisited by us. We will not be penned in even a giant's pen. We fly!

I do not understand your custom in this, but we do not intend to fight until all of us are dead. We desire very much that none of us be dead. And we will fight till all of you are dead only if it is absolutely necessary.

"I'm doing pretty good. I'm a seminal genius, they say, and I have the most sophisticated tools ever devised to work with. And I do build some good things for them. I'm quite successful. I'll tell you something, though. In the daytime, with all those sophisticated tools, and particularly if someone's watching me, I just stall around. But at night — "

"Ah, at night! What do you do then, Hondstarfer?"

"Put away those damned sophisticated tools and get my stone hammers. That's when I build the good stuff. Don't give me away, though, Roadstrum.

The witch has been playing a semantic trick on us. We were already pretty salty animals when we came here! It is toy animals she has turned us into. We have been working against ourselves, trying to be men again, but to be her idea of men, since we live in her context. But she does not know real animals, or men. … Be you not toys any longer! Stir up the wild business in you. You have to be real animals before you can be men.

An excess of science will leave none of us alive.

If you have come with high expectations of anything, you have come to the wrong place.

Something was working in Roadstrum's little ape head. When he had been a man he had always known when it was time for action; particularly he had always known the last moment when action was still possible. He knew now that that moment was come very near. … Then a blinding light burst upon Roadstrum, and he saw the truth of the situation. Many things Roadstrum was not, and it was sometimes wondered why he was the natural leader of all the men. He was their leader because he was a man on whom the blinding light sometimes descended.

Roadstrum had always believed that he had troubles enough of his own. He seldom borrowed trouble, and never on usurious terms. He knew that it was a solid thing that sheep do not gather in taverns and drink beer, not even potato beer; that they do not sing, not even badly; that they do not tell stories. But a stranger can easily make trouble for himself on a strange world by challenging local customs.

"But I am the greet Roadstrum," he said, suddenly and loudly. "I am a great one for winning justice for the lowly, and I do not scare easily. I threw the great Atlas at the wrestle, and who else can say as much? I suffer from the heroic sickness every third day about nightfall, and I am not sure whether this is the third day or not. I say you are men and not sheep. I say: Arise and be men indeed!"

"It has been tried before," said Roadstrum's friend, the sheep, "and it didn't work."

"You have tried a revolt, and it failed?"

"No, no, another man tried to incite us to revolt, and failed."

Be not nervous. In a very little while you will either be a member or you will not be.

The eye in his hand winked at him dourly. Eye was a tough old gump, not given to easy enthusiasms. Roadstrum put it back in his pocket and once more contemplated his good fortune.

I'm the guy who keeps it all going. If I weren't here, you wouldn't be here either. I know it all, I'm a smart-aleck. Loan-sharking and fencing. Any time I can't see you, you've had it.

They were down on Kentron-Kosmon, an insignificant world. And yet, in the middle of Space-Port there (a cow pasture rather; it wasn't much of a spaceport) there was a nice plaque of electrum and on it was lettered: This is the Exact Center of the Universe.

When we travel we find how greatly our boyhood dreams are outstripped by reality.

I'll break the spell or the science of her singing yet. As the only man left it devolves on me to do it.

As regards very small celestial bodies of a light-minded nature, the law of levity is allowed to supersede the law of gravity.

I've had enough of this place where they stuff you full of bull and then hunt you down and kill you every day.

"For one crime there is no asylum even in the Club," whispered Horace the Snake, who had sharp ears for whispering. "For all other crimes we give asylum, for the most heinous crime in the universe we give no asylum."

"What is the most heinous crime in the universe?" Roadstrum asked.

"Killing a songbird."

Roadstrum had a way of putting it on a little thick himself.

"Be there a man among you who doubts my demesne or destiny, then I have fared in vain," he said. "I bare my throat to the treacherous steel —"

"All right, all right," the three tough crewmen capitulated. We're with you all the way and in everything. Only spare us the 'act.'"

"'Monday and Tuesday and Monday and Tuesday and Monday and Tuesday,' so the poor slaves had to sing in their labor for the puca. And finally a great savior broke the charm. 'And Wednesday too' he said, and then it was all over with."

"Roadstrum is the great savior who breaks the charm," Roadstrum announced. "I will set a Wednesday-term to the monster. But there are other elements in this…"

I will never tell anyone how much fun it is in this place.

Man-a-bleeding, but they broke out of that place! You say it can't be done, but they did it. Their expectations had been too high, and no second-rate Hell could hold them.

In a way it was their greatest feat. No one else had ever broken out of there before.

You show signs of levity, and that is the one thing not permitted here. This place is for serious persons only. If you are not serious now, by hell you'll get serious pretty quick!

I tried to tell you, but words will not convey it. One has to be inside it to comprehend the magnitude. … It was the beginning. It's the only thing there is. But it was haphazard for so many aeons that it spooks me to think about it. There were always three or four maintaining it, but there was no one person strong enough to take it all over. "Somewhere there must be someone strong enough to take it all over," I said to myself in a direful moment, but the strongest person I could think of was myself. I've been doing it ever since. … By my attention I hold it all in being. Nothing exists unless it is perceived. If perception fails for a moment, then that thing fails forever. … I hate to be misjudged. They say that I bear it all on my shoulders, as though I were a stud or a balk. It's not on my great shoulders, it is amazing head on my great shoulders that maintains all.

There are no rules. We do whatever seems the most fun.

This petty place cannot be Hell, Roadstrum? Ah, but it is my friend. That, you see, is the hell of it.

"Here there are warlocks and mandragoras and witches," the navigation data log issued.

"When your machines start to go droll on you you're in trouble," Roadstrum growled. "I can get wise answers from my men. I don't need a machine for that."

I am Aeaea. To my notion there is no other lady anywhere. And I resent your calling this a silly myth. I made the myth and it is not silly; charming rather. Well, come along, come along! You are my things now, and you will come when I call you.

"This is the Improbable Club," said the President-Emeritus in a heavy muffled voice, "and you things have made an improbable entry. Many unqualified persons have attempted to crash this Club, but you have done it literally. Whether you will be able to qualify for our high membership is another thing. It will not matter. We accept, for a brief moment at least, all who come here as members. We will quickly measure you one way or another. We have no living ex-members. Sit you down, all, and unwind your ears. Remember, each topper must be topped."

I am the consummate scientist, Road-Storm. Science has suffered in having her name applied to mechanics, an ugly step-child of hers. Matter herself is a humiliation to the serious. We cannot make it vanish forever, but can make it seem to. For my purpose that is even better. All matter can be modified as long as it is kept subjective. Let us keep it so. … Those who fail to understand my science may call it magic or hypnotism or deception. But it is only my projection of total subjectivity.

Lend ear while things incredible we bring about

And Spacemen dead and deathless yet we sing about:— And some were weak and wan, and some were strong enough,

And some got home, but damn it took them long enough!

"Strangers may not lodge complaints till they have been in residence here for ninety days," the Cacique said, "and no stranger has ever remained with us that long."

"My complaint won't hold for ninety days. I accuse you people of eating men."

'We are strangers, lost and bemused," Roadstrum said to the lady. "We have landed here by accident. We are looking for a lady who was singing, the lady who (according to silly myth) is identical with the planet and who sang the planet into being."

It was the most exclusive club in the world, in all the worlds, and this is a mighty pale statement to make about it. Let us emphasize that it was hard to get into.

This myth filter was necessary. The ship logs could not tell it rightly nor could any flatfooted prose. And the deeds were too bright to be viewed direct. They could only be sung by a bard gone blind from viewing suns that were suns.

The war was finished. It had lasted ten equivalent years and taken ten million lives. Thus it was neither of long duration nor of serious attrition. It hadn't any great significance; it was not intended to have. It did not prove a point, since all points had long ago been proven. What it did, perhaps, was to emphasize an aspect, sharpen a concept, underline a trend.

On the whole it was a successful operation. Economically and ecologically it was of healthy effect, and who should grumble?

And after wars, men go home. No, no, men start for home. It's not the same.

Do you not know that the underground lands are shared by many worlds? It is all one underground, a vast place, and it is but a trick on which globe one will surface on coming out. This is the reason that the inside of every world is so much vaster than the outside. You are fooled by the shape of these little balls on which things live and crawl; you see the universe inside out; you see the orbs as containing and not contained. I will teach you to see it right if you please me.

Death is for a long time. Those of shallow thought say that it is forever. There is, at least, a long night of it. There is the forgetfulness and the loss of identity. The spirit, even as the body, is unstrung and burst and scattered. One goes down to death, and it leaves a mark on one forever.

It isn't my profundity that makes me a mental marvel, it's the amazing detail of my perception. There's nobody else who can keep so many things on his mind at once.

"I am mistress of all the sciences. I go so far beyond all else that my work is called magic. I manipulate noumena, regarding monads as points of entry tangential to hylomorphism. As to the paradox of Primary Essence being contained in Quiddity, the larger in the smaller, I have my own solution. The difficulty is always in not confusing Contingency with Accidence. Do you understand me?"

"Sure. You're a witch."

The Dong button was just that, a big green button with the word Dong engraved on it. You pushed it, and it went dong. Well, that was almost too simple. Should there not be a deeper reason for it? And the small instruction plate over it didn’t add much. It read: “Wrong prong, bong gong.”