All the Way Back by Michael Shaara Preface by David Drake Before writing The Killer Angels, his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the Battle of Gettysburg, Michael Shaara practiced his skill by writing SF. Those of you who've read "Soldier Boy," "Death of a Hunter" (my particular favorite), and this story will agree that he didn't need much practice. Great were the Antha, so reads the One Book of history, greater perhaps than any of the Galactic Peoples, and they were brilliant and fair, and their reign was long, and in all things they were great and proud, even in the manner of their dying? Preface to Loab: History of The Master Race The huge red ball of a sun hung glowing upon the screen. Jansen adjusted the traversing knob, his face tensed and weary. The sun swung off the screen to the right, was replaced by the live black of space and the million speckled lights of the farther stars. A moment later the sun glided silently back across the screen and went off at the left. Again there was nothing but space and the stars. "Try it again?" Cohn asked. Jansen mumbled: "No. No use," and he swore heavily. "Nothing. Always nothing. Never a blessed thing." Cohn repressed a sigh, began to adjust the controls. In both of their minds was the single, bitter thought that there would be only one more time, and then they would go home. And it was a long way to come to go home with nothing. When the controls were set there was nothing left to do. The two men walked slowly aft to the freeze room. Climbing up painfully on to the flat steel of the beds, they lay back and waited for the mechanism to function, for the freeze to begin. Turned in her course, the spaceship bore off into the open emptiness. Her ports were thrown open, she was gathering speed as she moved away from the huge red star. * * * The object was sighted upon the last leg of the patrol, as the huge ship of the Galactic Scouts came across the edge of the Great Desert of the Rim, swinging wide in a long slow curve. It was there on the massometer as a faint blip, and, of course, the word went directly to Roymer. "Report," he said briefly, and Lieutenant Goladan?a young and somewhat pompous Higiandrian?gave the Higiandrian equivalent of a cough and then reported. "Observe," said Lieutenant Goladan, "that it is not a meteor, for the speed of it is much too great." Roymer nodded patiently. "And again, the speed is decreasing"?Goladan consulted his figures?"at a rate of twenty-four dines per segment. Since the orbit appears to bear directly upon the star Mina, and the decrease in speed is of a certain arbitrary origin, we must conclude that the object is a spaceship." Roymer smiled. "Very good, lieutenant." Like a tiny nova, Goladan began to glow and expand. A good man, thought Roymer tolerantly, his is a race of good men. They have been two million years in achieving space flight; a certain adolescence is to be expected. "Would you call Mind-Search, please?" Roymer asked. Goladan sped away, to return almost immediately with the heavy-headed non-human Trian, chief of the Mind-Search Section. Trian cocked an eyelike thing at Roymer, with grave inquiry. "Yes, commander?" The abrupt change in course was noticeable only on the viewplate, as the stars slid silently by. The patrol vessel veered off, swinging around and into the desert, settled into a parallel course with the strange new craft, keeping a discreet distance of?approximately?a light-year. The scanners brought the object into immediate focus, and Goladan grinned with pleasure. A spaceship, yes, Alien, too. Undoubtedly a primitive race. He voiced these thoughts to Roymer. "Yes," the commander said, staring at the strange, small, projectilelike craft. "Primitive type. It is to be wondered what they are doing in the desert." Goladan assumed an expression of intense curiosity. "Trian," said Roymer pleasantly, "would you contact?" The huge head bobbed up and down once and then stared into the screen. There was a moment of profound silence. Then Trian turned back to stare at Roymer, and there was a distinctly human expression of surprise in his eyelike things. "Nothing," came the thought. "I can detect no presence at all." Roymer raised an eyebrow. "Is there a barrier?" "No"?Trian had turned to gaze back into the screen?"a barrier I could detect. But there is nothing at all. There is no sentient activity on board that vessel." Trian's word had to be taken, of course, and Roymer was disappointed. A spaceship empty of life?Roymer shrugged. A derelict, then. But why the decreasing speed? Pre-set controls would account for that, of course, but why? Certainly, if one abandoned a ship, one would not arrange for it to? He was interrupted by Trian's thought: "Excuse me, but there is nothing. May I return to my quarters?" Roymer nodded and thanked him, and Trian went ponderously away. Goladan said: "Shall we prepare to board it, sir?" "Yes." And then Goladan was gone to give his proud orders. Roymer continued to stare at the primitive vessel which hung on the plate. Curious. It was very interesting, always, to come upon derelict ships. The stories that were old, the silent tombs that had been drifting perhaps, for millions of years in the deep sea of space. In the beginning Roymer had hoped that the ship would be manned, and alien, but?nowadays, contact with an isolated race was rare, extremely rare. It was not to be hoped for, and he would be content with this, this undoubtedly empty, ancient ship. And then, to Roymer's complete surprise, the ship at which he was staring shifted abruptly, turned on its axis, and flashed off like a live thing upon a new course. * * * When the defrosters activated and woke him up, Jansen lay for a while upon the steel table, blinking. As always with the freeze, it was difficult to tell at first whether anything had actually happened. It was like a quick blink and no more, and then you were lying, feeling exactly the same, thinking the same thoughts even, and if there was anything at all different it was maybe that you were a little numb. And yet in the blink time took a great leap, and the months went by like?Jansen smiled?fenceposts. He raised a languid eye to the red bulb in the ceiling. Out. He sighed. The freeze had come and gone. He felt vaguely cheated, reflected that this time, before the freeze, he would take a little nap. He climbed down from the table, noted that Cohn had already gone to the control room. He adjusted himself to the thought that they were approaching a new sun, and it came back to him suddenly that this would be the last one, now they would go home. Well then, let this one have planets. To have come all this way, to have been gone from home eleven years, and yet to find nothing? He was jerked out of the old feeling of despair by a lurch of the ship. That would be Cohn taking her off the auto. And now, he thought, we will go in and run out the telescope and have a look, and there won't be a thing. Wearily, he clumped off over the iron deck, going up to the control room. He had no hope left now, and he had been so hopeful at the beginning. As they are all hopeful, he thought, as they have been hoping now for three hundred years. And they will go on hoping, for a little while, and then men will become hard to get, even with the freeze, and then the starships won't go out any more. And Man will be doomed to the System for the rest of his days. Therefore, he asked humbly, silently, let this one have planets. Up in the dome of the control cabin, Cohn was bent over the panel, pouring power into the board. He looked up, nodded briefly as Jansen came in. It seemed to both of them that they had been apart for five minutes. "Are they all hot yet?" asked Jansen. "No, not yet." The ship had been in deep space with her ports thrown open. Absolute cold had come in and gone to the core of her, and it was always a while before the ship was reclaimed and her instruments warmed. Even now there was a sharp chill in the air of the cabin. Jansen sat down idly, rubbing his arms. "Last time around, I guess." "Yes," said Cohn, and added laconically, "I wish Weizs?cker was here." Jansen grinned. Weizs?cker, poor old Weizs?cker. He was long dead and it was a good thing, for he was the most maligned human being in the System. For a hundred years his theory on the birth of planets, that every sun necessarily gave birth to a satellite family, had been an accepted part of the knowledge of Man. And then, of course, there had come space flight. Jansen chuckled wryly. Lucky man, Weizs?cker. Now, two hundred years and a thousand stars later, there had been discovered just four planets. Alpha Centauri had one: a barren, ice-crusted mote no larger than the Moon; and Pollux had three, all dead lumps of cold rock and iron. None of the other stars had any at all. Yes, it would have been a great blow to Weizs?cker. A hum of current broke into Jansen's thought as the telescope was run out. There was a sudden beginning of light upon the screen. In spite of himself and the wry, hopeless feeling that had been in him, Jansen arose quickly, with a thin trickle of nervousness in his arms. There is always a chance, he thought, after all, there is always a chance. We have only been to a thousand suns, and in the Galaxy a thousand suns are not anything at all. So there is always a chance. Cohn, calm and methodical, was manning the radar. Gradually, condensing upon the center of the screen, the image of the star took shape. It hung at last, huge and yellow and flaming with an awful brilliance, and the prominences of the rim made the vast circle uneven. B...
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