The Stoker and the Stars

The Stoker and the Stars, by

Algirdas Jonas Budrys (AKA John A. Sentry) This eBook is for the use
of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
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Title: The Stoker and the Stars
Author: Algirdas Jonas Budrys (AKA John A. Sentry)
Illustrator: van Dongen
Release Date: October 12, 2007 [EBook #22967]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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STOKER AND THE STARS ***

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[Illustration]
THE STOKER AND THE STARS

BY JOHN A. SENTRY
When you've had your ears pinned back in a bowknot, it's sometimes
hard to remember that an intelligent people has no respect for a
whipped enemy ... but does for a fairly beaten enemy.
Illustrated by van Dongen
Know him? Yes, I know him--knew him. That was twenty years ago.
Everybody knows him now. Everybody who passed him on the street
knows him. Everybody who went to the same schools, or even to
different schools in different towns, knows him now. Ask them. But I
knew him. I lived three feet away from him for a month and a half. I
shipped with him and called him by his first name.
What was he like? What was he thinking, sitting on the edge of his
bunk with his jaw in his palm and his eyes on the stars? What did he
think he was after?
Well ... Well, I think he-- You know, I think I never did know him,
after all. Not well. Not as well as some of those people who're writing
the books about him seem to.
I couldn't really describe him to you. He had a duffelbag in his hand
and a packed airsuit on his back. The skin of his face had been dried
out by ship's air, burned by ultraviolet and broiled by infra red. The
pupils of his eyes had little cloudy specks in them where the cosmic
rays had shot through them. But his eyes were steady and his body was
hard. What did he look like? He looked like a man.
* * * * *
It was after the war, and we were beaten. There used to be a school of
thought among us that deplored our combativeness; before we had ever
met any people from off Earth, even, you could hear people saying we
were toughest, cruelest life-form in the Universe, unfit to mingle with
the gentler wiser races in the stars, and a sure bet to steal their galaxy

and corrupt it forever. Where these people got their information, I don't
know.
We were beaten. We moved out beyond Centaurus, and Sirius, and then
we met the Jeks, the Nosurwey, the Lud. We tried Terrestrial
know-how, we tried Production Miracles, we tried patriotism, we tried
damning the torpedoes and full speed ahead ... and we were smashed
back like mayflies in the wind. We died in droves, and we retreated
from the guttering fires of a dozen planets, we dug in, we fought
through the last ditch, and we were dying on Earth itself before Baker
mutinied, shot Cope, and surrendered the remainder of the human race
to the wiser, gentler races in the stars. That way, we lived. That way,
we were permitted to carry on our little concerns, and mind our
manners. The Jeks and the Lud and the Nosurwey returned to their own
affairs, and we knew they would leave us alone so long as we didn't
bother them.
We liked it that way. Understand me--we didn't accept it, we didn't
knuckle under with waiting murder in our hearts--we liked it. We were
grateful just to be left alone again. We were happy we hadn't been
wiped out like the upstarts the rest of the Universe thought us to be.
When they let us keep our own solar system and carry on a trickle of
trade with the outside, we accepted it for the fantastically generous gift
it was. Too many of our best men were dead for us to have any
remaining claim on these things in our own right. I know how it was. I
was there, twenty years ago. I was a little, pudgy man with short breath
and a high-pitched voice. I was a typical Earthman.
* * * * *
We were out on a God-forsaken landing field on Mars, MacReidie and
I, loading cargo aboard the Serenus. MacReidie was First Officer. I was
Second. The stranger came walking up to us.
"Got a job?" he asked, looking at MacReidie.
Mac looked him