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Warren Moore surveyed the room with a faint smile. Only Mark Brandon's
enthusiasm kept it going at the first, but he himself had come to like this
mild remembrance. It came with age, he supposed; twenty additional years of
it. He had grown paunchy, thin-haired, soft-jowled, and--worst of
all--sentimental.
So all the windows were polarized into complete darkness and the drapes
were drawn. Only occasional stipples of wall were illuminated, thus
celebrating the poor lighting and the terrible isolation of that day of
wreckage long ago.
There were spaceship rations in sticks and tubes on the table and, of
course, in the center an unopened bottle of sparkling green Jabra water, the
potent brew that only the chemical activity of Martian fungi could supply.
Moore looked at his watch. Brandon would be here soon; he was never late
for this occasion. The only thing that disturbed him was the memory of
Brandon's voice on the tube: "Warren, I have a surprise for you this time.
Wait and see. Wait and see."
Brandon, it always seemed to Moore, aged little. The younger man had
kept his slimness, and the intensity with which he greeted all in life, to the
verge of his fortieth birthday. He retained the ability to be in high
excitement over the good and in deep despair over the bad. His hair was going
gray, but except for that, when Brandon walked up and down, talking rapidly at
the top of his voice about anything at all, Moore didn't even have to close
his eyes to see the panicked youngster on the wreck of the Silver Queen.
The door signal sounded and Moore kicked the release without turning
around. "Come, Mark."
It was a strange voice that answered, though; softly, tentatively, "Mr.
Moore?"
Moore turned quickly. Brandon was there, to be sure, but only in the
background, grinning with excitement. Someone else was standing before him;
short, squat, quite bald, nut-brown and with the feel of space about him.
Moore said wonderingly, "Mike Shea--Mike Shea, by all space."
They pounded hands together, laughing.
Brandon said, "He got in touch with me through the office. He remembered
I was with Atomic Products--"
"It's been years," said Moore. "Let's see, you were on Earth twelve
years ago--"
"He's never been here on an anniversary," said Brandon. "How about that?
He's retiring now. Getting out of space to a place he's buying in Arizona. He
came to say hello before he left--stopped off at the city just for that--and I
was sure he came for the anniversary. 'What anniversary?' says the old jerk."
Shea nodded, grinning. "He said you made a kind of celebration out of it
every year.".
"You bet," said Brandon enthusiastically, "and this will be the first
one with all three of us here, the first real anniversary. It's twenty years,
Mike; twenty years since Warren scrambled over what was left of the wreck and
brought us down to Vesta."
Shea looked about. "Space ration, eh? That's old home week to me. And
Jabra. Oh, sure, I remember...twenty years. I never give it a thought and now,
all of a sudden, it's yesterday. Remember when we got back to Earth finally?"
"Do I!" said Brandon. "The parades, the speeches. Warren was the only
real hero of the occasion and we kept saying so, and they kept paying no
attention. Remember?"
"Oh, well," said Moore. "We were the first three men ever to survive a
spaceship crash. We were unusual and anything unusual is worth a celebration.
These things are irrational."
"Hey," said Shea. "any of you remember the songs they wrote? That
marching one? 'You can sing of routes through Space and the weary maddened
pace of the--' "
Brandon joined in with his clear tenor and even Moore added his voice to
the chorus so that the last line was loud enough to shake the drapes. "On the
wreck of the Silver Que-e-en," they roared out, and ended laughing wildly.
Brandon said, "Let's open the Jabra for the first little sip. This one
bottle has to last all of us all night."
Moore said, "Mark insists on complete authenticity. I'm surprised he
doesn't expect me to climb out the window and human-fly my way around the
building."
"Well, now, that's an idea," said Brandon.
"Remember the last toast we made?" Shea held his empty glass before him
and intoned, " 'Gentlemen, I give you the year's supply of good old H2O we
used to have.' Three drunken bums when we landed. Well, we were kids. I was
thirty and I thought I was old. And now," his voice was suddenly wistful,
"they've retired me."
"Drink!" said Brandon. "Today you're thirty again, and we remember the
day on the Silver Queen even if no one else does. Dirty, fickle public."
Moore laughed. "What do you expect? A national holiday every year with
space ration and Jabra, the ritual food and drink?"
"Listen, we're still the only men ever to survive a spaceship crash and
now look at us. We're in oblivion."
"It's pretty good oblivion. We had a good time to begin with and the
publicity gave us a healthy boost up the ladder. We are doing well, Mark. And
so would Mike Shea be if he hadn't wanted to return to space."
Shea grinned and shrugged his shoulder. "That's where I like to be. I'm
not sorry, either. What with the insurance compensation I got, I have a nice
piece of cash now to retire on."
Brandon said reminiscently, "The wreck set back Transspace. Insurance a
real packet Just the same, there's still something missing. You say 'Silver
Queen' to anyone these days and he can only think of Quentin, if he can think
of anyone."
"Who?" said Shea.
"Quentin. Dr. Horace Quentin, He was one of the nonsurvivors on the
ship. You say to anyone, "What about the three men who survived?" and they'll
just stare at you. 'Huh?' they'll say."
Moore said calmly, "Come, Mark, face it. Dr. Quentin was one of the
world's great scientists and we three are just three of the world's
nothings."
"We survived. We're still the only men on record to survive."
"So? Look, John Hester was on the ship, and he was an important
scientist too. Not in Quentin's league, but important. As a matter of fact, I
was next to him at the last dinner before the rock hit us. Well, just because
Quentin died in the same wreck, Hester's death was drowned out. No one ever
remembers Hester died on the Silver Queen. They only remember Quentin. We may
be forgotten too, but at least we're alive."
"I tell you what," said Brandon after a period of silence during which
Moore's rationale had obviously failed to take, "we're marooned again. Twenty
years ago today, we were marooned off Vesta. Today, we're marooned in
oblivion. Now here are the three of us back together again at last, and what
happened before can happen again. Twenty years ago, Warren pulled us down to
Vesta. Now let's solve this new problem."
"Wipe out the oblivion, you mean?" said Moore. "Make ourselves famous?"
"Sure. Why not? Do you know of any better way of celebrating a twentieth
anniversary?"
"No, but I'd be interested to know where you expect to start. I don't
think people remember the Silver Queen at all, except for Quentin, so you'll
have to think of some way of bringing the wreck back to mind. That's just to
begin with."
Shea stirred uneasily and a thoughtful expression crossed his blunt
countenance. "Some people remember the Silver Queen. The insurance company
does, and you know that's a funny thing, now that you bring up the matter. I
was on Vesta about ten-eleven years ago, and I asked if the piece of wreck we
brought down was still there and they said sure, who would cart it away? So I
thought I'd take a look at it and shot over by reaction motor strapped to my
back. With Vestan gravity, you know, a reaction motor is all you need. Anyway,
I didn't get to see it except from a distance. It was circled off by force
field."
Brandon's eyebrows went sky-high. "Our Silver Queen? For what reason?"
"I went back and asked how come? They didn't tell me and they said they
didn't know I was going there. They said it belonged to the insurance
company."
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