A short story (10 pages circa) taken from a collection of sci-fi stories. It's nice enough, but of course very predictable too, now. It takes two pages to know everything. After escaping from a prison somewhere in space, four men fly a ship towards a place that only old Dunbar knows, a beautiful place nobody's ever heard of. Their ship has been hit and destroyed (meteorite or something) and now they are drifting in space; their special spacesuit can keep them alive for months, even years. Dunbar is still optimistic, he's sure they'll reach a paradise that will repay them of everything. They are heading for the sun "with the red rim around it" but our narrator, Russell, is sure that Dunbar's no more than a crazy fool, because all the other suns show the same red rims. Now, at this point, having read the title, having read that there are four men and four suns around them, it was pretty obvious that they would separate. What wasn't obvious of course was how; this is what I hoped: they quarrel and they split, but no no no, because Russell actually did NOT want to separate from the others. He feared the terrible loneliness, out there in the darkness, but he had 'a hunch' that Dunbar was wrong, and that the right sun was at their left, so Russell shot the old man he hated so much.
The other two men are not happy about it, neither are they convinced by his hunch. One likes the son on the right, the other the sun behind them, so to Russell's horror they decide to split up. That's not what he wanted at all, and now he regrets having shot Dunbar, now he's sure that he'll never make it alone.
We leave them there, and the last bit is exactly what I imagined. A beautiful, inhabited place: Dunbar's body is found and buried, for the marvel of the people there, wondering how he managed to head in the only right direction there was.
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento