Greenberg, Martin H - Christmas on Ganymede and Other Stories (SS Coll).pdf - książki o wampirach - chomciomania

Other Anthologies That Will Thrill,

Chill, and Entertain You

from Avon Books

ARABESQUES and ARABESQUES 2 edited by Susan Shwartz

ARCHITECTURE OF FEAR edited by Kathryn Cramer an4 Peter D, Pautz

1.4 Vicious VALENTINES

edited by Rosalind M. Greenberg,

Martin Harry Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh

HAUNTING WOMEN edited by Alan Ryan

TALES FROM THE SPACEPORT BAR and

ANOTHER ROUND AT THE SPACEPORT BAR

edited by George H. Scithers and

Darrell Schweitzer

TROPICAL CHILLS

edited by Tim Sullivan

Avon Books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales

promotions, premiums, fund raising or educational use. Special books, or book excerpts,

can also be created to fit specific needs.

For details write or telephone the office of the Director of Special Markets, Avon Books,

Dept. FP, 105 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016, 212-481-5653.

AND OTHER STORIES

edited by

MARTIN H.CREENBERC

AVON BOOKS HEW YORK

Additional copyright notices appear on the Acknowledgments pages, which serve as an

extension of this Copyright page.

CHRISTMAS ON GANYMEDE AND OTHER STORIES is an original publication of Avon

Books. This collection has never before appeared in book form.

AVON BOOKS

A division of

The Hearst Corporation

105 Madison Avenue

New York, New York 10016

Cover art by James Warhola

Published by arrangement with the editor

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 90-93183

ISBN: 0-380-76203-X

any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information

address Avon Books.

First Avon Books Printing: December 1990

AVON TRADEMARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. AND IN OTHER COUNTRIES, MARCA

REG1STRADA, HECHO EN U.S.A.

Printed in the U.S.A.

RA 10 987654321

Acknowledgments

1987 by Davis Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author.

1988 by Michael Swanwick. Reprinted by permission of the author and author's agent,

Virginia Kidd.

Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., 845 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10022.

by permission of the author and the author's agent, Virginia Kidd.

vi Acknowledgments

Brown, Ltd.

permission of the author.

Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the agents for the author's Estate, the Scott

Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., 845 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10022.

Reprinted by permission of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., 845 Third Avenue,

New York, New York 10022.

Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Contents

JACK McDEVITT

To Hell with the Stars

MICHAEL SWANWICK

A Midwinter's Tale

ISAAC ASIMOV

Christmas on Ganymede

BARRY N. MALZBERG

The Falcon and the Falconeer

JOHN CHRISTOPHER

Christmas Roses

FREDERIK POHL

Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus

GENE WOLFE

The War Beneath the Tree

FRANK M. ROBINSON

The Santa Claus Planet

CONNIE WILLIS

The Pony

111

119

151

vii

viii Contents

ROBERT F. YOUNG

O Little Town of Bethlehem II

GORDON R. DICKSON

The Christmas Present

POOL ANDERSON

The Season of Forgiveness

ISAAC ASIMOV

Christmas without Rodney

JAMES WHITE

Christmas Treason

158

171

184

202

213

To Hell with the Stars

Jack McDevitt

Christmas night.

Will Cutler couldn't get the sentient ocean out of his mind. Or the creature who wanted

only to serve man. Or the curious chess game in the portrait that hung in a deserted city on

a world halfway across the galaxy. He drew up his knees, propped the book against them,

and let his head sink back into the pillows. The sky was dark through the plexidome. It had

been snowing most of the evening, but the clouds were beginning to scatter. Orion's belt

had appeared, and the lovely double star of Earth and Moon floated among the luminous

branches of Granpop's elms. Soft laughter and conversation drifted up the stairs.

The sounds of the party seemed far away, and the Space Beagle rode a column of flame

down into a silent desert. The glow from the reading lamp was bright on the inside of his

eyelids. He broke the beam with

2 JackMcDevitt

his hand, and it dimmed and went out.

The book lay open at his fingertips.

It was hard to believe they were a thousand years old, these stories that were so full of

energy and so unlike anything he'd come across before: tales of dark, alien places and

gleaming temples under other stars and expeditions to black holes. They don't write like

that anymore. Never had, during his lifetime. He'd read some other books from the

classical Western period, some Dickens, some Updike, people like that. But these: what

was there in the last thousand years to compare with this guy Bradbury?

The night air felt good. It smelled of pine needles and scorched wood and bayberry. And

maybe of dinosaurs and rocket fuel.

His father might have been standing at the door for several minutes. "Goodnight, Champ,"

he whispered, lingering.

"I'm awake, Dad."

He approached the bed. "Lights out already?" he asked. "It's still early." His weight pressed

down the mattress.

Will was slow to answer. "I know."

His father adjusted the sheet, pulling it up over the boy's shoulders. "It's supposed to get

cold tonight," he said. "Heavy snow by morning." He picked up the book and, without

looking at it, placed it atop the night table.

"Dad." The word stopped the subtle shift of weight that would precede the gentle pressure

of his father's hand against his shoulder, the final act before withdrawal. "Why didn't we

ever go to the stars?"

He was older than most of the other kids' dads.

To Hell with the Stars 3

There had been a time when Will was ashamed of that. He couldn't play ball and he was a

lousy hiker. The only time he'd tried to walk out over the Rise, they'd had to get help to

bring him home. But he laughed a lot, and he always listened. Will was reaching an age at

which he understood how much that counted for. "It costs a lot of money, Will. It's just

more than we can manage. You'll be going to Earth in two years to finish school."

The boy stiffened. "Dad, I mean the stars. Alpha Centauri, Vega, the Phoenix Nebula—"

"The Phoenix Nebula? I don't think I know that one."

"It's in a story by a man named Clarke. A Jesuit goes there and discovers something

terrible—"

The father listened while Will outlined the tale in a few brief sentences. "I don't think," he

said, "your mother would approve of your reading such things."

"She gave me the book," he said, smiling softly.

"This one?" It was bound irt cassilate, a leather substitute, and its title appeared in silver

script: Great Tales of the Space Age. He picked it up and looked at it with amusement. The

names of the editors appeared on the spine: Asimov and Greenberg. "I don't think we

realized, uh, that it was like that. Your mother noticed that it was one of the things they

found in the time vault on the Moon a couple of years ago. She thought it would be

educational."

"You'd enjoy it, Dad."

His father nodded and glanced at the volume. "What's the Space Age?"

"It's the name that people of the classical period used to refer to their own time. It has to

do with the early exploration of the solar system, and the first

4 JackMcDevftt

manned flights. And, I think, the idea that we were going to the stars."

A set of lights moved slowly through the sky. "Oh," his father said. "Well, people have had

a lot of strange ideas. History is full of dead gods and formulas to make gold and notions

that the world was about to end." He picked up the book, adjusted the lamp, and opened to

the contents page. His gray eyes ran down the listings, and a faint smile played about his

lips. "The truth of it, Will, is that the stars are a pleasant dream, but no one's ever going

out to them."

"Why not?" Will was puzzled at the sound of irritation in his own voice. He was happy to

see that his father appeared not to have noticed.

"They're too far. They're just too far." He looked up through the plexidome at the splinters

of light. "These people, Greenberg and Asimov: they lived, what, a thousand years ago?"

"Twentieth, twenty-first century. Somewhere in there."

"You know that new ship they're using in the outer System? The Explorer?"

"Fusion engines," said the boy.

"Yes. Do you know what its top recorded speed is?"

"About a hundred fifty thousand miles an hour."

"Much faster than anything this Greenberg ever saw. Anyhow, if they'd launched an

Explorer to Alpha Centauri at the time these stories were written, at that speed, do you

know how much of the distance they would have covered by now?"

Will had no idea. He would have thought they'd have arrived long ago, but he could see

that wasn't going to be the answer. His father produced a mini-comp, pushed a few

buttons, and smiled. "About five

To Hell with the Stars 5

percent. The Explorer would need another eighteen-thousand years to get there."

"Long ride," said Will grudgingly.

"You'd want to take a good book."

The boy was silent.

"It's not as if we haven't tried, Will. There's an artificial world, half-built, out beyond Mars

someplace. They were going to send out a complete colony, people, farm animals, lakes,

forest, everything."

"What happened?"

"It's too far. Hell, Will, life is good here. People are happy. There's plenty of real estate in

the solar system if folks want to move. In the end, there weren't enough volunteers for the

world-ship. I mean, what's the point? The people who go would be depriving their kids of

any kind of normal life. How would you feel about living inside a tube for a lifetime? No

beaches. Not real ones anyhow. No sunlight. No new places to explore. And for what? The

payoff is so far down the road that, in reality, there is no payoff."

"In the stories," Will said, "the ships are very fast."

"I'm sure. But even if you traveled on a light beam, the stars are very far apart. And a ship

can't achieve an appreciable fraction of that kind of velocity because it isn't traveling

through a vacuum. At, say, a tenth of the speed of light, even a few atoms straying in front

of it would blow the damned thing apart."

Outside, the Christmas lights were blue on the snow. "They'd have been disappointed," the

boy said, "at how things came out."

"Who would have?"

"Benford. Robinson. Sheffield."

The father looked again at the table of contents. "Oh," he said. He riffled idly through the

pages.

Greenberg, Martin H - Christmas on Ganymede and Other Stories (SS Coll).pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: