G.B.S. - Mark V Read online

  «Yes, sir!»

  «How much food do you carry at this moment, Willis?»

  «Enough to last two hundred days in Space.»

  «Dear me, that's fine, fine! And self-recycling oxygen units, also, for two hundred days?»

  «Yes, sir. Now, how long will your batteries last, Mr.Shaw?»

  «Ten thousand years.» the old man sang out happily. «Yes, I vow, I swear! I am fitted with solar-cells which will collect God's universal light until I wear out my circuits.»

  «Which means you will outtalk me, Mr.Shaw, long after I have stopped eating and breathing.»

  «At which point you must dine on conversation, breathe past participles instead of air. But, we must hoi the thought of rescue uppermost. Are not the chance good?»

  «Rockets do come by. And I am equipped with radio signals ―»

  «Which even now cry out into the deep night: I'm here with ramshackle Shaw, eh?»

  I'm here with ramshackle Shaw, thought Willis, and was suddenly warm in winter.

  «Well, then, while we're waiting to be rescued, Charles Willis, what next?»

  «Next? Why―»

  They fell away down Space alone but not alone, fearful| but elated, and now grown suddenly quiet.

  «Say it, Mr.Shaw.»

  «Say what?»

  «You know. Say it again.»

  «Well, then.» They spun lazily, holding to each other. «Isn't life miraculous? Matter and force, yes, matter and force making itself over into intelligence and will.»

  «Is that what we are, sir?»

  «We are, bet ten thousand bright tin-whistles on it, we are. Shall I say more, young Willis?»

  «Please, sir,» laughed Willis. «I want some more.»

  And the old man spoke and the young man listened and the young man spoke and the old man hooted and they fell around a comer of Universe away out of sight, eating and talking, talking and eating, the young man bit-ing gumball foods, the old man devouring sunlight with his solar-cell eyes, and the last that was seen of them they were gesticulating and babbling and conversing and wav-ing their hands until their voices faded into Time and the solar system turned over in its sleep and covered them with a blanket of dark and light, and whether or not a res-cue ship named Rachel, seeking her lost children, ever came by and found them, who can tell, who would truly ever want to know?

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