Produced by Greg Weeks, Geetu Melwani, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

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Transcriber’s Notes: 

This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe Science Fiction, December, 1959.  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.

A number of typographical errors found in the original text have been corrected in this version.  A list of these errors is found at the end of this book.

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The Answer

by

H. BEAM PIPER

For a moment, after the screen door snapped and wakened him, Lee Richardson sat breathless and motionless, his eyes still closed, trying desperately to cling to the dream and print it upon his conscious memory before it faded.

“Are you there, Lee?” he heard Alexis Pitov’s voice.

“Yes, I’m here.  What time is it?” he asked, and then added, “I fell asleep.  I was dreaming.”

It was all right; he was going to be able to remember.  He could still see the slim woman with the graying blonde hair, playing with the little dachshund among the new-fallen leaves on the lawn.  He was glad they’d both been in this dream together; these dream-glimpses were all he’d had for the last fifteen years, and they were too precious to lose.  He opened his eyes.  The Russian was sitting just outside the light from the open door of the bungalow, lighting a cigarette.  For a moment, he could see the blocky, high-cheeked face, now pouched and wrinkled, and then the flame went out and there was only the red coal glowing in the darkness.  He closed his eyes again, and the dream picture came back to him, the woman catching the little dog and raising her head as though to speak to him.

“Plenty of time, yet.”  Pitov was speaking German instead of Spanish, as they always did between themselves.  “They’re still counting down from minus three hours.  I just phoned the launching site for a jeep.  Eugenio’s been there ever since dinner; they say he’s running around like a cat looking for a place to have her first litter of kittens.”

He chuckled.  This would be something new for Eugenio Galvez—­for which he could be thankful.

“I hope the generators don’t develop any last-second bugs,” he said.  “We’ll only be a mile and a half away, and that’ll be too close to fifty kilos of negamatter if the field collapses.”

“It’ll be all right,” Pitov assured him.  “The bugs have all been chased out years ago.”

“Not out of those generators in the rocket.  They’re new.”  He fumbled in his coat pocket for his pipe and tobacco.  “I never thought I’d run another nuclear-bomb test, as long as I lived.”

“Lee!” Pitov was shocked.  “You mustn’t call it that.  It isn’t that, at all.  It’s purely a scientific experiment.”