The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Legion of Lazarus, by Edmond Hamilton

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Title: The Legion of Lazarus

Author: Edmond Hamilton

Release Date: May 23, 2010 [EBook #32486]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The Legion Of Lazarus

By Edmond Hamilton

[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Imagination April 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
on this publication was renewed.]

[Sidenote: Being expelled from an air lock into deep space was the legal
method of execution. But it was also the only way a man could qualify
for--The Legion Of Lazarus]

_It isn't the dying itself. It's what comes before. The waiting, alone
in a room without windows, trying to think. The opening of the door, the
voices of the men who are going with you but not all the way, the walk
down the corridor to the airlock room, the faces of the men, closed and
impersonal. They do not enjoy this. Neither do they shrink from it. It's
their job._

_This is the room. It is small and it has a window. Outside there is no
friendly sky, no clouds. There is space, and there is the huge red
circle of Mars filling the sky, looking down like an enormous eye upon
this tiny moon. But you do not look up. You look out._

_There are men out there. They are quite naked. They sleep upon the
barren plain, drowsing in a timeless ocean. Their bodies are white as
ivory and their hair is loose across their faces. Some of them seem to
smile. They lie, and sleep, and the great red eye looks at them forever
as they are borne around it._

"_It isn't so bad," says one of the men who are with you inside this
ultimate room. "Fifty years from now, the rest of us will all be old, or
dead._"

_It is small comfort._

_The one garment you have worn is taken from you and the lock door
opens, and the fear that cannot possibly become greater does become
greater, and then suddenly that terrible crescendo is past. There is no
longer any hope, and you learn that wi