The Project Gutenberg EBook of Graveyard of Dreams, by Henry Beam Piper

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Title: Graveyard of Dreams

Author: Henry Beam Piper

Release Date: April 3, 2006 [EBook #18109]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Transcriber's note: This etext was produced from Galaxy
Magazine February 1958. Extensive research did not uncover
any evidence that the copyright on this publication was
renewed.

Graveyard of Dreams

By H. Beam Piper

_Despite Mr. Shakespeare,
wealth and name
are both dross compared with
the theft of hope--
and Maxwell had to rob
a whole planet of it!_

Standing at the armor-glass front of the observation deck and watching
the mountains rise and grow on the horizon, Conn Maxwell gripped the
metal hand-rail with painful intensity, as though trying to hold back
the airship by force. Thirty minutes--twenty-six and a fraction of the
Terran minutes he had become accustomed to--until he'd have to face it.

Then, realizing that he never, in his own thoughts, addressed himself as
"sir," he turned.

"I beg your pardon?"

It was the first officer, wearing a Terran Federation Space Navy uniform
of forty years, or about ten regulation-changes, ago. That was the sort
of thing he had taken for granted before he had gone away. Now he was
noticing it everywhere.

"Thirty minutes out of Litchfield, sir," the ship's officer repeated.
"You'll go off by the midship gangway on the starboard side."

"Yes, I know. Thank you."

The first mate held out the clipboard he was carrying. "Would you mind
checking over this, Mr. Maxwell? Your baggage list."

"Certainly." He glanced at the slip of paper. Valises, eighteen and
twenty-five kilos, two; trunks, seventy-five and seventy kilos, two;
microbook case, one-fifty kilos, one. The last item fanned up a li