The Project Gutenberg EBook of To Each His Star, by Bryce Walton

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Title: To Each His Star

Author: Bryce Walton

Release Date: February 22, 2010 [EBook #31355]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TO EACH HIS STAR ***

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Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Space Science Fiction May 1952. Extensive
research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this
publication was renewed.

[Illustration]

TO EACH HIS STAR

_by_ BRYCE WALTON

_"Nothing around those other suns but ashes and dried
blood," old Dunbar told the space-wrecked, desperate men.
"Only one way to go, where we can float down through the
clouds to Paradise. That's straight ahead to the sun with
the red rim around it."_

_But Dunbar's eyes were old and uncertain. How could they
believe in his choice when every star in this forsaken
section of space was surrounded by a beckoning red rim?_

* * * * *

There was just blackness, frosty glimmering terrible blackness, going
out and out forever in all directions. Russell didn't think they could
remain sane in all this blackness much longer. Bitterly he thought of
how they would die--not knowing within maybe thousands of light years
where they were, or where they were going.

[Illustration]

After the wreck, the four of them had floated a while, floated and
drifted together, four men in bulbous pressure suits like small
individual rockets, held together by an awful pressing need for each
other and by the "gravity-rope" beam.

Dunbar, the oldest of the four, an old space-buster with a face
wrinkled like a dried prune, burned by cosmic rays and the suns of
worlds so far away they were scarcely credible, had taken command.
Suddenly, Old Dunbar had known where they were. Suddenly, Dunbar knew
where they were going.

They could talk to o