Project Gutenberg's Happy Ending, by Fredric Brown and Dallas McCord Reynolds

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Title: Happy Ending

Author: Fredric Brown
Dallas McCord Reynolds

Release Date: June 22, 2009 [EBook #29206]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_A world had collapsed around this man--a world that would never
shout his praises again. The burned-out cities were still and dead,
the twisted bodies and twisted souls giving him their last salute in
death. And now he was alone, alone surrounded by memories, alone and
waiting ..._

happy
ending

_by MACK REYNOLDS
and FREDRIC BROWN_

Sometimes the queerly shaped Venusian trees seemed to talk
to him, but their voices were soft. They were loyal people.

There were four men in the lifeboat that came down from the
space-cruiser. Three of them were still in the uniform of the Galactic
Guards.

The fourth sat in the prow of the small craft looking down at their
goal, hunched and silent, bundled up in a greatcoat against the coolness
of space--a greatcoat which he would never need again after this
morning. The brim of his hat was pulled down far over his forehead, and
he studied the nearing shore through dark-lensed glasses. Bandages, as
though for a broken jaw, covered most of the lower part of his face.

He realized suddenly that the dark glasses, now that they had left the
cruiser, were unnecessary. He slipped them off. After the
cinematographic grays his eyes had seen through these lenses for so
long, the brilliance of the color below him was almost like a blow. He
blinked, and looked again.

They were rapidly settling toward a shoreline, a beach. The sand was a
dazzling, unbelievable white such as had never been on his home planet.
Blue the sky and water, and green the edge of the fantastic jungle.
There was a flash of red in the green, as they came still closer, and he
realized suddenly that it must be a _marigee_, the semi-intelligent
Venusian parrot once so popular as pets throughout