The Earth Gods Are Coming by Kenneth Bulmer Read Free Book Online Page A

maiden name is Chalmers-Wong-Berkely."
    That rattled Gus Rattigan's rear dentures. "CWB!" Then he jerked his head forward, like a relay slapping over.
    "Laura. Laura CWB. Well, I'll be! I helped pin one of the first pairs of three-cornered trousers you ever wore!"
    Laura did not flush; she was too firmly set in the smart mould of sophistication among the fashionables to allow that sort of plebian betrayal of her emotions. During the evasions that Admiral Rattigan had been going through, she had been growing closer and closer to a conviction that her husband was dead. When she at last allowed herself to look at it squarely, it made no impact on her emotions.
    And now this old dodderer was babbling about pinning trousers. She said, icily, "I cannot call to mind that no doubt refreshing experience, Admiral. I naturally had no idea that you knew my father. But you do understand that my family—"
    "I haven't seen Jack CWB in, what is it, five or six years. As a marine colonel-admiral, he hasn't been in my orbit for years. Your brothers? Chuck and Hsi and Pierre? Are they—?
    "Chuck is a' marine general, Hsi is a marine colonel, Pierre is a marine colonel. Also there is Andy; but he's a mere space navy captain ... so ..."
    "I take your point, Laura. Well, well!" Rattigan, despite the knife this girl had slipped in under his ribs, was beaming fatuously. Friendships made in" space endure. Even so ; he hadn't anticipated that old Jack CWB's girl would turn out quite so—quite so—what, case hardened?
    "So you see, Admiral, I intend to know what has happened to my husband. And if you refuse to tell me, then I shall take the matter elsewhere."
    Rattigan sat forward in his chair and steepled his fingers.
    "Mrs. Inglis ... Laura," he said, staring hard at her and trying to pierce beneath that smart shell. "I will tell you this. Roy was on a dangerous mission in deep space." Rattigan was again grim, gray, broadside-battering space navy admiral. "Tell me, how do you stand space? This business you mentioned with the CDB Disseminator ship. Could you stand up to a long haul in space?"
    Laura did not flinch—that would have been common; but she felt the whiplash of insufficiency within her. "I do not intend to go trailing about the Galaxy after Roy. I just want to know what's happened to him."
    "Is that why Roy has a desk job?"
    "What if it is? I see no reason to be ashamed of it. Roy was too high in the marines just to go space-hopping for the sheer love of boyish adventure. It was time he settled down."
    Rattigan, remembering Inglis' cold comment that there would be no trouble from his wife in his going off on a deep space trip, wondered where they'd come unstuck. Marriages smash easily if space hunger bites deep in one partner and cannot touch, except with fear, the mind and feelings of the other.
    "I'll tell you everything I'm allowed to," he said, at last, heavily. "Even if you could overcome your reluctance to space travel, Laura, I doubt that there'd be much use in going anywhere. We should have had reports in from his ship long since. There has been none. Only silence from out there in the lonely wastes beneath the stars."
    "You mean—he's lost? He's never coming back? He's dead?"
    Rattigan lowered his head.
    "Yes, Laura. This is what I believe."
    She stood up, her chic slimness out of place in the office. "I had anticipated it. I am, of course, deeply shocked. Very much upset. However, it does free me from bothering the family with divorce. They'd never approve of divorce in the CWB clan."
    Rattigan cocked his head back and looked at her. He was thinking of Inglis, and the lines on his face, and the way he'd taken the job and his understanding of what might be necessary.
    "Yes," he said. "There are so many things people don't approve of. It's lucky they don't have to meet very often."
    -

7
    Lieutenant Bergquist lifted the three-tined, beryl-dural fish spear up from the water. The fat, silver-scaled fish that was firmly pronged on