To Save Earth

BY EDWARD W. LUDWIG
ILLUSTRATED BY VAN DOGEN
The life of everyone on Earth depended on their sanity ... which they had long ago lost!
For more than six years the silver rocket was like a tomb buried at the Earth's center. It wore the blackness of interstellar space for a shroud, and ten thousand gleaming stars were as the eyes of hungry, waiting worms.
Five of the inhabitants of the rocket moved like zombies, stone-faced and dull-eyed, numb even to their loneliness.
The sixth inhabitant did not move at all. He sat silent and unseeing. The sixth inhabitant was mad.
There had been times when all of them—mad and near-mad—had forgotten that they hurtled through space, that they were men and that they were growing old. Occasionally they had even forgotten that the destiny of mankind might lie in their hands like a fragile flower to be preserved or crushed.
But now came a moment six years one month and five days after their departure from Earth. The sole planet of Sirius loomed green and blue in the ship's magni-screen. The sight of the shining planet was like a heavenly trumpet call, a signal for resurrection.
The inhabitants stirred, rubbed their eyes, and tried to exhume forgotten hopes and memories from the lethargy of their minds....
What do you think? asked Lieutenant Washington.
Captain Jeffrey Torkel, gaunt-faced and gray, stiffened his lean body. At this moment all memory had left him, like a wind-tossed balloon leaping out of his skull.
It's happened again , he thought. I've forgotten. Oh God, why must I keep forgetting?