DIE, SHADOW!
BY ALGIS BUDRYS
He began as a hero. Eons later and a
universe away, he became instead a god!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1963.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
I've come a long, long way to die alone, David Greaves thought as Defiance tumbled through the misty shroud of Venus, hopelessly torn apart by the explosion in her engines. On the console in front of him, the altimeter was one of the last few meaningful instruments, and it told him there were only a few tortured miles remaining before the ship he had brought this far—had spent his fortune in building when no government would yet consider risking a manned rocket on his flight—would smash down to its doom on a planet no man had ever walked.
Battered and tossed in his seat by the ship's crazy tumbling, Greaves tensed the oak-hard muscles of his arms and thrust himself up to his feet. He wasn't dead yet. He wasn't dead and, if the slim chance paid off, he'd still be present to laugh in the government's face when the first, safe, cautious official venture finally made its way across the emptiness between Earth and the Sun's second planet.
Dragging himself from handhold to handhold, his tendons cracking with the strain, he levered himself toward the Crash Capsule, forced open its hatch and pulled himself through, while the winds of Venus tore at the shattered hull and the scream of Defiance's passage through the murky sky rose to a savage howl.