The ship went out safely, came back
safely. The pilot was unaware of anything
wrong. Somewhere in the depths of his brain
was locked the secret that made him
MAN ALONE
BY DON BERRY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Phoenix I belled out smoothly in the region of a G-type star. There was a bright flare as a few random hydrogen atoms were destroyed by the ship's sudden appearance. One moment space had been empty except for the few drifting atoms, and the next—the ship was there, squat and ugly.
Inside, a bell chimed sweetly, signalling the return to a universe of mass and gravitation and a limiting velocity called C. Colonel Richard Harkins glanced briefly out his forward port, and saw no more than he had expected to see.
At this distance the G-type star was no brighter or yellower than many another he had seen. For a man it might have been hard to tell which star it was. But the ship knew.
Within one of the ungainly bulges that sprouted along the length of Phoenix I, a score of instruments mindlessly swung to focus their receptors on the nearest body of star-mass.