Dearest Enemy
BY FOX HOLDEN
Well trained actors are taught
the old tradition that the
show must go on. But what's
the point of it all when your
audience is very, very dead?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, October 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
From somewhere there was a buzzing sound. It kept repeating. The gentle throb of it vibrated his eardrums; the vibrations registered somewhere at the bottom edges of his brain. Buzzzz. Insistently, like a wasp. Like a trapped wasp.... But there were no wasps in the streamlined metal shell of Vanguard-I.
Better answer, another part of his brain whispered. Better answer ... they want to tell you what to do....
God!
Some sweat oozed from the dark bunches of his eyebrows, fogged the binocular eye-piece of the orbit-synchronized refractor, but he kept watching, he could not stop watching. Buzzz! Buzzzz!