So when I walked into the grocery, being Edna, she merely turned to face me. She asked me where I’d been. Mars, I said. She hasn’t spoken to me since.

  A reporter from our local paper interviewed me that night and wrote up a crazy story about how I’d claimed I had established consulates all over the solar system. I hadn’t; I’d just told him my friend Fatty Myers was the acting consul for Earth on Mars.

  The story was reprinted in one of the Boston papers as a little back-page squib with a humorous illustration. That’s all. I’ve been going crazy since, trying to get someone to believe me.

  Remember, there’s a time limit: one riz, two at the most.

  For the last time, then, to anyone who’s interested in space travel after all I’ve said: Stop knocking yourself out trying to break through a barrier of forces-in-balance that isn’t meant to be broken through. You have to come down to Cassowary Cove and take a boat out and wait for It-of-Shoin to appear. I’ll help, and you can be sure that when it gets to him, Fatty Myers will verify and do whatever else is necessary. But you won’t be able to go to Venus or Mars any other way.

  You need a visa.

  Afterword

  THIS WAS THE SECOND story Ted Sturgeon agented for me. He liked it (at least he always said he liked it) and kept telling me it was a better story than I thought it was.

  I don’t know what went wrong with it in the writing. Well, for one thing, I may have been reaching for something that was a bit beyond my strength at the time—I mean all the It-of-Shoin stuff. For another, I think upon rereading it, I should have decided early on as between the comic and the cosmic; as it was, they kept getting in each other’s way. Finally, I was experimenting with something—the idiomatic narrative—that I was to do a little more successfully later on with stories like “Bernie the Faust” and “On Venus Have We Got a Rabbi.” When I wrote “Consulate,” I was dealing with both an unfamiliar idiom and an unfamiliar culture. I was, after all, even much more than I am now, an intellectual Brooklyn Jew. New England was only something I had read about.

  At least the editor of Thrilling Wonder thought it was a good story. And so, according to the letter columns of the magazine, did a good many of his readers.

  As far as I’m concerned? An early stage in the learning process. (But I am fond of the alien-and-the-mackerel bit.)

  Written 1947 / Published 1948

  The Last Bounce

  THERE WASN’T MUCH difference between Commissioner Breen’s office and the office of any other memorandum baron in Sandstorm, the interstellar headquarters of the Patrol on Mars. If you’ve seen one, Vic Carlton decided, you’d seen them all; and, in twelve years of standing at attention during the wet-with-tradition ceremony known as the Kiss of Death, he had seen them all—every last uncompromising whitewashed cubicle. Rooms as friendly as a surgical table.

  A few star maps speckling the glare from the walls; a bookcase filled with miscellaneous handbooks and manuals of space; one stiff thin chair behind the stiff, square desk; and, over the desk, the Scout Roll of Honor—names of 563 men who had laid down their lives in the Service: 563 casualties out of a total all-time roster of 1,420.

  Yet the Scouts were a volunteer service, and every year, all over the galaxy, young men broke their backs and overloaded their brains to get into it.

  The speech was pretty much the same as usual. Perhaps even better in one way: Breen was new to the job and slightly—well, embarrassed by this aspect of it. He kept his talk short; made the Kiss of Death almost a peck.

  He was tall and straight as they: he had no more than three years on Vic Carlton, the oldest of the three; and his blue uniform differed from theirs only in the badge of office, a gold star instead of a silver rocket, on his chest.

  “Lutz and O’Leary, you are under the command of Victor Carlton—one of the very few men on active duty with over ten years’ experience. Carlton, your two juniors have been certified as psychologically, physically, and educationally fit for this mission: no more can be said of any man. I must remind you that the Patrol has been called the glory of space and the Scouts the glory of the Patrol; but I need not remind you how jealously that glory should be guarded. Good scouting, good luck. That is all.”

  He exhaled a tiny gust of relief before shutting his mouth.

  All? Vic Carlton thought, as they saluted and about faced to the door. This is only the beginning. You know that, Breen. The danger and the horror—death perhaps, agony without death perhaps—start officially when the commissioner’s talk is finished. You should know: you decided you had a belly full six months ago and resigned from active duty for this sleek office job. When we walk out of your office, it’s only the beginning.

  Then he thought: Hey, those are dangerous ideas for a commander. Maybe Kay’s right; maybe I’m getting old.

  And then he thought: Breen’s only thirty-five; I’m thirty-two. I remember when I thought all commissioners were shambling wrecks held together by will-power and a handful of regulations. Why, Breen’s only thirty-five! I am getting old!

  They were out in the corridor, and a group of scouts being briefed for another set of missions swung down to the elevator with them. They clapped their helmets on, leaving the broad, flaring visors open.

  “Attaboy, O’Leary, take it on the bounce!”

  “You don’t know how lucky you are, Lutz. Unkillable Carlton is my idea of a commander for a rookie’s first mission.”

  “Look at Carlton, fellows. He’s bored! What a man!”

  “The first bounce is the hardest, O’Leary. Gee, I remember mine!”

  “Hey, Lutz, what’re you looking so green about? According to statistics, you have an even chance of coming back in one hunk!”

  “On the bounce, O’Leary. On the bounce.”

  Carlton watched his men. O’Leary was the one to look out for at this point. Lutz was still riding the enthusiasm of graduation from the academy; he might be frightened at his baptismal mission, but he was even more exhilarated. He wouldn’t be important until action started; and, even then, he’d probably have to be checked from daredevil stunts more than he would have to be encouraged to take a chance. But O’Leary was the one to watch.

  It was tough making your first bounce. Vic remembered his—was it nine? No, eleven years ago. A commander who’d been so badly off that he’d requested disenrollment in preference to making a bounce, the other junior so psychologically smashed that he’d become a permanent resident of the tiny Patrol Mental Hospital on Ganymede. A kind of carnivorous moss had almost got them: pretty screaming awful. But Vic had been patched up and made his bounce on the very next mission out of Sandstorm. You had to bounce right back or your nerve would go.

  Sure enough, O’Leary sounded off.

  “We drew a creampuff. The planet’s only three-tenths of a point off Earth-type.”

  The others hooted at that. “And it’s out around the Hole in Cygnus! Where they found a nova acting like a third-magnitude star and a meteor stream traveling at the speed of light! The part of the galaxy that never heard of Newton! You can have it!”

  “That region hasn’t even been adequately mapped, O’Leary. It may be the place where time warped in on itself and exploded, where the universe got started. A creampuff, he calls it! You can have it: I’ll be happy with a planet six full points off Earth-type, in a sane area like Virgo or Taurus or something.”

  “Sure, don’t kid yourself, O’Leary. But on the bounce, boy, take it on the bounce!”

  “Hey, Lutz, what’re you looking so green about?”

  Harry Lutz giggled weakly and wiped palm sweat off on his blue jumper. Carlton slapped him on the back, kneaded his shoulder blades. “Don’t worry, you have two experienced men behind you. We’ll take care of you, won’t we, O’Leary?”

  O’Leary looked up startled, then nodded seriously. “Sure; we’ll show you the ropes, kid.”

  Good. Get O’Leary’s mind off himself, get him to worrying about the rookie instead, and he’d have no time for a funk.

  The elevator stopped on the main floor of the Scout Operations Building unimaginatively decorated in azure plastic. Through the open double doors, Vic Carlton could see the mob of civilian personnel who always left their jobs when a mission took off. Death-watch in Sandstorm, the Scouts called it. Oh, well, he shrugged, it must be exciting for civilians. Man’s empire extends another couple of light-years into space—that was probably exciting to some people.

  Someone started the song—

  Bell-bottomed helmet, suit of SP blue,

  He’ll shoot the ether like his daddy used to do…

  The three had linked arms when they began singing. Their feet beating the rhythm, they marched down to the slender little ship with the long blue stripe that lay waiting for them at the end of Sagittarius Runway. Behind them, their honor guard of Scouts bawled the chorus at the pink Martian sky. On either side, people cheered. Evidently, Vic reflected, this was something to cheer about.

  “What about you,” Kay had asked last night, after he had hummed the song, lying with his head on her lap and watching the two moons of Mars coruscating overhead. They’d walked in the Rosenbloom Desert for two hours, and when she’d sat down in the coarse red sand, he’d put his head on her lap and hummed the song because he felt so strangely tranquil. “What about you—don’t you want a son? Don’t you want him to—to shoot the ether like his daddy used to do?”

  “Kay, please. Of course I want a son. As soon as we can get married—”

  “But you can’t. Not while you’re on active duty with the Scouts. You can’t have a son. The only children that active Scouts have are orphans. That’s different, Vic. Orphans who never have seen their daddies.”

  He grimaced at her brown eyes, certain and serene under the perfect piles of blonde coiffure. “Look, I want to marry you, girl. I’m going to marry you. And I agree with you that we can’t build a home life around Scout missions.”

  “Yes, Vic.”

  “You’re right about my being no good to you—or any woman—until I decide on my own that one planet is good enough for me. You don’t want me counting jet-trails wistfully; and you don’t want me with all the fire gone out—you said so yourself. I’ve got to want to build a family as much as I want to scout.”

  “Yes, Vic.”

  He made an impatient gesture and cut it short as he watched her draw five parallel trails in the sand with her fingers. “So? So it’s just a matter of patience on your part, just a matter of waiting until I’m ready to chuck the whole thing. After all, I’ve been a Scout for twelve years; the odds against that length of service are pretty high—most men who survive five years of it are ready to quit. You’ll have me soon, Kay—and not as a shoulder-shrugging has-been, but a guy who’s adventured enough in space and is ready to roost, I’m still young by ordinary standards—only thirty-two. Trip after next, three or four missions from now maybe, I’ll be ready. Soon.”

  A pause. Then—“Yes, Vic.” Her voice was low, agreeable.

  Somehow, in retrospect, it seemed like the most final of quarrels.

  Vic found himself looking for Kay past O’Leary’s huge head. She worked in Administration; she’d be in the bunch near the great white dome. He wished he could kiss her before they took off; but tradition demanded that farewells be said the night before and nothing interrupt the march to the ship.

  He caught sight of her just as they reached the part of the song that always made her wince. Vic grinned in anticipation.

  If it’s a girl, dress her up in lace;

  If it’s a boy, send the bastard off to space!

  She winced so hard, screwing her eyes down and pulling her shoulders up, that they had marched past her and into the ship before she looked around again.

  The two regular Patrolmen who were on duty saluted and said, “Ship in good order. Commander. Luck.” They left.

  The other Scouts gave them one more round of handshakes before climbing silently through the open locks.

  Vic pressed the green hexagonal button that shut the airlocks, and, leaping to the portholes, they all took a last quick glimpse of Sandstorm’s concrete buildings rising like so many bandaged thumbs out of the rosy Martian plain.

  “Jets in good order, Commander,” the voice of the ground-crew chief announced. “Awaiting takeoff.”

  “Mission crew ready,” Vic told him in the communaphone, as Lutz and O’Leary went to their stations. “Taking off.”

  His eyes swept around the pilot-room, focused on his juniors for a double-check, came to rest on the clicking gauges.

  “Jets away,” he said and cut the communaphone connection.

  He counted to fifteen slowly, thinking of the immemorial cry of “Jets away! Jets away away, jets away!” that was being sung out on the ground below as the crowd scattered.

  “Fifteen,” he said, and O’Leary pulled the red switch the requisite two notches, while Lutz swung the tiny wheels of the balance control. They jerked slightly in the seats, then, as Vic adjusted acceleration helix, they relaxed comfortably. Mission begun.

  Mission 1572 on the schedule of the Scouting Patrol; Number 29 in Vic’s personal Service Record back in Sandstorm, the last page of which was headed “Circumstances of Death—Posthumous Citations—Provision for Dependents.” Not many Service Records could count that high. When a man passed his twentieth mission, they began calling him “Lightning” Ching Lung or “Safety-First” Feuerbach or “Two-Blast” Bonislavski. You had to hang some such nickname on a man who, mission in, mission out, came back with three-fourths of his skin missing or some weird virus that made the medics dither and dream up whole new pathologies—but a man who always came back. Until, of course, there was that one time—

  They called Vic “Unkillable” Carlton, and there were only two Scouts now shooting the ether who had longer active service. One of his very few ambitions was to be the Senior Scout of Space and wear the gold uniform that went with the rating. It meant that you never paid for anything anywhere, that you walked through Patrol cordons, that you were practically a one-man parade wherever you went. That would be nice, Vic thought; it was childish and garish, but it gave a man some sort of goal at this stage of his life. It meant that even in the Scouts who were the chosen of the Patrol, in turn the chosen of the galaxy’s male population, you were still unique. It also meant that one day, you might cut your throat while shaving with a safety razor.

  Cute idea, the Scouts. Economical. Instead of losing thirty or a hundred highly trained scientists at a clip, civilization, at most, would lose three men. True, the three would be rather unusual men with remarkable qualifications; but in a galaxy swarming with youths thirsty for a nice suicidal-type job in adventurous surroundings with a little glory, fair pay and plenty of room for advancement, the three would be replaced. And Honor-Rolled.

  A Patrol cruiser happens to run across a previously uncharted star which is the one-in-a-thousand with a family of planets. Spectroscopic observations are made; and, if the cruiser has the time, robotjets are sent out to circle one or two of the more likely-looking worlds and make automatic observations on their atmospheres, ground conditions, evidences of intelligent life and the like. If there are no signs of an indigenous civilization anywhere, the cruiser goes on about its business and reports its findings to Sandstorm HQ at the earliest opportunity.

  Sandstorm files the information along with a mass of deductions by physicists, chemists and biologists. Five years later, say, it becomes necessary to make a more detailed examination of one of the planets. Maybe the surface promises interesting mineral deposits; maybe it’s a good spot for a fueling station or Patrol outpost or a colony; maybe it’s just that someone important is curious.

  Three available Scouts—one A, one B and one C Scout—are alerted. They are briefed for a month on all data handy, given the best ship and equipment that can be built, wished lots and lots of luck and sent off. If they aren’t back in ninety days, Terran time, a heavy cruiser crowded to the stern jets with fancy weapons and brilliant minds goes after them to find out how they were knocked off. If any or all of them return in the prescribed time, their reports are examined and, on the basis of their experiences, an expedition is organized to do whatever job is necessary, from mapping the site of a colony to laying the foundations of an astronomical observatory.

  The Scouts are sitting ducks. Oh, sure, their motto is “Take No Chances” and Scout Regulations 47 to 106 deal with safety measures to be observed. They are supposed to wander about the new planet with recording instruments, getting first-hand, on-the-spot data. That’s all the books say they’re supposed to do. And back in the academy—

  “Back in the academy,” Lutz confided to O’Leary as, outside the orbit of Pluto, they prepared to switch to the interstellar jets that would sweep them to their destination at several times the speed of light, “back in the academy, they told us three-fourths of all Scout casualties are caused by carelessness or disregard of the safety regulations. The commissioners said that as discipline improves and more men adhere closely to regulations, casualties will inevitably go down.”

  “They will, huh?” O’Leary glanced round at Carlton and sucked in his lower lip. “I’m right glad to hear that. It’s nice to know that casualties are going down. I’ll take a commissioner’s word against nasty statistics any old time. Down, huh?”

  Harry Lutz completed his sight and handed the instrument to O’Leary for checking. “Sure. We function simply as an advance-information crew. At the first hint of danger we’re supposed to clear out. ‘Better lose your bonus than lose your life.’ ”

  “And outside that fat bonus for a full scouting period on a planet, what other compensations are there to this wacky job?” O’Leary nodded at Carlton. “Objective lined up, Vic. We can shoot. You try coming back from a mission with a scary story, boy; you’ll find yourself demoted to watch-dog duty in the Patrol before you can say Al-debaran Betelgeuse Capricorn. Or take that last mission I was on. Nothing dangerous on the planet—nothing, that is, that wanted to do us harm. But there was a bird thing with funny wings which generated a high-frequency sound wave as it flew. Pure biological accident, but it happened to be on exactly the same frequency as our supersonic pistols. Yeah.”