Eccles
Grammar School
THE MAN WHO CAME BACK
Wainwright pushed the lever to bring his ship into
normal space, and, as the stars reappeared, started to look for the familiar
solar system on his astro-screen.
Twenty long years ago he
had disappeared beyond radio contact with the universe, on this first manned
voyage to the stars — now, back to Earth, with the saddening news that nowhere,
not about any of the stars he had visited — the Alpha Centauri, Vega, Orion,
Sirius, or any of the other dozen or so — was there a planet capable of
supporting more than a fractional number of Earth's teeming billions. By now,
he reflected, the number would be nearly doubled since he left — fervently, he
hoped that the next journey would be successful. If it was not — what then?
He made a routine check of
the co-ordinates; yes, everything appeared to be all right in the solar system,
viewed from this distance, far outside the orbit of Pluto. Then he realised
something — the radio which, when he had left, had been alive with the crackling
of the many stations in the solar system, was silent — not even the call-signs
of the interplanetary beacons, made up of a radioactive core, which should
never die out, broke the silence!
First, he checked the set, tried the laser receiver, the deep-space radio-telescope — yet he could find nothing to reassure him. Something dreadful had happened!
He then switched to
transmit, for the first time in twenty years, and sent out his call sign,
agreed upon before he left the orbit round the moon, where the ship, never
designed to go into the earth's atmosphere, had been built specially for the
one and only trip it would make. No reply penetrated the eerie silence of the
cabin and he began to be a little worried. Still, in a matter of days, his ship
would be in orbit round the Earth, waiting for a service craft to come and take
him home, and to check his tiny, one-man interstellar probe with the equipment
on board that had taken years of research and the finest brains on Earth to
develop. This equipment had worked perfectly, generating the field that had
carried him on a grand cruise to the nearer parts of the Milky Way. Without
developing any noticeable faults, it had brought him home — to what? He did
not know and dared not guess.
A few hours later, he shot
past silent Pluto, freezing under its eternal blanket of solid hydrogen, and
headed inwards, still receiving no replies to his urgent signals. Soon, he
should find out what had happened.
Uranus, Neptune, Saturn,
Jupiter — all appeared now uninhabited, as if the small exploratory stations
had been withdrawn and their dwellings left to decay.
The asteroids were the
same, hardly depleted at all yet, by the mining operations necessitated by the
growing need for the metals they contained. His ship had been built from most
of one of the smaller ones, XK 657, he remembered. He did not check very
closely, because he was still worried about the continued radio silence from
all sources.
Deeply worried now, he
turned up the power on his radio transmitter, and explored the moon with the
searching fingers of the electron telescope — no sign of man appeared at all,
and the moon seemed suddenly larger, and less pockmarked with craters than it
had been before.
Then he went cold all over,
as he realised that the Apennine range, cut through in many places over the
years of increasing colonisation, was completely whole — not a mark of the work
of centuries appeared!
Now with a real sense of
urgency he accelerated down towards the Earth. Surely he must find something —
his telescope would show him everything more than a hundred yards across, on
the earth. What would it reveal?
Settling into orbit just
outside the atmosphere he subjected Europe to an intense scrutiny. Where were
the City of Britain and the European Community. Only rolling hills and
ubiquitous forests mets his gaze.
All over the world it was
the same — forests covering all the land, with the polar caps shrunken and
thin. The continents, too, were out of place — somehow bunched together and
mis-shapen.
Then his numbed mind
realised that there would be no service ship to take him home. Wainwright burst
into insane laughter as it came home to him — he must starve and die there,
stranded on the fringes of the atmosphere in his twenty-fifth century starship,
above the primeval Earth.
R. H. Britton, 6USc. I
SCHOOL CAMP, 1966
Do you know Borrowdale, the
wettest area of the British Isles? We can now state that this fact is true.
Miss Green and Miss Boulton bravely assumed command over seven misguided fifth
and sixth formers, and took us to camp at Grange-in-Borrowdale from the 8th to
the 15th of August, and we would like to thank (?) them for doing so.
We soon discovered that the
quickest way to enlist help, concerning such complicated mano’euvres as
erecting tents and lighting primus stoves, was to stand about looking pathetic,
and wait for more experienced campers to offer their services.
Throughout the week we
enjoyed such things as hikes, swimming in the River Derwent (for the hardy ones
only!) and drinking coffee in the cafe at Grange. Most of the days ended with a
sing-song and supper (biscuits and hot chocolate, drinking chocolate) in the
large tent.
Saturday night was most
exciting. Borrowdale's worst storm in living memory occurred that night,
leaving a trail of destruction throughout the valley. The nine of us huddled
together in the large tent, singing to keep out the thunder and endeavouring
to mop up the stream that was flowing through the tent.
The rain finally gave
way to beautiful sunshine on the day that we came home.
We did enjoy
ourselves. Honestly!
J.
and N.
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