CHAPTER 1

When the first space ship landed on that pleasant world (the only pleasant planet of which Alpha Centauri could boast) the crew was so happy to get rid of the passengers that they took off the moment they could. Not even the interminable boredom of the return trip was enough to make them want to stay in anything like proximity with the thirty men and thirty women who had been sentenced to be marooned as far from earth as was humanly possibly.

There had been maximum security prisons in the past. But this was the ultimate maximum. When the ship took off, the prisoners were isolated as no human beings ever had been in the recorded history of men.

It was part of a plan of course. Earth did want the planet inhabited just as earlier powers had wanted Mars colonized. But when no volunteers appeared despite the cleverest high pressure advertising campaigns, the alternative became clear. If no one wanted to go to the new planet, to New Australia, then someone would have to be forced to go there.

It was just too bad for the exiles, but they could not protest too loudly, since they had long since forfeited any claim on anyone's sympathy. A little back eddy of intransigent inner-directed people, fanatics in a world of other-directed humans, positive that they, and they alone, knew what was good and what was evil; the world heaved a communal sigh of relief when they were taken away. Attempting, as these sixty had, to turn back the clock, to bring back into being the dark days of the twenty-second century, was such a horrid crime as to merit even so harsh a sentence as they received.

* * * * *

The first hundred and fifty years on New Australia were, in a way, difficult. But not too difficult. To these inner-directed people fighting for existence on a new planet was precisely the kind of crusade which to them was worth living.

Five hundred years after they established themselves, their last scientist managed to set up a system of protective devices which prevented any communication with Mother Earth at all. No earth ship landed or took off, and no other means of communication had yet been devised that would work in interstellar space.

A thousand years later even the memory of earth had faded and grown dim. There were mentions of it of course in old books, but they were not the kind of books that these people read.

Their sun rose and set, their erratic moon rose when it seemed to feel like it, and sank seemingly just as randomly, their days were full and to them worth living.

All sixty of the first settlers had married. Sixty humans, thirty family names. They were, to these people, good names, and therefore there had never been felt any need for new patronymics.

The planet's sprawling surface now contained millions of people but all of them shared thirty last names. It was nothing for anyone to question since to them this had always been the case. Science as such was an unknown word. It was one of the things that the original sixty settlers had fought against. When they made their brave new world, science was one of the earth things that was jettisoned. This, of course, led to some strange circumstances....

James Comstock 101 had reached maturity. At thirty-five he felt that the time had come for him to leave the home nest and go out on his own. His mother, as was to be expected, fought against his plans. But dad came through, as good old dad would.

Dad had said, "Now mother, admittedly Jimmy is still a little boy, but even little boys have a right to strike out for themselves."

"But Father," mother only called him that when something serious was under discussion, for after all, "Father" was a term of ... Jimmy didn't know quite what to think of it as ... power? Awe? It was, in any event, a word that one did not bandy about.

"But Father," mother had become embarrassed, and surely that was a blush on her cheeks, "did you ... have you ever ... that is ... what about ... oh, you know."

Father had looked very serious. He had said, his voice deep in his chest, "You're right, of course. Come, son."

Then had come that conversation which had stunned Jimmy, opened up vistas unheard of, unthought of, really. So that was where babies came from.... If anyone but his Father had told him about it he'd have struck them, perhaps killed them. To think that his mother had suffered through such an abysmal, horrible experience ... and the results of that experience.... Tremors swept through him in retrospect.

But that had been five years previously and Jimmy had become a man then under his father's aegis. That first time had been cataclysmically awful. The whole atmosphere of that place had been so foreign to him that it was only because he knew that his father was waiting downstairs in the parlor, waiting for a good report from the fallen woman that enabled Jimmy to go through with it at all. Not that the woman had waxed very enthusiastic, but then, a creature like that....

* * * * *

His monthly visits to the brothel were now part of his being and although he still did not relish going, he forced himself to, for after all it was part of the duty of a man. He did so wish, however, that it was not necessary. Life would be so much simpler if he could just skip the whole unsavory thing.

Sighing, he pressed the button on the door. Inside the curtained window the brash lights of the place, red as sin, shone on his weakly handsome face. The tinkle of the piano droned on.

Swinging the door wide, the fat madame said jovially, "Jimmy my boy. Come on in and let joy be unrefined."

Shuddering delicately and wishing that the madame would not be quite so robust, Jimmy inched his way into the parlor. The red plush chairs and the dingy lights were just as they always were. At the piano the little man looked up, said, "Hi-ya, Jimmy, how's every little thing?"

"Pretty good, professor, pretty good." The whole conversation was as stereotyped as the act which would follow it. Sometimes Jimmy wished that just once the madame would sneer at him, or the professor be grouchy, but they never were.

Lydia came down the stairs, her wrapper as dirty and unkempt as it always was. He wondered if she had a succession of these wrappers all equally dilapidated, or if she owned just one which she managed to keep looking the same way all the time.

Jimmy wished too, that Lydia were a little older. It seemed somehow a little indecent for her to be only forty. A child like that should not be forced to make a living the way she had to, but then they were all about her age. Jimmy had shopped around, tried to find an older woman but had been forced back into Lydia's arms. After all, she had been the one Father selected for him and good old dad knew best.

She said, "Come on upstairs honey lamb."

He followed her dolefully, averting his eyes from her full breasts which were altogether too prominent through the tight cloth of the wrapper.

Her room looked as if it had not been cleaned since the previous month. Stuck to the mirror was the picture of The Grandfather that always embarrassed him. The stern old eyes should not be forced to look down on the scenes in this room. Jimmy had tried to turn the picture to the wall one time, but Lydia had become hysterical and he had given up. As a matter of fact it was only after a long argument and an increase in fee that Jimmy had been able to force her to turn out the light in the room when they did--what they did.

The old brass bed jingled just as embarrassingly as ever when he sat down on the edge of it to remove his shoes. It was only by keeping his eyes on his stockinged feet that he was able to avoid looking at Lydia who had dropped her wrapper to the floor and was now shamelessly considering herself in front of the mirror that lined the whole wall.

That had been the main reason he had insisted on the light being extinguished. The combination of the wall of mirror, the ceiling mirror and the searching eyes of The Grandfather were just more than he could bear.

There was no use, he knew, in asking Lydia not to look at her n..e body. She had told him many times that she enjoyed doing it; there was no law against it and what was he going to do about it?

Of course there _was_ a law against women admiring themselves in any way, let alone n..e and in front of a mirror, but the law, of course, did not apply to p.........s.

Whistling gaily, Lydia dropped onto the bed next to him and wound her arms about him. Almost dying with embarrassment he mumbled, "Lydia, the light ... you promised."

Grumbling, she switched off the light. Then it began, again.

But this time, right in the middle, a lancing pain unlike anything he had ever experienced shot through his heart. The hurt was so great that he cried out in agony.

Lydia, unknowing, said cheerfully. "Attaboy. That's what I like to hear."

It was only after he gasped, "Don't ... stop ... my heart ... I think I'm going to die ..." that she finally stopped and turned on the light. His face was whiter, much whiter than the grey pillow case under his head. His lips were purple. He still felt what he could only visualize as iron fingers pressing into his heart.

Racing out of bed the girl ran towards the door. She gasped. "I'll call the madame, get a doctor...."

Crouched on the bed in agony, his hand pressing deep into the center of the pain, he was still able to retain the presence of mind to call weakly, "Put on your wrapper, Lydia, you can't go out that way."

Then the pain became so great that he passed out.

* * * * *

When he opened his eyes he was in bed but it was another bed, with crisp white linen on it. The pain, he was grateful to find, had eased up.

The adult woman in the nurse's uniform, who must have been a pleasant sixty-five, bent over him and whispered, "There, there, you'll feel much better now."

"The doctor?" he whispered.

"Coming." Her sweet face was wreathed in an angelic smile. Her buxom body was omnipresent. Wondering what kind of perverted monster he was, he found that he was fantasying her in Lydia's bed. If only fallen women were mature, like this one, so many of his problems would be easier of solution. He guessed he just did not like young chits and that was all there was to it.

Luckily the doctor entered the room before the fantasy could go too far. Feeling mentally defiled, he greeted the doctor anxiously, glad of the interruption. "Doctor, do you know what's wrong with me?"

"Yes son," the white-haired elderly man was slow of speech, he considered each syllable before he allowed it to leave his thin lips. His sunken cheeks and hollow eyes were so typical of the whole medical profession that Jimmy found himself wondering, as he had before, what there was about doctoring that made men look like this.

"What do I have, doctor?" Jimmy's voice was tremulous.

"I've got bad news for you, son." It must have taken three minutes for the single sentence to be articulated by the doctor.

Sweating, Jimmy wondered what he had ever done, what commandment he could have unconsciously broken that was now punishing him for his sin.

"What is the cure, doctor?"

"First," the doctor said, "we must consider the disease."

Jimmy wasn't the least bit interested in what disease he had, there were cures for all known diseases. But he waited with bated breath to be told what terrible, what terrifying thing he would have to do in order to be cured.

"You have," the doctor said even more slowly, "angina pectoris."

Scrambling through his memory, Jimmy tried to remember what heart patients had to do. All he could think of at the moment was the treatment for arterio-sclerosis. It was so awful that he found himself saying a little prayer of thankfulness to The Grandfather, that he did not have to indulge in that cure. Adultery was the only known cure for hardening of the arteries and the prospect of what he would have had to go through made Jimmy almost glad that he had angina. Imagine, he kept thinking, "I'd have had to get married and then be untrue to my wife...."

His gratitude faded a little when the doctor's droning voice went on, "As you may or may not know, son, the only cure for what you've got is drunkenness. We'll have to make you into an alcoholic, boy. I'm sorry."

The world reeled.

Jimmy had seen drunks, who hadn't, but the thought of having to share their disgraceful conduct was more than he could bear. He gasped, "I won't do it. I'd rather die."

"Ummm ..." the doctor said, "a lot of them say that ... but remember, boy, suicide is what you're talking about!"

Suicide, Jimmy thought sickly, the sin against The Grandfather!

Horrible as the cure for his disease was, he'd have to go through with it. But what would mother think when he came reeling home, singing songs, consorting with ... he retched. No more seeing Lydia once a month, he'd have to consort with fallen women all the time....

Thank Grandfather, he thought dully, that dad is dead. It was the only thing for which he could feel grateful at the moment.

"Cheer up," the grey-faced doctor said and his voice was if anything more doleful than before, "be grateful you don't have cancer."

That was another thing for which to be grateful. The cure for cancer was the only thing he had ever heard of that was more horrible than that awful cure for arterio-sclerosis.

"Of course," the doctor said, "before we release you, we'll test you for all the known diseases."

Grandfather above, he thought despairingly, suppose something else is wrong with me!