A spacewreck presents many complications
not in the rule book. Take survival—it's quite
a basic instinct—but to some, so is politics!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
June 1955
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Quibblers may shove dictionaries in my face till the end of theuniverse and I will always maintain that almost anything you can nameis a matter of good luck or bad. Every great man owes his success toluck of some sort. What made him great is what he did with his luckafter he got it.
Had I been born eleven years before Senator Clive Littlebrook, I mighthave been brilliant to the point of stupidity, as he was. Nobodyplanned that I should be 24 when he was 35, and a space pilot insteadof a senator. He had eleven years to get smarter than me. But all ofhis brilliance and all of my youthful innocence couldn't have preventedour being spacewrecked on a lonely, uninhabited planet. We knew it waslonely and thought it was uninhabited, as it almost was. It was thesecond planet of an unimportant sun, Yuga 16, which lay unexpectedly inour path through hyperspace while I drove him to an important committeemeeting on Arcturus III. As a result I had to dump our fuel to alterour mass in order to avoid a direct collision. And naturally there wasnothing else to do but land on II Yuga 16.
So we were marooned and even if our radio had been powerful enough tosend out an S O S it would take years for our message to get anywhere.
Clive was philosophical about it. After cussing me for three hours, hedecided that we'd better make the best of our situation. We could fightwhen we had less important things to do.
"I have always maintained," he said, "that even in its smallestdetail, a human settlement must be political. And I've also believedthat politics must be designed to fit environment."
He always talked like that, so I wasn't particularly impressed till hehad talked a few minutes more, expanding his point.
"—so on this planet we will have a one-party, autocratic rule. I willbe the head of the government, and you will be my constituency."
"Huh?"
"It is perfectly clear. Dave," said Clive. "I have had experience inpolitical matters, therefore I'm more suited to governing the planet.You follow my orders and do all the work, and I'll do the planning andthinking."
These might not have been his exact words, but that was what he said.I was mad enough to want to sock him right there. But I knew that wemight get rescued someday and he could throw his weight around almostanywhere. The only time I had the authority to shove Clive Littlebrookaround was when he was a passenger on my spaceship, which he certainlywasn't now.
"The first thing to do will be to find shelter, food and water," hesaid.
"Don't be silly," I said, "we've got all those things on our spaceship."
"We don't know how long we'll be here," said Clive. "Since the supplieson our ship are limited, we must try to be self-supporting."
I've always liked that fable about the oak and the willow trees. Onewas big and strong, the other wasn't, but the willow tree lastedlongest because it bent and swayed before the wind. So with SenatorClive Littlebrook, I made like a willow tree. I humored him.
I started out to explore the spot where our ship landed. A couple ofmiles away were some rolling hills, covered with trees. Since we hadseen a number of small animals, I figured there would be game there,probably water too.
Clive came with me, not to explore, but