The Happy Castaway

Being space-wrecked and marooned is tough enough. But to face the horrors of such a planet as this was too much. Imagine Fawkes' terrible predicament; plenty of food--and twenty seven beautiful girls for companions.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1945. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Jonathan Fawkes opened his eyes. He was flat on his back, and a girl was bending over him. He detected a frightened expression on the girl's face. His pale blue eyes traveled upward beyond the girl. The sky was his roof, yet he distinctly remembered going to sleep on his bunk aboard the space ship.

"You're not dead?"

"I've some doubt about that," he replied dryly. He levered himself to his elbows. The girl, he saw, had bright yellow hair. Her nose was pert, tip-tilted. She had on a ragged blue frock and sandals.

"Is--is anything broken?" she asked.

"Don't know. Help me up." Between them he managed to struggle to his feet. He winced. He said, "My name's Jonathan Fawkes. I'm a space pilot with Universal. What happened? I feel like I'd been poured out of a concrete mixer."

She pointed to the wreck of a small space freighter a dozen feet away. Its nose was buried in the turf, folded back like an accordion. It had burst open like a ripe watermelon. He was surprised that he had survived at all. He scratched his head. "I was running from Mars to Jupiter with a load of seed for the colonists."

"Oh!" said the girl, biting her lips. "Your co-pilot must be in the wreckage."

He shook his head. "No," he reassured her. "I left him on Mars. He had an attack of space sickness. I was all by myself; that was the trouble. I'd stay at the controls as long as I could, then lock her on her course and snatch a couple of hours' sleep. I can remember crawling into my bunk. The next thing I knew you were bending over me." He paused. "I guess the automatic deflectors slowed me up or I would have been a cinder by this time," he said.

The girl didn't reply. She continued to watch him, a faint enigmatic smile on her lips. Jonathan glanced away in embarrassment. He wished that pretty women didn't upset him so. He said nervously, "Where am I? I couldn't have slept all the way to Jupiter."

The girl shrugged her shoulders.

"I don't know."

"You don't know!" He almost forgot his self-consciousness in his surprise. His pale blue eyes returned to the landscape. A mile across the plain began a range of jagged foothills, which tossed upward higher and higher until they merged with the blue saw-edge of a chain of mountains. As he looked a puff of smoke belched from a truncated cone-shaped peak. A volcano. Otherwise there was no sign of life: just he and the strange yellow-headed girl alone in the center of that vast rolling prairie.

"I was going to explain," he heard her say. "We think that we are on an asteroid."

"We?" he looked back at her.

"Yes. There are twenty-seven of us. We were on our way to Jupiter, too, only we were going to be wives for the colonists."

"I remember," he exclaimed. "Didn't the Jupiter Food-growers Association enlist you girls to go to the colonies?"

She nodded her head. "Only twenty-seven of us came through the crash."

"Everybody thought your space ship hit a meteor," he said.

"We hit this asteroid."

"But that was three years ago."

"Has it been that long? We lost track of time." She didn't take her eyes off him, not for a second. Such attention made him acutely self conscious. She said, "I'm Ann. Ann Clotilde. I was hunting when I saw your space ship. You had been thrown clear. You were lying all in a heap. I thought you were dead." She stooped, picked up a spear.

"Do you feel strong enough to hike back to our camp? It's only about four miles," she said.

"I think so," he said.