Long After Midnight by Ray Bradbury Page A

.
                 "Oh,
Mr. Shaw," he said. "Are you dead, then, oh God, are you really
dead?"
                 The
old man was what they called dead when a machine no longer spoke or tuned an
electric thought or moved. His dreams and philosophies were snow in his shut
mouth.
                 Willis
turned the body this way and that, looking for some cut, wound, or bruise on
the skin.
                 He
thought of the years ahead, the long traveling years and no Mr. Shaw to walk
with, gibber with, laugh with. Women in the storage shelves, yes, women in the
cots late at night, laughing their strange taped laughters and moving their strange machined motions, and saying the same dumb things that
were said on a thousand worlds on a thousand nights.
                 To
be alone. To fall.
                 "Oh,
Mr. Shaw," he murmured at last "Who did this to you?"
                 Silly
boy, whispered Mr. Shaw's memory voice. You know.
                 I
know, thought Willis.
                 He
whispered a name and ran away.
                 "Damn
you, you killed him!"
                 Willis
seized Clive's bedclothes, at which instant Clive, like a robot, popped wide
his eyes. The smile remained constant.
                 "You
can't kill what was never alive," he said.
                 "Son
of a bitch!"
                 He
struck Clive once in the mouth, after which Clive was on his feet, laughing in
some strange wild way, wiping blood from his lips.
                 "What
did you do to him?" cried Willis.
                 "Not
much, just—"
                 But
that was the end of their conversation.
                 "On
posts!" a voice cried. "Collision course!"
                 Bells
rang. Sirens shrieked.
                 In
the midst of their shared rage, Willis and Clive turned cursing to seize
emergency spacesuits and helmets off the cabin walls.
                 "Damn,
oh, damn, oh—d—"
                 Half-through
his last damn, Clive gasped. He vanished out a sudden hole in the side of the rocket.
                 The
meteor had come and gone in a billionth of a second. On its way out, it had
taken all the air in the ship with it through a hole the size of a small car.
                 My
God, thought Willis, he's gone forever.
                 What
saved Willis was a ladder he stood near, against which the swift river of air
crushed him on its way into Space. For a moment he could not move or breathe.
Then the suction was finished, all the air in the ship gone. There was only
time to adjust the pressure in his suit and helmet, and glance wildly around at
the veering ship which was being bombarded now as in a space war. Men ran, or
rather floated, shouting wildly, everywhere.
                 Shaw,
thought Willis unreasonably, and had to laugh. Shaw.
                 A
final meteor in a tribe of meteors struck the motor section of the rocket and
blew the entire ship apart. Shaw, Shaw, oh, Shaw, thought Willis.
                 He
saw the rocket fly apart like a shredded balloon, all its gases only impelling
it to more disintegration. With the bits and pieces went wild crowds of men, dismissed
from school, from life, from all and everything, never to meet face to face
again, not even to say farewell, the dismissal was so abrupt and their deaths
and isolation such a swift surprise.
                 Good-bye,
thought Willis.
                 But
there was no true good-bye. He could hear no weeping and no laments over his
radio. Of all the crew, he was the last and final and only one alive, because
of his suit, his helmet, his oxygen, miraculously spared. For what? To be alone
and fall?
                 Oh,
Mr. Shaw, oh, sir, he thought.
                 "No
sooner