The 40th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK by Robert F. Young

Author:Robert F. Young [Young, Robert F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, fantasy, pulp, short stories, classic
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2018-01-22T21:00:00+00:00

PROMISED PLANET

Originally published in If, December 1955.

The European Project was a noble undertaking. It was the result of the efforts of a group of noble men who were acquainted with the tragic histories of countries like Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Rumania, and Poland—countries whose juxtaposition to an aggressive totalitarian nation had robbed them of the right to evolve naturally. The European Project returned that right to them by giving them the stars. A distant planet was set aside for each downtrodden nation, and spaceships blasted off for New Czechoslovakia, New Lithuania, New Rumania, and New Poland, bearing land-hungry, God-fearing peasants. And this time the immigrants found still waters and green pastures awaiting them instead of the methane-ridden coal mines which their countrymen had found centuries ago in another promised land.

There was only one mishap, in the entire operation: the spaceship carrying the colonists for New Poland never reached its designated destination…

—RETROSPECT; Vol. 16,

The Earth Years (Galactic History Files)

* * * *

The snow was falling softly and through it Reston could see the yellow squares of light that were the windows of the community hall. He could hear the piano accordion picking up the strains of “O Moja Dziewczyna Myje Nogi.” “My Girl is Washing Her Feet,” he thought, unconsciously reverting to his half-forgotten native tongue; washing them here on Nowa Polska the way she washed them long ago on Earth.

There was warmth in the thought, and Reston turned contentedly away from his study window and walked across the little room to the simple pleasures of his chair and his pipe. Soon, he knew, one of the children would come running across the snow and knock on his door, bearing the choicest viands of the wedding feast—kielbasa perhaps, and golabki and pierogi and kiszki. And after that, much later in the evening, the groom himself would come round with the wódka, his bride at his side, and he and Reston would have a drink together in the warm room, the snow, white and all-encompassing without, perhaps still falling, and if not still falling, the stars bright and pulsing in the Nowa Polska sky.

It was a good life, hard sometimes, but unfailing in its finer moments. In his old age Reston had everything he wanted, and above all he had the simple things which are all any man wants in the final analysis; and if he occasionally needed to apply a slightly different connotation to a familiar word or two in order to alleviate a recurrent sadness, he harmed no one, and he did himself much good. At sixty, he was a contented if not a happy man.

But contentment had not come to him overnight. It was a product of the years, an indirect result of his acceptance of a way of life which circumstance and society had forced upon him…

Abruptly he got up from his chair and walked over to the window again. There was a quality about the moment that he did not want to lose: the reassuring yellow squares of

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