THE DAWN GAME

                        from Spaceman's Paradise

                                By Eugene Pearce

Rupert tossed his little ball up into the air.  Up it soared into the blue
skies until it almost disappeared.  Then it hung suspended for a moment before
it plunged back to Earth.  The second it struck the ground, the sun rose and
dawn came.

Picking up his ball, Rupert walked away feeling slightly foolish.  He didn't
know why he played this silly game.  Every morning, just before dawn, for
thirty-five years he had gone out to toss the ball.  And all because of that
promise he had given his father.

His father had played the game, too, and his grandfather.  The way he
understood it, generations untold had played the game for thousands of years
wherever they lived...  The promise he gave was to play the game and make his
son promise to play after he died.  But Rupert couldn't keep that part of the
promise.  He had no son.

Across the street Mrs. Johnson stood staring at him.  He felt it was most
impolite of her to do it, but he couldn't think of any way to stop her, so he
shook a fist in her direction.  She disappeared into the house.

He was old now.  There had been a time when his step had been filled with the
bounce of youth and he had been a lady's man.  The bounce had dissipated to a
shuffle and the ladies he had wooed were gone.  All his old friends were gone
and he was tired.

Rest was his; he was retired.  Except for getting up early and playing the
game, he had nothing important to do.  And the game wasn't important, except
that he had never broken a promise and wasn't going to now.  Besides, in thirty
years it had become a habit to play the game.

Later in the day, when the housework was done, Rupert decided to take a walk. 
The skies were cloudy but he didn't bother with an umbrella.  He was an
optimist at heart.

He carried the little ball with him and studied it for the first time in years.
It was an odd little ball, apparently made of rubber.  He dropped it to the
pavement and it bounced back into his hand.  "Quite strange," he thought, "it
never bounces at dawn."

The streets were cast in grey and he thought that it was time to head
homewards.  "Wouldn't do to get caught in the rain.  Colds are bad things at my
age.  Besides," he thought, "Jimmy is coming for dinner."

But the rain came before he made it back and he was soon soaked through and
through.  As he changed clothes, he muttered dire threats against the gods of
the weather.

Jimmy called an hour later to say he couldn't make it for dinner.  They were
running night tests on the space-survival suit.  Rupert said he understood and
went about throwing away the dinner.

The next day he was feverish when he woke, and he was plagued with a nagging
cough.  He would never have gotten out of bed but for his promise.  So he
struggled outside and tossed up the little ball.  It flickered in the air and
fell to earth.  The sun rose.  As he walked into his house, Rupert noticed it
was five minutes late.

Jimmy came in the afternoon and he found Rupert in his bed.  It was the first
time the old man had ever stayed abed, as far as Jimmy knew.  He called for a
doctor.

When the old man was safely in the hospital, Jimmy went to the base.  In his
pocket was the rubber ball.  Rupert had pressed on him and made him promise to
throw it in the air at dawn.  He said the sun wouldn't rise if it weren't done.

The night tests on the space-survival suit were due to be finished that night. 
Jimmy carried the little ball with him so he could toss it up at dawn.  He knew
of the ritual that Rupert and his family had gone through for so many
generations and he was quite willing to carry it on for the old man.

The suit was an experimental model.  It was meant to withstand an atomic
explosion and keep the wearer alive for five days afterwards.  The night tests
were to test the radar equipment and the infra-red and ultra-violet lights and
scanners.

After putting the suit through its paces for six hours, Jimmy took a break and
phoned the hospital.  Rupert was dead.  Pneumonia; nothing they could do. 
Feeling a great loss, Jimmy went back to work.

The next set of tests were to ascertain whether the suit would be useful for
scouting unfriendly country.

Just as the tests were finished, Jimmy looked at his watch and saw it was time
for the sun to rise.  Remembering his promise he groped for the little ball. 
It was gone, lost somewhere on the training field.

He turned to watch the dawn.

The freighter Lindsay picked Jimmy out of space three days later.  The captian
of the vessel put down the half-incoherent tale the boy told as hysterics over
being the only survivor of a planet that exploded.  Floating for three days in
space could unhinge anyone's mind.

Jimmy spent the next eight years of his life in an asylum.  At the end of that
time he stopped insisting that the planet would not have stopped spinning if he
had thrown the ball into the air.

It took him five years of combing the dust of the destoyed planet to find the
ball.  Somehow, he knew it wouldn't be destoyed.  He was right.  When he found
it, it didn't even show a scratch.

                                  [pp. 31 - 34, NO-EYED MONSTER #8, Summer 1966]

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