DIE, SHADOW! BY ALGIS BUDRYS He began as a hero. Eons later and a universe away, he became instead a god! [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Worlds of If Science Fiction, May 1963. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] I I've come a long, long way to die alone, David Greaves thought as Defiance tumbled through the misty shroud of Venus, hopelessly torn apart by the explosion in her engines. On the console in front of him, the altimeter was one of the last few meaningful instruments, and it told him there were only a few tortured miles remaining before the ship he had brought this far—had spent his fortune in building when no government would yet consider risking a manned rocket on his flight—would smash down to its doom on a planet no man had ever walked. Battered and tossed in his seat by the ship's crazy tumbling, Greaves tensed the oak-hard muscles of his arms and thrust himself up to his feet. He wasn't dead yet. He wasn't dead and, if the slim chance paid off, he'd still be present to laugh in the government's face when the first, safe, cautious official venture finally made its way across the emptiness between Earth and the Sun's second planet. Dragging himself from handhold to handhold, his tendons cracking with the strain, he levered himself toward the Crash Capsule, forced open its hatch and pulled himself through, while the winds of Venus tore at the shattered hull and the scream of Defiance's passage through the murky sky rose to a savage howl. Outside the cloud-lashed hull there were no stars. Below, no one knew what sort of jungle, or sea, or desert of whipping poison sand might lie in wait. Greaves had not cared when he set out, and did not care now. If men had always waited to be sure, if all the adventurers of mankind had waited until the sign-posts had gone up, the cave bears would still be the dominant form of life on Earth, and races undreamed of might never know such a thing as man to contest their sway over the Universe. I'll live to see my share of that, Greaves thought as he pulled the capsule's hatch shut and dropped into the special padding that, in theory, would cushion
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