V
265 Words
VABOUT HIM, STAFF AND crew
Of the ill-starred Dotty Sue
Were huddled, bitter, grim, but unafraid.
A quarter mile away
The last scene of the fray
Tween Man and Asteroid was being played.
Her stern jets flaming white
Against the endless night
The bobbing ship was fighting, bolt and nail,
To curve from underneath
Those looming tons of death
That poised above her like a cosmic flail.
McNeer cried, “No, Bill! No!”
And then his audio
Clacked with the Skipper’s thin, metallic voice,
“There’s nothing we can do
But hope he pulls her through.
He made his choice, McNeer; a hero’s choice.”
As they watched tensely, all,
The spaceship seemed to crawl
An inch, a foot, a yard, another yard....
Meanwhile, the massive rock
Raced blindly toward the shock
With vast, colossal, cosmic disregard.
And nearer yet they drew,
To their strange rendezvous
In space; Fate’s balance hovered fine and thin.
And then, “The Lord be praised!”
The crew a paean raised;
McNeer’s white lips cracked in a nerveless grin.
Imponderable mass
And spaceship seemed to pass
Each other with a hair ‘twixt hull and face;
But then, as every voice
Roused in a loud rejoice,
A single boulder slashed through empty space—
The spaceship buckled, bent;
A gaping, white-fanged rent
Split stern plates, and McNeer’s voice cracked with fear.
“Board ship, all hands!” he cried!
“Bill’s dying there inside!”
The wan sun watched the killer disappear.
McNeer was first to kneel
Beside the shattered wheel
And Bill’s pale, silent figure; gray with grief
He cried, “He’s breathing yet!
Here, Skipper! Help me get—”
But Bill said, “No—don’t try to lift me, Chief.”
“I look all right on top
But ... better get ... a mop....
My underneath part’s not so good....” A chill
Ran through his broken frame,
But, to the last ditch game,
“I held ‘er to ‘er course—” said Blaster Bill.
- Writer
