The Project Gutenberg EBook of Death of a Spaceman, by Walter M. Miller

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Title: Death of a Spaceman

Author: Walter M. Miller

Illustrator: Ernest Schroeder

Release Date: August 9, 2009 [EBook #29643]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: Illustrator: Ernest Schroeder]

DEATH
OF A
SPACEMAN

BY WALTER M. MILLER, JR.

_The manner in which a man has lived is often the key to the way he
will die. Take old man Donegal, for example. Most of his adult life
was spent in digging a hole through space to learn what was on the
other side. Would he go out the same way?_

Old Donegal was dying. They had all known it was coming, and they
watched it come--his haggard wife, his daughter, and now his grandson,
home on emergency leave from the pre-astronautics academy. Old Donegal
knew it too, and had known it from the beginning, when he had begun to
lose control of his legs and was forced to walk with a cane. But most of
the time, he pretended to let them keep the secret they shared with the
doctors--that the operations had all been failures, and that the cancer
that fed at his spine would gnaw its way brainward until the paralysis
engulfed vital organs, and then Old Donegal would cease to be. It would
be cruel to let them know that he knew. Once, weeks ago, he had joked
about the approaching shadows.

"Buy the plot back where people won't walk over it, Martha," he said.
"Get it way back under the cedars--next to the fence. There aren't many
graves back there yet. I want to be alone."

"Don't _talk_ that way, Donny!" his wife had choked. "You're not dying."

His eyes twinkled maliciously. "Listen, Martha, I want to be buried
face-down. I want to be buried with my back to space, understand? Don't
let them lay me out like a lily."

"Donny, _please_!"

"They oughta face a man the way he's headed," Donegal grunted. "I been
up--_way_ up. Now I'm going straight down."

Martha had fled from the room in tears. He ha