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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59150 ***
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+                               LOST ART
+
+                             BY G. K. HAWK
+
+                     _They lived by and for push
+                       buttons and machines, and
+                    knew nothing else. But Endicott
+                         remembered about the
+                       old, old days--when a man
+                      could save a life without a
+                          push-button...._
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+               Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1955.
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+Stiff fingers of icy, wind-driven snow beat a tattoo on the hull of the
+cargo ship, filtered through the jagged tears in the metal skin, sifted
+down over the useless control board with its dead gauges and bank upon
+bank of pushbuttons. Amidship, a wind-thrashed branch screechingly
+scraped the reverberating hull, and the sound, like the rasp of sliding
+hatch covers, echoed through the ship.
+
+Dazedly, Allison watched the sifting snow settle on the buttons, each
+one acquiring a grotesque, lop-sided, conical hat which grew as he
+stared. He reached forward an already stiffening finger and brushed one
+of the hats away, and almost idly watched another one form in its place.
+
+"Come on, Allison, come on. Snap out of it." Endicott came out of the
+passageway into the control room, returned from his inspection of the
+machinery. "You hurt in the landing?"
+
+Allison didn't answer. He shivered and pushed another inquisitive
+finger at the control board; the finger selected a certain button and
+pushed it steadily. There was no click of a hidden relay, no whir of
+little motors springing to life.
+
+"You can punch that button or any of the others from now until--It
+won't do any good. We're dead." The plume of Endicott's frozen breath
+drifted over Allison's shoulder, merged with the sifting snow.
+
+"Dead?" Allison echoed in a sleepwalker's voice. "Dead," he repeated
+and jabbed the button again and again.
+
+"In a manner of speaking," Endicott's white-sandy brows drew together
+in a frown. "We're off the powercast--our receiver, I guess."
+
+"No power." Allison was following better, was waking up. "That
+means--Can't you fix it, Chief?"
+
+"Nope. I tried, but something in its guts is burned out. No power."
+Endicott beat his old blue-veined hands together.
+
+Allison's frost-numbed fingers picked at the straps on his reclining
+geeseat, and he stepped to the light metal deck. He shivered and
+punched the button on the control board again. He was seized by a spasm
+of uncontrollable shaking. "No power means--no heat!" Panic crept into
+his voice.
+
+Endicott said nothing but looked at the tier upon tier of buttons,
+functionless now.
+
+Allison looked at the board, too, his narrow shoulders hunched.
+"They've never failed before," he muttered through chattering teeth.
+
+"What?" Endicott seemed bemused.
+
+"The buttons. Punch 'em, and you always get what you want--except now!"
+
+"Now, now," Endicott said soothingly. "Panic isn't going to help us
+any. All we have to do is sit tight--and wait. They'll send a relief
+ship out--"
+
+"When?"
+
+"In the morning. Morning, sure. They had us on the 'viewer, don't
+forget. They'll know exactly where to look."
+
+"They won't be able to locate us in this white stuff."
+
+"I tell you they know precisely where we are. And anyway the scanviewer
+will pick us up."
+
+"I don't think they'll ever find us." Allison slumped down on his
+transverse geeseat, stared wide-eyed at the drift forming slowly inside
+the torn metal of the windward side of the control room. "This white
+stuff scares me." He shivered, then got up hastily, his boots slipping
+slightly on the snow-slick decking, and punched the button again. "It's
+got to work!" he cried and beat on the board with his fist.
+
+"Stop that!" Endicott said sharply.
+
+There was a crack of a slap in the control room, then silence.
+
+In a moment Endicott said in his soothing voice, "Sorry, Allison.
+Everything'll be all right. Don't you worry."
+
+"If you say so, Chief." Allison stood in the center of the control
+room, his arms slack by his sides.
+
+"We'll be all right," Endicott said. "We have food capsules--"
+
+"Sure, Chief."
+
+"We'll be all right, except--" Endicott peered through the rents in the
+hull into the storm outside. "All we have to do is sit tight," he added
+hastily.
+
+"We'll freeze tonight without heat." Allison's voice was still
+breathless with panic.
+
+"Yeah. Yeah, I've been thinking about that. There's some thing
+'way down deep in my mind--something I can't quite get--" Endicott
+still looked out at the storm-thrashed trees, a puzzled expression
+wrinkling his face. "Something from my childhood--I was born a long
+time before you, you know, before they set up state conditioning homes
+for children. Long before they set up this 'everything-from-buttons'
+business. Lived with my own people, I did, and I seem to remember--seem
+to remember--" The puzzled expression became a frown of concentration.
+"Or maybe it was something I read a long time ago," he mused.
+
+"Did what?" Allison perked up.
+
+"Read. You wouldn't know what that was. Everything comes from buttons
+now, entertainment, food, light, heat--everything.... No, it was from
+my childhood, I'm sure. I remember my people used to take me out in
+the country--" Endicott mused on while a cloak of snow grew on the
+shoulders of his jacket, and the light began to fade.
+
+"Out in the country? What for? Nobody goes out there." Allison's eyes
+gleamed slightly in the growing dusk.
+
+"--for picnics. And--" Endicott's eyes brightened, and one hand
+clenched.
+
+"For what?" Allison's head thrust forward.
+
+"What?" Endicott snapped, irritated at having his train of thought
+broken.
+
+"What did your people take you in the country for?"
+
+"A picnic.... Yes, yes, that's it! I remember now!" Endicott's words
+poured out.
+
+"You know it is forbidden to think of the old days."
+
+"Shut up! Let me think. You want heat, don't you?"
+
+"It's forbidden to think of the old days," Allison repeated stubbornly.
+"You'll get heat when I report this--in a different way."
+
+"Shut up! Look, you want to keep from freezing tonight?" Endicott
+glared. "All right. Come with me and do as I say." Without a backward
+glance Endicott crossed the slippery deck and entered the passageway.
+At the midship cargo natch he stopped.
+
+"How are you going to open it without power?" Allison's breath-plume
+shot over Endicott's shoulder. "It's locked and unlocked by a button on
+the control board. Remember Chief?"
+
+"Stop gloating, Allison. This is for your benefit as well as mine.
+There's an escape hatch in the control room."
+
+"That's controlled by power, too."
+
+"Yes, but in these older models the hatch also has a manual control, as
+I remember." Endicott moved off toward the control room.
+
+Allison hesitated, then followed, and joined Endicott as he began to
+search the control board. Endicott found the emergency lever for the
+escape hatch and tugged on it, turning his head to watch the hatch
+in the side of the hull, back of his seat. The hatch, big enough for
+one man to pass through at a time, popped, crackling with frost, and
+stirred slightly.
+
+"Now, Allison, my boy, let's put our shoulders to it." Endicott was in
+high spirits again.
+
+As soon as the hatch swung open, Endicott put his head and shoulders
+through the opening, squinting his eyes against the icy snow which
+swirled past him. He grabbed a handhold on the outside of the hull and
+pulled his legs through, and dropped into the snow alongside the ship.
+
+Allison's head and shoulders appeared in the opening, and in a moment
+he was beside Endicott. "Now what?" Allison yelled above the wind.
+
+Endicott looked toward the clearing in which they had landed, then
+turned to face the trees around the disabled ship. He waded through the
+snow to the nearest one and reflectively took hold of a dry branch over
+his head, tugged it several times as though judging its resiliency,
+before snapping it off.
+
+"Now, Allison, you see what I did? Well, you do the same, only gather
+an armload of branches. When you have them, bring them to me at the
+ship. And keep on gathering them until I tell you to stop."
+
+Allison stood still in the deep snow, peering suspiciously at Endicott
+through the snow-swirl. "Is this something from the old--?"
+
+"Never mind that now, Allison," Endicott said patiently. "Let's not
+worry about all that twaddle. You want to be warm, don't you? So, just
+do as I say."
+
+Allison's eyebrows shot up and lowered instantly, and his face set in
+stubborn planes. "If this is from the old days I'm not sure I want any
+part of it." He looked furtively over his shoulders at the gloomy woods.
+
+"There are no Conditioning Committees here, Allison," Endicott said
+testily. "Get on with it."
+
+Allison took a few reluctant steps toward the nearest tree. Endicott
+started back to the ship with his branch, looking back over his
+shoulder.
+
+"No, no, Allison. See those green needles? It won't do at all.
+Dry branches, Allison, _dry_ branches." The whipping wind carried
+Endicott's words over the few yards.
+
+"I can't see how these--branches?--are going to keep us warm. It seems
+like a lot of useless trouble getting them," Allison said sulkily,
+suspicion and fear unabated.
+
+Endicott didn't answer. Instead, he went to the side of the ship away
+from the wind and began tramping the snow down into a flat, hard
+floor. He broke his branch into short lengths over his knee, then, in
+a nearly forgotten gesture, slapped at his uniform until he remembered
+that he had no pockets. For a moment he stood still, his eyes roving
+over the side of the ship until it came to one of the jagged tears.
+With a little self-congratulatory chuckle, he began scraping one of
+the lengths of wood over the torn metal, catching the splinters and
+shavings in the palm of one hand.
+
+Allison dropped his armload of branches by the ship, waged an inner
+battle between fear of the unknown and curiosity in which curiosity
+won, and stood watching Endicott arrange the branches in a crib around
+the neatly piled shavings. Endicott, on one knee by the crib, worked
+steadily, laying the pieces of wood with care and a returning sense
+of sureness, with only brief pauses to flex his freezing fingers.
+Finally, with a smile of satisfaction on his face, Endicott got to his
+feet, and the nearly forgotten gesture at the pocketless uniform was
+repeated.
+
+Slowly, Endicott's lined face altered. He looked hastily at the
+watchful Allison and hastily looked away; he looked at the completed
+crib, and his tongue licked his lips; he looked along the side of the
+damaged ship, and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully; finally, he looked
+into the swirl of the icy snow, and he shivered. His hands ceased their
+pawing, fell slowly, to hang slack by his sides. He was not smiling as
+he turned away.
+
+"What were you looking for?" Allison asked curiously.
+
+"I just remembered something else," said Endicott, his voice was very
+soft in the stillness, "we used to have something called a match to
+start those picnic fires."
+
+
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+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lost Art, by G. K. Hawk
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 59150 ***