David Stringer
As a direct contrast to the preceding story, David Stringer suggests that not only will man conquer space, but in less than a hundred years he will be reaching for the outer planets. The major problem, he infers, will be with man himself and not the mechanics of space flight.
* * * *
They called it the high-G blues and there were a lot of gags about it, some funny, others not so funny, but when you got it that wasn’t a joke. The feeling of bird-panic in your skull, as if your brain had come loose and was swilling about pulsing and fluttering, that was bad. And the sickness, the nausea, the drag in the pit of your stomach where you forced lead-heavy feet and legs to move. Too much, he told himself, too damn much happens far too quick when they flip you back to Terra.
He stood under a sky of gentian blue, a fierce sky. Round him was the roar and bustle of Mainport, Earth. It seemed momentarily that the noise was focusing itself on him; he heard with a crystal clarity the booming of traffic on the distant turnpikes, the lighter clatter of the base Pedivators, the thin high whistle of escaping lox from the fuelling floats way out on the midfield launch pads. Somewhere over there loudspeakers were bellowing, clearing an Athene tourist ferry through the last few minutes of her countdown.
He turned slowly, feet seeming locked to the ground. Mainport had grown a lot in the two years he’d been away. In front of him the new admin building rose storey on storey, a shimmering card-stack against the blue, and there were new transit sheds and autoparks reaching into the distance. Behind him the service ferries perched on their tails like a forest of silver steeples; beyond them again, four, five miles away, was the long shape of the Athene. He imagined rather than saw the white tubes of the umbilicals thrust into her hull, the scurrying of trucks and minicars between her fins. The floodlights top of the launch tower would be twinkling down through the spectrum, timing the blast off, the ground crews scurrying clumsily like divers dressed in asbestos armour. The fuel floats were mating the ferry, fertilizing her with coldness; the frost was forming in thick white swaths under her inlet vents and there were patches of it round the tankers’ wheels where decompressing lox snatched the temperature from the air. The floats made their own seasons, travelled in hoar-patches of winter.
The Spacer grinned. There was a hitch, some irregularity in the thousand-item checklist. He heard a command rumble across the pads. “Abort... abort..The old jargon of the nineteen-sixties, still in use over a century later. But there was a rightness to the word; the launch of a rocket was an organic event, it was a straining, a building of pressures. There was a culmination, a final thrusting, a furious naked outbursting through Earth’s skin of air. It was an orgasm, and a birth. Old times, a man was born just once in life. But the Spacers, like the rockets, were born over and again, into the icy Otherworld between the planets ...
A medic was touching his elbow. He laughed at her and shook his head, tried to step out briskly across the apron to the waiting Port Conveyor. He felt now that he was a giant, yards high, swinging his ponderous, ungainly legs and arms. The air seemed to thicken in front of him so he had to butt at it with his chest, the Conveyor was half a mile away. High-G blues; what was that line from the song, the one he’d heard tinkled on guitars and banjos out in deep space, on the Moon and the service feeders? “There’s nothing half so bad as that swim across the pad...” With Acclimatization the feelings would pass, but until then he was big as a god, with all a god’s clumsiness moving among men.
He eased himself into the Conveyor, heard the door sigh shut, let his shoulders sink into the silvery Atmocushioning of the seat. The little vehicle, jewel-yellow, extruded jointed buglike antennae from its front fender, picked up the rails of the control grid buried in the Aureocrete and swooped away towards the distant complexes of buildings. Two minutes now, maybe three, for the Spacer to adjust, get hold of a few tearaway fantasies, worry out just what in Hell he was going to say to this girl Reb.
Problems, God he had problems. Everything shifting too fast... He touched the blank dash in front of him and it rendered up a ready-lit Sobranie. He put the gold-tipped black cylinder between his lips and shut his eyes, saw Reb in the white suède of full-dress uniform, Earth spinning up blind and bright from a void. G-shift had scrambled his brains; only hours before, or so it seemed, he’d exchanged the brooding calm and desolation of a met cabin at the foot of the Lunar Alps for the noise and bustle of Selena, Moon’s biggest colony. From Selena to a yawing orbit-feeder, then a Thunderbird, now this. From choice he would have waited out his leave on the Moon, yarning with the incoming Deepspacers in a dozen low-grade bars, living with his parents in their three-cubicle suite in the tourist wing of the Terran Hotel. His folks had gone Moonside a year before, looked like staying. There was elbow-room in Selena, jobs for the asking; Earth was getting crowded out again. But Spaceregs were strict; first duty period was followed by Terran re-acclimatization, and the rule was never relaxed. He blew smoke moodily and shrugged. Being sent Earthside was standard practice. So why the helpless feeling that he was a pawn, a chunk of flesh and blood being shoved from square to square like a counter in the ancient game of chess ?
He yawned. Maybe he was just overtired. The trip back to merry middle Earth had been a cattle-run. A two-year Louie couldn’t expect much red carpet to be rolled for him between planets, but the Routing Branch could surely have done better than that. Piled into a modified Mark Nine Thunderbird towing a thousand-ton cargo drogue. Two days on acceleration, three more of straining to halt the burden, rendezvous with blazing Vulcan up there miles above Terra ... He grinned sourly; Earthside you still heard people talk about the “weightlessness” of space. It was just too easy to forget inertia. The Mark Nine had yanked away by the hour, a flea trying to turn a whale; the drogue, once moving, wanted to plummet down at the Pacific, burst over Earth in a firestorm of glowing ore fragments. Accidents like that had happened, and they would happen again. Hitting the home plate was like trying to roll a ballbearing through a maze of magnets. They’d made it after a lot of sweating; during deceleration a course computer had gone on the blink and that had been fun, real crazy fun. The bag of rock was still up there somewhere, floating in the blue, tethered alongside the orbiting foundry where the deepspace boats were made. In the early days they’d prefabricated the ships on Terra, ferried the pieces up to assembly orbits with fleets of rockets; but Moon’s incredibly rich ores, her acres of nearly unoxidized iron, had combined with her low escape velocity to make the elephantine drogue technique more economical. On Vulcan, in the total vacuum of space, solar mirrors raised furies of cheap heat for the smelting. The satellite would be busy tonight; from this latitude it was invisible, but its glare would be lighting the tropics.
What was left of the Thunderbird had kicked off Earth-side after ditching the drogue and the rest of the trip had gone smooth as honey, but it had still been a bloody cattle-run. Too much time to think...
The Conveyor slowed, beeped faintly to itself with what sounded like annoyance and slid into the geometrically perfect line of traffic edging under the flaring portico of the Admin stack. The Spacer swung down the vanity mirror from above the windshield, ran a hand through his cropped blond hair. Against his will, he started wondering what his planetary tour would be. Privately, he fancied Mars. He’d heard some good stories about the Red Planet. Facilities and conditions were improving now with over a dozen domes operating; the scenery was spectacular, G just low enough to be pleasant and the equatorial temperature bearable in the daytime at least. Venus wasn’t much of a deal, nothing but a perpetual red-hot dust storm, and Mercury was worse; Hell’s back kitchen they called it, with reason and feeling. One hemisphere hotter than a blast furnace, sporting lakes of molten tin, the other frozen at ultimate zero, atmosphere plastered to the rocks like icing on an unholy cake. They had established three domes in the libration belt, but development was next to impossible; human-kind was showing the flag down there by the sun, but that was about all. No, it would probably be Mars. Or perhaps farther out, one of the moons of Jupiter maybe; that was a long haul, it would mean ten years snapped off his life, but his back pay would be building all the time, he’d come back to Terra rich and it wouldn’t be too bad ... Whatever he was offered, he would only have one choice; he could back down, but there would be no second chance. The Service had made its own astringent rules years ago; if you wanted Deepspace you took what was given. If you refused, nobody blamed you. At least, not to your face.
He put the mirror back out of sight, shrugged off a momentary chilling thought. There was no reason why he shouldn’t go stay with the Le Cheminants, he’d been pretty friendly with Reb right through space school, he’d got no family on Terra now, wasn’t a reason why he shouldn’t spend his leave with her folks. He reminded himself wryly he might be a second-rate Louie out on Selena, but at home he was one of the élite, a Spacer of two years standing. He’d made the grade; he was Gerry Kaufman, V.I.P., from here on in. The kids would mob him for his autograph; the Deepspace blue was like a magnet to them, they couldn’t resist it. He should know; hadn’t been too long since he was a star-eyed nipper himself, dreaming planets and Hoffman Approaches before he dreamed anything else at all...
How long had Reb been Earthside now, nine months, a year? She’d worked the standard Ranger first tour, six months on GX then the post-satellite course back at space school. Couldn’t have done much else with a father like that. The Le Cheminants were one of the old Spacer families, third-generation aristocrats with a name to keep up. Reb’s grandfather had been in the first Venus crew, her father was famous for the opening-up of Mars’ uranium fields. Gerry wondered if Reb had got her planetary posting yet. Or if she’d maybe opted out. He wondered how the satellite tour had changed her. Not if but how. Space changed everybody, one way or another. Some it spewed back gibbering wrecks. The medics couldn’t tell, finally, what would happen to a human mind off Earth. They could examine and select, weed out the incipient unbalances, the budding schizophrenics and manic depressives, the glory-hunters and the kids with delusions of grandeur, they could iron out your personality, tidy your repressions and phobias; they could paper the walls with encephalographs, turn your mind into the sort of stable computer that can live with the nearly unthinkable. They could send you out into space a whole creature, but space alone ever knew what would come back ...
The Conveyor stopped, breaking his thought-stream. The door opened for him; he climbed out, his legs taking the strain of Earth G better now, and walked into the bustling confusion of the Customs shed. He hefted his grip, swung it on to the travelling counter-top. And Reb came running down the long bay, calling.
He didn’t speak at once, and his face didn’t change. He’d had a while to get ready for this meeting and he was calm now, determined to play it by ear. She pulled up short of him, stood watching doubtfully, while his eyes looked her over.
Somehow Kaufman hadn’t expected the deep blue of the Ranger uniform. He saw the ankle-high sandals, the short knife-pleated skirt, the neatly cut blouse with the twinkling meteor of the Service burning on the dark material just below the left lapel. The silver lanyard and the lacy silver on the wrist-strap of the standard radio/chrono unit. Silver everywhere, showing in flashes and darts; in the six tiny pips on her shoulder, one for each month of satellite service; and again, silver highlights in her hair. For a moment he knew, coldly and without emotion, that this wasn’t for him. Then he forced the thought out of his conscious mind. The bigger issues must wait; this was just a girl he knew, a girl called Rebel, someone he wanted more than he’d ever dared admit even to himself. He split his thin face, making the muscles grin. She laughed back then, and put her hands out simply. “Welcome,” she said. “Welcome to Terra ...”
A Customs-man scanned his bag quickly, snapped a twinkling clearance seal on the identity strap. “Your kit’s O.K., you’ll pick it up in Bay Seven; straight through the shed, and on your right.” He smiled, quickly and professionally. “Have a good leave, Spacer.”
They found the rest of his baggage, what little he’d been allowed to bring under Rocket Poundage Regulations, waiting for them in charge of a luggage pup. The little machine scanned them industriously, fixed their silhouette data and set itself, snuffling, to follow at their heels. As they walked towards the autopark they saw other pups, scores of them, each attached to its temporary master as if by an invisible lead. Gerry grinned again, naturally this time; the pups were new since he’d left Mainport last, they were crazy but sort of cute.
He’d only seen Reb’s new home in a stereo she’d sent him via the last mail-rocket, but it had looked fine in that. As they stood waiting for the car to ingest the luggage he said casually “The new place, Reb. Is it far?”
She shook her head, making the honey-coloured hair swing. “Not so. About three hundred kilometres.” He thought of pumice dust grinding under the tracks of a Mooncat and three hundred kilometres seemed plenty. She chuckled, watching his face. “You’re back in civilization now, brother. Think nothing of it.”
Way across the pads a feeder, maybe the delayed Athene, geysered brightness and noise. Subsonics thudded and grumbled, shaking the ground. Reb winced and Gerry put his hand out, gripped her shoulder; the automatic reaction of people everywhere to the voice of a rocket. The thing rose, tiny with distance, jacking itself up on a flame; climbed swiftly, fish-slim, the focus of a continuous thunderclap. Lost itself in the brightness of the zenith. The world was normal again. Gerry ran his tongue round inside his lips, touched the shoulder-high fin of the car. “She’s a great motor, Reb. You drive her down ?”
“Heavens, no. She roboed. We can do that because Daddy’s a Group Leader now.” He nodded, remembering the restrictions on casual travel. He was back on Terra now, with a vengeance. Even on the twenty-lane turnpikes congestion could get severe round big centres like spaceports, though not so bad, so his history tutors had assured him, as during the grossly overpopulated twentieth century. But Spacers were of course exempt from all petty regulations; Reb’s father could send the motor to Timbuctu on robot control if he wanted. In a few short generations the Space Service had become the new élite, the new ruling class; the Spacers, and the girls of the Rangers were walking symbols of God alone knew how many years of man^ kind’s dreams and aspirations; the Word, perhaps, made flesh ...
Reb was watching up at him, no longer smiling. He stopped the blasphemous thought-stream with an effort, knowing some part of its darkness had showed in his eyes. She put out her hands again, resting them lightly on his forearms. Her eyes were searching his face. She said hesitantly, “Was it a good tour, Gerry? Was it O.K?”
He gripped her elbows. “Was great. It’s just ... things are moving a little fast, bunny, I guess...” He looked at her shoulder again and whistled softly. “Six satellite pips. Sure was some Hell of a ride on the porch swing... How was old Tinribs?” GX, kick-off plate for Moon and the planets, was always an object of mock contempt to Spacers. Good thing to see though, swimming up from the void...
The car, luggage stowed to its mechanical satisfaction, had whispered open its doors. Reb said lightly, “Time for questions later. Once we get going we shan’t ever stop.”
He stepped into the motor, and a half-acre of pure white upholstery. He looked out through the deeply curving windshield at the tangerine plain of the hood, touched the sill of the featureless dash coaming, pushed against it with his palms to force his back into the yielding leather behind him. He whistled again, gently, nodding his approval. “She sure is one Hell of a bitch of a motor ...”
Reb didn’t answer and he turned to look at her. She was watching him, head laid back against the seat. He thought now as he’d thought two years before, that her jaw was firmly and delicately lined and just a shade too wide, thank God, to ever be called beautiful. She was brown, and soft, and like a very smart neat animal somehow. She said quietly, hardly moving her lips. “Welcome back ...”
Then try it out, old son. Take something that doesn’t really belong, and never has, and never will. Take it and see just what in Hell it feels like... He reached across and pulled her into his arms, not hurrying, savouring the touch of hair and mouth, the muscles of her back moving under the thinness of the uniform blouse. She made a little noise while she was being kissed, and relaxed against him, and his mind wanted to scream Judas while his body lapped up physical contact, luxuriating in it after the thistledown unreality of zero G. He laughed when she pushed back, a little breathless in spite of himself, tasting her scent, still trying to stop a thought that wouldn’t be stopped but pursued its own way, dark as the rocket noise. “Reb,” was all his mouth could find to say. “Hell, you’re heavy ...”
Above their heads a clear voice said softly, “California AX two one seven three A/T, you are cleared on Route Seventeen, will you authorize?”
Reb sighed and stretched on the seat, watching him cheekily. “Even here we are automated” ... She leaned forward and touched a microswitch on the bulkhead. ‘Thanks, Tower, hope we didn’t hold you up. I’m authorizing now.” She turned the ride control to its positive position; warning lights flickered and steadied. The car trembled; a thin whine reached through to the cab, all that was audible of the blasting power of the turbine a few feet in front of their knees. Reb said over her shoulder, “We have a priority routing; personal control.”
The speaker in the roof lining clicked again. “Thanks, Spacer ...” It chuckled. “Sorry if we broke anything up.”
Gerry was startled. “This thing is bugged...”
She shook her head serenely. “Nope. That’s Captain MacLeish. Daddy probably told him I was picking you up.” She clicked the talkback. “Thanks a lot. Captain, you can get us out of here as fast as you like.”
Overhead, miles in the stratosphere, a feeder began a screaming rumbling descent. Behind Gerry’s back the cushions wheezed slightly as the car picked up speed, fleeing from the sound.
The big vehicle streaked between the buildings of the perimeter, swung on to one of the multiple tracks and accelerated again. Within seconds it was across the port, slowing and weaving as it nosed into the traffic at Gate Seventeen. In a way that seemed slightly miraculous the vehicles ahead and to either side parted. The car slid into the momentary gloom of an underpass, flicked out into light; Turnpike Seventeen showed ahead, and the white cloverleaf of the approach roads. More traffic; the big soft hands of the brakes closed round the car’s nose, relaxed; then she was on the carriageway and building speed again. “Over and out” from the roof speaker; lights twinkled as Spaceport Manual handed the vehicle across to the Journey Control network. Reb glanced sideways and twisted the now-operative ride adjuster fully open. Something kicked Gerry in the chest, the near scenery became a racing blur. She said casually, “Overdrive cuts in about two hundred kilometres an hour.”
He lay back, not answering for the moment, enjoying the sensation of matchless speed and power, sensing the flyovers that jumped past with a scarcely audible whooshing. Occasionally he felt the negative G of the brakes lift him, shuck off some of the Terrestrial weight he’d acquired, but the answering power surges from the engine were soundless. On his left, Reb had nothing to do; the machine was running by wire, controlled by pulses in the buried grid beneath its wheels. The girl took a cigarette from the dash, inhaled, held the thing out in front of her, vertical between her fingertips. “One quaint and insanitary left-over from the twentieth century ...” She glanced sidelong again, grinning. “One more quaint and insanitary left-over-”
He moved restlessly, suddenly surly. “Cut this thing down to size, honey, will you?”
“What...”
“The car,” he said. “The car. Life goes fast enough.”
She touched the dash and the hurtling speed eased. “I’m sorry,” she said. Nearly looked like she meant it. “I’m real sorry. You still space-dizzy?”
“Could be ...”
“Tired?”
“I guess. A little.” Why doesn’t she turn it off, why does she have to push ... All I need’s a little time, he thought, time to sort this thing through. Only there had been time enough already. It never would get sorted. Not this way ... He settled back again, knowing she was watching him. Maybe he should make small-talk, only he wasn’t the type. She knew that already though, it was part of the deal. Nothing quite as bad as that swim across the pad. Wasn’t there, though? Oh, brother ... I’ll wake up soon, he thought, find this was all a way-out dream. Like the hallucinations the long-service boys talk about. Deepspace Jerks is the name for it...
Stop that line of thought, stop it...
Everything was above-board then. Fine and dandy. Home was the sailor, home from sea. Or the Woodcutter, how about that ? He was the Woodcutter and Reb the Fairy Princess. Yeah, and pigs were flying.
He nearly laughed. These days pigs did fly. They had a herd of them up on GX. Fresh pork, bacon... Last he’d heard they were doing fine, had magnetic hooves clapped on their trotters to keep ‘em down on the decking, looked crazy... But this was the twenty-first century, anything could happen. Usually did.
He thought about GX. They’d passed close on the way in, smoking on down in the worn-out Thunderbird. He remembered the functional, complex shape of it spinning in its orbit. Regular and delicate, holding above it the countless petals of the solar cells that turned automatically to light, soaking up its energy. Like a chrysanthemum a half mile across. GX exhibited tropism, like a flower; inside the bloom were workshops, schoolrooms, galleys and mess halls, StereoTele theatres. All the life of a tiny planet. There were men, and women. The Rangers... He’d heard some fancy stories about their Space-side dormitories. The yarn that guy Mitchellson used to tell up in the Asteroid Bar in Selena, about hammering a Ranger Captain under zero G, and the pair of them drunk as skunks ... Was that where they changed, turned into machines, learned to pull gags like this?
Back to the present. Reb was checking her chrono. Nearly half-way there, he must have dozed... His brain still felt numbed with too much thinking. Maybe there was something in this Acclimatization routine after all. He remembered the fantasies that had started back at Main-port. Great stuff for his psycho charts. Humanizing the unliving. The feeders were machines, GX was a machine. The Space Service was a machine, was all. The rest was so much romantic crap, the stuff the Stereos slammed out round the clock on Terra, the kind of thing that sucked kids into the Service fast as they could be reared. He was surprised he’d let himself get caught up with it. I am a King who found thee, and I know ... He tried, again, to put it to the back of his mind. Live for the present, Kaufman. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow powee ... He sat up and Reb spoke for the first time in a long while. “Twenty minutes from grid end,” she said. “Then things get* interest-mg.
He was glad of that, it would mean some real driving for a change. Outside the limits of the Journey Control network folk still relied on their feet and hands and reflexes, same as they always had. He looked round the car again. Wondered how she’d feel to drive. Probably lousy. Murder to hold. All these big turbo limousines were the same, too much weight ... The robos could hold them, on the hundred-mile straights of the Turnpikes; but try a dice outside the network and they’d slide out from under you, they had the cornering characteristics of a stack of Service flapjacks. Status symbols with wheels ... He’d taken a twentieth-century Sting Ray up the road once, pal of his had had her on Museum loan for his Space Cadets’ entrance thesis, that had taught him what driving used to be about. Gerry grunted. He still felt plenty sour.
Five minutes afterwards Reb took points for a left turn and the car’s speed started to ease again. Perversely the noise of the turbine became more audible, dropping with deceleration to a throaty rumble. “Taking points” was another of those anachronisms with which the language was full; it had referred originally to mechanical control systems used in the time of rail travel. Gerry sat up and made himself take notice. In front of the car the Turnpike still stretched its set of white tapes into distance. They’d long since left the flat country round Mainport; they were climbing now, ahead mountains reared against the sky. The car, programmed for its turn, dropped to a crawling hundred kilos; soon an intersect showed ahead and the brakes came on, powerfully. The motor swung into the escape loop, steadied, accelerated. Now the road was no longer gun-barrel straight; it curved and dipped, following the contours of the foothills.
The route shrank to twin track, and the warning buzzer for the end of the grid sounded its first beep. Close ahead the unseen circuits ended, leaving all traffic to manual control. A hundred metres on, and speed down to forty, the car warned again and gave over her dash. Gerry watched, interested in spite of himself. The instrumentation came sliding out of the plain coaming, the steering quadrant swung up from its floor recess, locked into place with a click. “Hallelujah,” said Rebel, faintly; she took the white horns lightly, testing from side to side against the strength of the still-active robot. A last buzz, the quick flashing of warners in the road surface itself and the electric fingers on the steering column relaxed. The girl’s feet touched throttle and brake bars; the car climbed, accelerating round the dished bends, while evening gathered in the sky above.
A few minutes later he saw it. Nothing there at first but a brief yellow sparkle high on the mountain face ahead; the flash of the levelling sun on an aureolumin roof.. The motor dived into a tunnelled bend, eased over a long spur of rock and he could see the house, still infinitely small but detail perfect in the thin air. It seemed to hang out from a sheer rock-wall, clinging to the mountain in a way that took his breath. Reb followed his glance, flicking her eyes up then back to the snaking road. Pushed a strand of hair back.
“Like it?”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding slowly. “Yeah, it’s fabulous. Prettier than the pictures.”
She spoke curtly, as if anxious to dismiss the subject. “I know. We’re pretty thrilled. Daddy says there’s no need to take cruises to see a bit of Space. We’ve got it all round us.”
He nodded again, broodingly. “What keeps it up there?”
She said “Glue.” Then laughed. “It’s true. The struts underneath it, they’re bonded somehow with the rock. Not to worry though, we’re insured. If it comes unstuck we get a million bucks ...”
They were closer now, still climbing fast, and he could see the retractable windows of the observation galleries under the long eaves of the roof. He said sardonically, “You taking this can up there?”
She shook her head. “Nope, there’s a garage in the cliff. Daddy could have had a shaft driven, but it wasn’t worth all the extra cost. The last stretch is strictly for the birds.”
He lit another cigarette. “My,” he said through the smoke. “My, how we Spacers do live.” She looked at him sharply. Didn’t answer. The house was nearly overhead now, the car drumming heavily, tilting its nose at the steepest part of the trail. Gerry watched the girl’s brown hands on the quadrant. Way out on the right the sun was setting, pouring orange light through the side ports, warming the paleness of the upholstery. He reached for a button and slid his window down. The air was magnificent, rushing and sweet; the sound of tyres on grit came through the opening crisply. Reb edged the vehicle over a hump so steep that for a second the coaming of the hood pointed straight into the darkening blue of the sky. Waited with her foot poised over the throttle bar for the autobox to find bottom. She whined the car over the last few yards of flat, stopped outside the motorport in the hill and zipped up the two big linked levers of the handbrake. She slipped the authorization key into the pocket of her blouse and waited while the turbine growled into silence, through the disturbing subsonics below it, and stopped. She leaned back then, raising her eyebrows. “Boy,” she said lightly. “But have you got a chip ...”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I guess.”
“Gerry, what is it? Like to talk now?”
He said, “It’ll keep. It’ll keep.” He activated the passenger door, swung out into the cold gusting of the wind. His lungs started to labour again. He stepped back the way they’d come, hearing the sharp noise of his feet on the ground. Somehow outside the car everything seemed about ten sizes bigger. He looked over the edge of the little flat, saw the road looping down into the valley they’d left. Night was seeping like ink into the great bowl of space below him; the wind soughed up from it, rippling his clothes. The pressure of air was steady, felt like he could lean out into it and not fall. He threw the half-smoked cigarette, watched the spark of it curl out, swoop aside and vanish. Reb joined him, hair whipping round her face. Took hold of his arm. He looked back, sensing her grip absently. The car had deposited the luggage like a clutch of odd eggs, was already inching forward on its pad into the maw prepared for it. In the odd light the machine looked unreal, a long bright ghost sliding into the rock. The motor-port flat was wholly in shadow, but way above the house still caught sunlight, burned like a flame against the vast backdrop of the mountain. Over it the sky was turquoise, fading to a clear, sweet yellow, and a chip of moon showed palely. The voice of the wind was big and wide-sounding, blustering among the high passes of rock.
Gerry heard a droning, saw the dark speck of a Skyfan dropping down towards him. He walked forward, stopped by the luggage; the machine swung overhead and landing lights flicked on round the edges of the plateau, driving back the night.
* * * *
The Spacer lay stretched out on a low, well-sprung divan. Rebel sat beside him, a little close maybe and showing a lot of tanned leg through the unpinned side of her white evening kilt. For the last hour she’d been eating pecan nuts with something of the nervous intensity of a squirrel; round her, polished pink shells were scattered thickly on the carpet. The carpet was pale blue, a misty, shimmering Moon-colour; against it the coffee-brown upholstery, the spindly legs of chairs and tables, showed sharply. This was Rebel’s wing of the house, the surroundings reflected her tastes. The room itself was low and wide, the ceiling crossed at intervals by functional beams of smooth, grey-yellow oak. Wooden cheek-pieces slanted down the walls; the effect was a little like the cabin of a ship. To one side the long observation windows, and the gallery beyond them, added to the impression. There were flower arrangements in white, quietly classical vases: a Siamese cat lay curled on the carpet, in one corner stood an old-fashioned phonograph and a cabinet of records. There were many pictures; repros of Clingermann’s Martian landscapes, a highly impressionistic view of the Mare Imbrium; an Old Master, a girl’s head by Pablo Picasso. And on the far wall, what looked very much like a genuine Kandinsky. On Gerry’s right a log fire burned quietly in a hearth of grey stone surmounted by a splaying copper flue; flame reflections danced on the carpet, making little orange fans of light.
Only a half of the room was really visible. In front of the couch the walls seemed to dim, spreading and vanishing in ghostly perspectives. The nearest of the ring of ceiling-mounted projectors was just visible through the illusion. The Stereoplay was nearing its end; Gerry seemed to be looking into the throne room of a palace, sombre and magnificent. Torches burned in sconces, sending up thin wreaths of smoke to the high roof; one end of the set was raised to form a dais, on which sat and lounged a group of dignitaries. Here were the two sets of lovers, Helena tall and blonde, Hermia flashing and dark; Theseus, greying and richly robed, his forehead encircled by a thin golden torque; Hippolyta in a barbaric half-dress of glinting bronze-coloured strips. In front of the platform the clowns mouthed and postured; music piped, silver and eerie, underscoring the old words that never would be old.
And we fairies, that do run
By the triple Hecate’s team,
From the presence of the sun,
Following darkness like a dream,
Now are frolic ...
A glittering golden Puck stood on the blue carpet, bowed, winked and was gone. The long poem finished. Reb yawned, stretched, put her heel on the floor control in front of the divan; the Stereo went out in a momentary busyness of electrons. The room assumed its normal proportions; wall lighting flowed back softly. Gerry sat up, blinking. He’d been lulled by good food and liqueur and by the glimmering beauty of the Stereoplay, he’d almost managed to forget the pain that had been nagging away at the edge of his consciousness. Now, nearly instantly, he could feel it coming back. The house was very still; outside the wind called, emphasizing the isolation. The sound came dimly through the insulated walls. Now’s the time, honey. Just say out what you’ve got to say, it’ll be O.K. But play it straight. Don’t fool around, not any more ...
Reb brushed a last nutshell off her lap, turned lazily. Eyes very deep blue, half shut. “Like it, Gerry?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it was great. Rebel...”
“Hmmm?” Sleepily.
“Something I had to ask...” His voice now he’d got to the point of no return sounded harsh in his ears, adolescent.
She rolled over the rest of the way towards him. “Hmm ... Let it wait...”
‘‘It can’t, bunny, not any more. I’m sorry—”
“It can,” she said. “Till morning. Better in the morning. Everything’s better in the morning...” She prodded him, playfully. “C’mon, Kaufman, quit worrying. Like the man said; lovers to bed, ‘tis nearly fairy time ...”
For a moment he seemed to sense the strain under the words; then the anger came again. He tried to move back and she wriggled carefully, trapping him. Caught his hand, guided it up to her breast. He let it lie there cupped round the warmth and fullness and things were how they’d been just once before a very long time ago. She pulled his head down and started using her mouth, not kissing yet, just brushing and touching with the lips. She was making the noise in her throat again like she always did, he used to wonder if it was an unconscious thing like the purring of a cat. His body reacted to her; he pulled her closer, felt gently at first, then more urgently the rhythmic pushing of her tongue. “That’s twice,” he thought, hopelessly. ‘That’s twice, Rebel, twice is twice too much ...”
He pushed away. His arm when he lifted it felt heavy as lead. He swung his knuckles backwards across her cheek. The noise of the blow was flat and hard, its force knocked her against the cushions. She lay staring, throat moving, and seconds turned into a minute. Then she got up and walked off.
He lit a cigarette, trying to control his shaking. He said brutally, “I’ll leave on my own, don’t bother to have me thrown.”
She stood at the sideboard, back turned to him, doing something that made a chinking sound. She said dully, “Nobody going to throw you anywhere. But if you have no objections I need a drink.” She swallowed, shuddered, swung round with a glass of whisky in her hand. She walked back, sat facing him. Set the glass on the hearth, pushed her hands between her knees, stared down at nothing. Then the eyes travelled back to him. “Why, Gerry?” she said. “Why?”
He went across to the wall, stood looking at the Kandinsky, not seeing it. He said, “It’s the Uranus trip, isn’t it? Or farther out. Neptune, Pluto...” Fabled projects, he’d only half believed in them. Until this ...
The fire crackled softly. Reb sat like a brown-and-white statue. Finally she said, “It’s a long tour, Gerry. Twenty years.”
He clenched his fist slowly, and opened it. Looked at the blue depressions the nails had made in the palm. He said, “Like some lousy Stereoplay, isn’t it?”
“Gerry...”
He said, “You watch, and watch. You think no, it couldn’t be that old corny workout. Not again. They’ll put a twist, will be some new sort of end. But when it comes, it’s just what you reckoned. The old workout all over again.”
“Gerry,” she said. “Please come and sit down. Here ...” She held her hand out, fingers inviting. Wanting to draw him back to the half circle of warmth where the flame patterns moved and flickered. But that was a thing to be resisted. He didn’t belong in the warm any more, wasn’t for him. He became aware of the Kandinsky as a tumble of colour, chaotic as his thoughts. His hand seemed to ache now, where he’d hit her. “Rebel,” he said, “lay down. Lay down, you’re dead, I just killed you.”
She said, “Gerry, please let’s talk. We should have talked before, not kept it all sort of bottled ... I ... handled things all wrong, wasn’t supposed to be like this ...” She licked her mouth, tried to phrase her words exactly and correctly, giving each the same value. “Honey, I ... it wasn’t like you think. Honestly ...”
His eyes were on the picture, he wasn’t listening. She tried again, miserably. “Gerry, I ... used to think about you a lot. Work it out, plan how it was going to be. I used to lay for hours, off-duty, when I was in Space—”
He spun back. “You were never in Space ..He laughed, letting the bitterness well up. No point trying to stop it now. “GX. That isn’t Space. That’s a warm, friendly, cosy, all-Terran little old home from home, that isn’t Space.” He was shouting now, didn’t care. She should have let him go. But no, she wanted the dirty game played through. “I’ll tell you about Space,” he said. “Space is a little cabin. About yea big.” He gestured jerkily with his hands. “Round. Silver walls. Little air-pump that goes thuck-thuck-thuck till you dream the noise, feel it. Smell it. Eat it with your dehydrates. There’s one port you never open. One radiophone you never use. A coupla books you read through and through, over and over, till you know ‘em by heart, till you know ‘em backwards, till you’re sick of every bloody word. Space is where you sit for a week or a month or a year and listen to the temp changes make dust out of the mountains. Above all, Space is where you think. And boy, how you learn to do that...”
The met cabin was swimming in front of his eyes with the vividness of hallucination. Every tiny detail of it, as if the image was burned on his brain. He said savagely, “Everybody comes back out of Space just a little crazy. All the boys know that. Did you know that, honey? Did you know when you were picking me up, you were waiting for a crazy man?”
She didn’t answer, didn’t look at him. She was staring down again, sitting hunched. It was like the words were lashing her, he could nearly see them hitting her back. But he couldn’t haul up now. “Tell you a little story,” he said. “Tell you just how things are. And don’t stop me, bunny, this is Kaufman’s one big scene. Just let it all come rolling out, it’ll show you what you’ll be missing.
“There was a little kid once, nice little guy. And he had a sort of yen. A dream. Used to spend all his nights reading, sit and time the satellites up the sky, build the gear so he could hear ‘em cheep. Watched all the Stereos he could get, turned himself bug-eyed seeing Mars and Venus and the Moon. Was only one thing the little guy wanted, right from when he could think. Wanted out, wanted to be a Spacer, wanted the long haul. Only that wasn’t too easy, honey, you know why? You wouldn’t know about things like that I guess ... He was born wrong side of the tracks. Daddy kept a general store in a little way-out dump of a town you never heard of. Wasn’t no money, no money at all.
“Well, he made it. Took years. His Ma slung hash in a dirty little flop joint to pay his way through High School. Then College, then the Cadets. He made it. Got his uniform, got his commission. Travelled all the way back home just to show the folks, tell ‘em what it felt like wearing the Blue. Was a big day for him, honey. That was the day they turned out the band.”
“You made it, Gerry,” she said. “What’s the point, raking this all over?”
He carried on as if he hadn’t heard her. He was sweating a little; he stood with his feet apart on the carpet, and some piece of his mind was wondering at the violence that was getting itself let out. It was like a stranger was talking, he was listening to the words, seeing them make new patterns. “He went back to Space School, did that little guy,” he said. “They tested him, they probed him, they taught him everything they could. And he found out all there was about the Space Service. Every little thing.”
He looked out the long windows, blue and vibrant with night. “I wonder what they’d have thought,” he said. “All the old guys, the dreamers. Galileo, Newton, Verne, Wells. Old Lucian, all those years back. Wonder what they’d have just made of it, seeing the dream ...
“There’s nothing out there for us. Just a hole that goes on for ever, they call that Space. And lumps of rock, they call ‘em planets. We can’t populate, we can’t use a thing. Not for generations. There’s nothing out there we haven’t got already, ten times over. No life. No air. And we’re still looking for God ...”
“Gerry ...”
“But we got a Space Service,” he said. “By Heaven we got one of those. It’s big and it’s rich, and what the Service says goes. Any place, any time. If the Service wants a million bucks sort of sudden, it gets it. If it wants ten million, it gets it. Wants to glue a few houses on the side of cliffs, it goes right on up and does it. But now and then, just once in a while, some guy gets on his back legs and says so what the Hell, how about the Conquest of the Universe? Then things have to move, honey, they have to whirl. And you know what happens ? They got a routine for it, all laid out. They take some goof with his head full of glory. Like the little guy I was saying about. They make him up big. Promote him. Give him a coupla years leave. Fix him a high-class wife, somebody to raise the family, look after the back pay. They give him the lot, everything a guy could need. Sure they’ll build him a house on a mountain if that’s what he wants, it’ll be great... Then they shove a bloody little flag in his hand. ‘Off you go, son,’ they say.
‘Just stick this in the farthest ball of muck you can find, will ya, just poop off for a coupla dozen years, somebody gotta keep making Progress.. .’ “
She got up like she’d just sat on a tack. “It wasn’t like that... Gerry, it wasn’t...” She was nearly screaming, her eyes were very bright. She stamped, made the short kilt swing. He’d never seen anybody, girl or woman, stamp with a temper before. “O.K.,” he said. “O.K. bunny, wasn’t like that. Wasn’t anything like I said at all.” He walked towards the door. “I’m an upstate slob. Rebel, I never changed. How do I get out of this Goddam place?”
Quietly. “There’s a fan in the garage. You’re welcome.”
“Great,” he said. “I’ll send a guy back for my things, O.K?”
She seemed dazed. “Gerry ... where’ll you go?”
“Downtown LA. Find me a bar that doesn’t shut nights. Make like a Spacer.” He reached the door and she ran to him, took his arm. Rubbing, not looking at him. “Gerry, I ... never said please to you before. Please believe me, it wasn’t like that. Not this time. I thought... well, we could take up where we left off. It was going to be like ... well, like it could have been. Oh, you know what I mean. It’s all messed up, Gerry, I made one Hell of a mess of things, you know what I mean ...”
He unhooked her, as gently as he could. Seemed he couldn’t see straight any more. And the blood was sounding in his ears, it was like he was drunk. “Darling,” he said, “I believe you. It’s just, I don’t want any part of this. Always wanted you but I can’t take this, not you a chunk in a package deal. You didn’t have to put yourself on show with a price tag round your neck ... I got a twenty-year tour, is all. O.K., so I’ll do the bloody tour. The long haul. So O.K., we can’t just all have the luck. I pulled the short twig, that’s all...”
She stood back from him, white and gold, tousled. “Then I never mattered,” she said. “Thought I did, thought there was something between us, wasn’t so.” Then, bitterly, “Just a hayseed getting over his first dose of hormone trouble ...”
He leaned his hand on the door-frame, made a fist, pushed his forehead against his knuckles. Knew that walking out was going to be like towing a ton weight up a cliff. He looked up, face haunted. “Reb,” he said. “This is a thing just has to be done. Don’t know why.” He was shaking, trying to grin. He heard his own voice rambling on into absurdity but this was still his scene. Would never be another. “Bunny,” he said, “there was a man called Shaw, wrote a play. In the play, the girl’s going to be fed to the lions. The soldier asks her why, why do it? And she says, ‘I don’t know, I’ve forgotten.’ That’s a wonderful line I guess. And that’s with me. Don’t know why I’m going. Don’t know why any of us burn our lives up cutting rings in Deepspace. I don’t know. I’ve forgotten ... But we go anyway. Nothing for us, we still have to go.” He fumbled the door open. “Rebel,” he said. “I love you. Mean that, bunny.” She shut her eyes, swayed a little. Heard the frame bang in the wind.
She walked back across the room, moving automatically. On the hearth, her Scotch was getting cold. She knelt in front of the fire, looked into flame. Rubbed the senseless prettiness of her legs. Hadn’t been easy for her either. But she’d had to play it this way. How deep was trust, or need? She picked up the glass, her hand tightened, there was a quick clear snap. Blood ran across her palm. She watched the brightness stupidly, not understanding it. Outside, she heard him yell.
He crossed the loggia feeling his head spinning. Bright sparks of light showed in front of his eyes. The wind hit him; he stumbled on the steps, caught the guard-rail... and he was staring into nothing, into Space, into the endless bowl of the Valley. The wind sang and bawled under his feet.
It got him. The mountain over his head was leaning, it was going to fall and crush, snap him out. He was a dust mote on a ball called Earth that fled through Space eternally. He made it to the walled yard and stayed there on his knees, the stars above him and all Space shoving down on his back. His lungs pumped, not acclimatized, wanting thicker air, not getting it. The house watched with its orange windows and he couldn’t see. He shouted blindly and Reb came running, skidded in the gravel. She tried to haul him up by the collar; he pulled back wincing and she started to laugh. “You’re soft, brother. You know what, your belly’s gone soft...” She used a phrase that cut into his shock like a knife. “And I didn’t bloody well learn that on Terra either ...” She was shaking him. Yelling. “Like to play it tough though, don’t you, feller, like it all on the line. So O.K. you’re an upstate slob, I’m worth twenty years of your dirty life. Better take the deal, slob, is the only way you’ll get me ...”
The plateau was tilting, he felt he was going to be sick. He had hold of her kilt, “Reb,” he said weaving, “Reb, please, Reb, please...” And suddenly his head was down between her breasts, in the warmth there, she was holding him and she was warm. “It’s O.K.,” she said. “Oh, you fool, Gerry, it’s O.K----” She nuzzled at him, voice husking and limping against his ear. “Everybody has to break ... Everybody gets the jolt, has to break just once. I lost the ... Mars trip ... for this thing, I hit ... LA, high as a kite, I used to be a virgin ...” She rubbed a hand across his back, feeling the shaking. “Gerry, it’s alright, take it easy, Gerry, it’s alright...” He spoke thickly, face muffled. “Gimme a minute, Reb ... Be O.K...”
“You got it, brother,” said the Ranger. “You got all the time there is.” It was O.K., together they had a chance. They could keep back the cold that was coming. She laughed, felt pain start in her hand where the cut throbbed in the palm. It seemed now house and mountain were cardboard cut-outs, less real than the Stereo. The only thing that mattered was the warmth, hers and Gerry’s. They were tiny, both of them, but they were alive. She had to, laugh. Was only one thing she hadn’t told him, somehow she’d get round to it. Up to now it hadn’t seemed important, thing that mattered was how much he needed her, she knew how much now. He was marked for the long haul, so was she. No more parents, in just a little while. No more high-class parties, no more pretty house on a cliff. But that was the deal and you had to take it, whoever you were. You had no second choice; nobody got a second choice ...
Above her, way up over the shoulder of the mountain, the void brightened and glowed. GX rose, close and huge, still finding sunlight, hurling it back transmuted from its high-albedo dural skin. It sailed up the sky, a ragged silver flower; Rebel watched, kneeling upright. Her face in the brilliance looked like she was seeing a god.