Orbit 2 - Anthology

by Edited by Damon Knight

  Nammue the scribe hath

  written this for the Lord

  Garth, the Son of Garth,

  and Watcher of the North

  Marches.

  * * * *

  FROM: Prof. John Beatty

  Edgemont Inst., Earth

  TO: Dr. M.M. Finch

  UNworld spcrft MOTH (Reg #387760)

  Sorry to be so slow to write, Morton, but I have been busy as ten sub-instructors at theme time doing a new symposium for Archaeological Worlds. Some of the people who want to write in this kind of thing are such asses!

  About your native, this Garth. Morton, let an old friend warn you; it is always a temptation for someone situated as you are to strike a lofty pose and impress the natives. “Me great magician, come from star in silver boat.” And all that. But, Morton, sooner or later he is bound to discover that you are only flesh, even as he. Don’t carry on in such a way that this comes to him as too great a shock; he may turn on you then if you have. Take him into your confidence at times; explain the simpler principles of what you are doing and allow him to make a minor decision at times—whether to camp or go on, which of a group of similar sites to tackle first—that kind of thing. Fear and awe alone will not suffice indefinitely.

  Meanwhile, would you please send more detail on the markings and pictures. Rubbings and photographs as soon as you can get them and arrange for civilized mail service. I had to write my article for Arch. Worlds (the one that stirred up all this symposium rubbish) on the very sketchy information in your letter; how sketchy it was you will note in the clipping I am having transmitted with this. I gave you full credit, as you will see. It is the paragraph beginning: “I sent an investigator. . .”

  Hastily,

  J. Beatty

  JB/sl

  <>

  * * * *

  “Philip Latham” is the pen name of Robert S. Richardson, American astronomer formerly on the staffs of the Mt. Wilson and Palomar Observatories, He was born in Kokomo, Indiana; his wife won’t let him say when, but he can remember seeing Halley’s Comet the last time around. He is the former holder of the UCLA record in the 100-yard dash—101 yards in 9.8 seconds (he was set back a yard for jumping the gun). After about twenty-five years at Mt. Wilson, he joined Griffith Planetarium for a few years, then resigned to devote himself to writing. He isnot retired. (“Just try to retire and make your living as a free-lance writer!”)

  * * * *

  THE DIMPLE IN DRACO

  By Philip Latham

  There was never any doubt when quitting time came to the Institute for Cosmological Physics, Bill Backus reflected. Promptly at 4:53 P.M. the women all started heading for the powder room, whence shortly thereafter came the sound of water in turbulence. It was one of the zero points in this uneasy world.

  For the third time he reached for the telephone and for the third time hesitated. It was 4:57 now. The girl at the switchboard always got sore if you kept her after five o’clock. Oh, well, the hell with her. He needed help. He seized the phone.

  “Two-seven, please.”

  No answer… no answer… no…

  “MacCready,” came a noncommittal voice.

  “Mac, this is Bill.”

  “Bill! It’s so good to hear your voice!”

  “Listen, Mac, I’ve got something down here in the measuring room I think will interest you.”

  “So’s my wife. She’s probably mixing it now.”

  “I’d like your opinion very much. Shouldn’t take ten minutes.”

  One… two… three…

  “All right. See you.”

  A few minutes later MacCready sauntered into the measuring room, hoisted one leg over a corner of the bench that ran along the wall, and applied a match to his pipe. When the tobacco was going to his satisfaction, he folded his arms and gazed expectantly at Bill.

  “Here I am. Interest me.”

  Bill indicated the Toepfer measuring engine beside him.

  “Plate’s on there. Got it last week with the prime focus spectrograph. Six-hour exposure in the second order blue. I nearly froze. Coldest night in the memory of man-”

  “You don’t look so good,” MacCready remarked.

  “Maybe that’s because I don’t feel so good,” Bill said. He rose and began pacing the floor. “Take a look at the plate, will you, and tell me what you think.”

  “But your feet seem better,” MacCready added encouragingly.

  “Yeah, they are better. Now will you look at the plate?”

  MacCready laid aside his pipe and peered into the eyepiece.

  “Nice spectrum,” he said. “Real sharp lines.”

  “But what lines?” Bill cried. “I’ve been working on those lines for three days. Can’t identify a single one.” He ran his fingers through his black hair. “It’s driving me crazy.”

  “Well, d’you have to get so dramatic about it?” MacCready asked. He gave the focusing screw a touch. “What is this famous object, anyhow?”

  “Well, you see, that’s what I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know!” MacCready stared at him. “Do you realize how much it cost the Institute to get this plate? Do you know that we have seventeen applications on file for time at this instrument? Applications from highly qualified individuals with no suspicion of insanity in their background. And then you take our giant eye, as the newspapers are pleased to call it, and bang away at any old-”

  “Mac, shut up.” Bill lit a cigarette. “I was after NGC 2146, that way-north nebula in Cepheus, I guess it is. This new night assistant was on that evening. Poor guy got all balled up. My fault as much as his. You wouldn’t believe it possible, but he got set on the wrong side of the pole. Landed me over in Draco somewhere. I thought the setting looked kind of funny-”

  “Couldn’t you tell from your star field?”

  “Well, I should, but the fields weren’t so different. Anyhow-”

  “-anyhow you goofed but you got something,” MacCready finished for him. “By any chance would you have the vaguest notion what it is? Radio source? Interloper? QSG? Haro-Luyten object? Humason-Zwicky star? Have I left out anything?”

  “All I know, it’s got a spectrum nobody ever saw before.”

  “Then what are you griping about?” MacCready demanded. “That’s good. Maybe this object’s got the world’s biggest red shift. You’ve probably dredged up some lines buried thousands of angstroms deep in the ultraviolet.”

  “Nope, won’t suit, Mac. Remember the Houston meeting? It was agreed we’re living in an exploding universe with a q-zero of 2.5. This thing’s way off the beam - much too bright.”

  “You know what your problem is, Bill?” MacCready was suddenly serious. “You’ve always got to relate to somebody else. You’re afraid to take your results just as they stand.”

  “But there must be an answer,” Bill protested. “What else can it be?”

  MacCready shrugged and fell to scrutinizing the plate again.

  “Wouldn’t surprise me if the answer’s staring us right in the face,” he said. “Only it’s so simple we can’t see it.”

  He moved the plate carriage a bit.

  “Now you take these three big lines I see here… Why couldn’t the one on my left be that Hell line at - what is it? - 1640? And the one in the middle-”

  “Oh, my gawd, don’t you think I’ve been all through that search list?” Bill said wearily. “None of ‘em’s any good. I’ve tried a bunch of hundred-to-one shots. They’re no good either. Nothing fits.”

  “Too bad.” MacCready frowned slightly. “Strange… these lines are all in absorption, aren’t they?”

  “Here’s my list of wavelengths,” Bill said, handing him a sheet of paper. “They’re the means of my measures on the machine and some runs with the electronic line-profile comparator. They ought to be pretty good.”

  “I’m sure they are,” MacCready murmured. He shot a sudden glance at Bill. “You sure you set the grating in the right order spectrum?�
�

  “Mac, I couldn’t make a mistake like that.”

  “Congratulations.”

  There was a long silence broken only by an occasional motor starting up in the parking lot, and the steady rumble of traffic from the boulevard nearby. MacCready was the first to speak.

  “After you got this plate, did you take another exposure on a familiar object, same spectrograph - same emulsion - same everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was?”

  “Yes!” Bill shouted. “In France it’s oui. In Spanish it’s si. In Russian it’s da.”

  MacCready transferred his attention from the plate to Bill’s list of wavelengths.

  “You know, these three big lines remind me of something,” he muttered. “But I’ll confess I haven’t the faintest notion what it is.”

  Bill looked completely deflated. He began pacing the room again, clasping and unclasping his hands behind him. MacCready seemed to have forgotten his existence.

  Bill tossed away his cigarette.

  “Well, thanks for coming down, Mac. I’d gotten to the end of my rope. Thought perhaps you could suggest something.”

  There was no response. Bill paced the floor for another five minutes.

  “Well, I’ve got to go. We’re having company tonight.”

  “Yeah, you run along,” MacCready told him. “Leaving myself in a minute… just want to check one thing.”

  Bill was nearly out the door when MacCready called suddenly, “Bill.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Call my wife, will you? Tell her I’ll be a little late.”

  * * * *

  Bill had to wait forever before he got a break in the traffic at Los Robles. Why did he keep coming this way? he asked himself. There was no answer. You saw an opening - you took a deep breath - uttered a prayer - and if you were lucky you made it.

  Turning north toward Hillhurst he saw that the signal at Cordova was going to be red, as usual. The signal was always red at Cordova. In the past five years he must have crossed Cordova going north at least two thousand times. There had been just three times by actual count when he had hit the green light. His confidence in the theory of probability had been badly shaken.

  Through the tangle of varicolored lights, leering Santa Clauses, liquor advertisements, and five-pointed stars [Stars do not have points sticking out of them. Stars are spherical.] of Bethlehem, Bill perceived a huge sign looming ahead, village market. Click! What was he supposed to do? What was he supposed to - Helen’s grocery list, of course. Good old autohypnosis.

  Within the Village Market the aisles were abustle with hausfrauen pushing metal carts, their vacant gaze reflecting the trancelike state induced by the sight of merchandise in profusion. Bill took a cart himself and went to work on Helen’s grocery list, tracking down the various items by the awkward process of taking them in the order written. Occasionally when it seemed like a good idea he tossed in an extra item or two. How often he had come in for a fifty-nine-cent piece of cheese and departed laden down with a lot of junk he never originally had the slightest intention of buying. But who were we? Mere puppets moving at the bidding of the vast formless things that operate these huge pleasure domes of produce.

  Helen wrote her shopping items in a code that might have baffled the best brains in Interpol. This time, however, it had been pretty clear sailing. He now had in the cart the “6 nee rd rpe toms” and the “2 pkes lmn jlo,” and finally had reached the last item, “2 dz Ye Olde Eng Muffs.” This sounded almost too easy. On any rational distribution system Olde English Muffins could hardly be anywhere else but in the bread section. He glanced at the Store Guide. Bread?… Bread?… Section 5. Where was he? Way over in 21 among Frozen Desserts and mouthwash. He deftly changed course and started bearing toward smaller numbers. 2… 3… 4… 6… 7. No 5! Must have missed it. Scan more carefully now…2…3…4…6…7. Number 5 was absolutely and positively missing.

  He looked around for a clerk, but there was none in sight. Neither was there any bread. He explored one aisle after another as fast as traffic permitted. There were shelves and bins loaded with pickles and olives, wieners and knockwurst, yoghurt and horseradish. But no Olde English Muffins. Well, he couldn’t spend the evening pushing a metal cart around the Village Market. He picked up a box of Bixmix and headed for Checkers’ Row.

  The porch lights were already burning when he turned into the driveway. That was bad. It meant that even now company was ominously near. Closing the garage door, he noticed the stars of Auriga rising over the mountains to the north. How odd Capella looked, reddened almost to the color of Mars by the smoke and haze. Auriga had always been his favorite constellation. All the constellations had a background rich in mythological lore-except Auriga. Auriga was known as “the Charioteer.” But where were his chariot and horse? Nobody knew. The stars of Auriga were meaningless.

  “Well, where have you been?” Helen demanded, as he staggered into the kitchen with his load of groceries. She was a small woman whose early blond prettiness was beginning to show signs of wear under the ceaseless bartering of suburbia: the Garden Club, the Art League, WAGS, [Women Against Smog.] etc.. etc.

  “Where do you think?” Bill growled. “Picking up the stuff you forgot.”

  She started sorting over the groceries. “It shouldn’t have taken - where’s the muffins?”

  “Couldn’t find ‘em. Got Bixmix instead.”

  “Why couldn’t you find them?”

  “Hidden too well, I guess.”

  “Why, they’re right by the bread.”

  “Couldn’t find the bread either.”

  “Did you ask a clerk?”

  “Didn’t see any to ask.”

  “But there’s always-”

  “It’s the truth!” he cried. “What do you want me to do? Lie to you?”

  “Oh, do as you like. I don’t care.” With a resigned air she began putting away the various items. “Now hurry and change your clothes. They’ll be here any minute.”

  He was scarcely halfway up the stairs when she came dashing after him. “Your feet! What’s happened to your feet?”

  “Don’t know.” He shrugged. “They just didn’t hurt when I got up this morning-”

  “What did I tell you,” Helen told him triumphantly. “You wouldn’t go to see Dr. Levine. He’s only the best orthopedic specialist in town but of course you know more than he does. If I hadn’t made an appointment for you, you’d never have gone. Now admit it. Those arch supporters did help, didn’t they?”

  “If I’d worn those arch supporters one more day I wouldn’t be ambulant now.”

  “But they must have done you some good.” She regarded him with despair. “If it wasn’t the arch supporters, what was it?”

  Bill did not answer immediately. He leaned against the railing, gazing thoughtfully at some of Helen’s abstract artwork on the opposite wall.

  “Last night.’’ he declared solemnly, “my feet were healed.”

  “Healed?”

  He nodded. “What they called a miracle in the old days.”

  “So it was a miracle and not the arch supporters?”

  “Why couldn’t I be cured by a miracle?” he demanded angrily. “Other people are. People with their stomach and lungs eaten up by cancer. Suddenly they’re all right. They rise from their bed and walk. They’ve got sworn medical testimony to prove it.”

  Helen hesitated uncertainly. “But you’re not the miracle type.”

  “What’s the matter with me?”

  “I always supposed you had to be kind of on the saintly side.”

  He dismissed her objection with a wave of his hand.

  “Merely a technicality.” He closed his eyes for a few moments as if in meditation. “I hadn’t intended to say anything about it, but for your information, I was healed by an angel who appeared in my room last night.”

  “So that was what I heard going on in there.”
>
  “She appeared over by the filing cabinet,” Bill continued. “She was surrounded by a golden halo that illuminated the whole room. I thought I’d forgotten to turn the lights out at first.” His voice dropped almost to a whisper. “She was no ordinary angel, either.”

  “It’s so nice you got special attention.”

  “She had the most beautiful golden red hair.” There was a faraway look in his eyes. “Her name was Edna.”