Brock’s answering signal came.
Surely, Ames thought, he could tell Brock. Surely he could tell somebody.
Brock’s shifting energy pattern communed, “Aren’t you coming, Ames?”
“Of course.”
“Will you take part in the contest?”
“Yes!” Ames’s lines of force pulsed erratically. “Most certainly. I have thought of a whole new art-form. Something really unusual.”
“What a waste of effort! How can you think a new variation can be thought of after two hundred billion years. There can be nothing new.”
For a moment Brock shifted out of phase and out of communion, so that Ames had to hurry to adjust his lines of force. He caught the drift of other-thoughts as he did so, the view of the powdered galaxies against the velvet of nothingness, and the lines of force pulsing in endless multitudes of energy-life, lying between the galaxies.
Ames said, “Please absorb my thoughts, Brock. Don’t close out. I’ve thought of manipulating Matter. Imagine! A symphony of Matter. Why bother with Energy. Of course, there’s nothing new in Energy; how can there be? Doesn’t that show we must deal with Matter?”
“Matter!”
Ames interpreted Brock’s energy-vibrations as those of disgust.
He said, “Why not? We were once Matter ourselves back-back- Oh, a trillion years ago anyway! Why not build up objects in a Matter medium, or abstract forms or-listen, Brock-why not build up an imitation of ourselves in Matter, ourselves as we used to be?”
Brock said, “I don’t remember how that was. No one does.”
“I do,” said Ames with energy, “I’ve been thinking of nothing else and I am beginning to remember. Brock, let me show you. Tell me if I’m right. Tell me.”
“No. This is silly. It’s-repulsive.”
“Let me try, Brock. We’ve been friends; we’ve pulsed energy together from the beginning-from the moment we became what we are. Brock, please!”
“Then, quickly.”
Ames had not felt such a tremor along his own lines of force in-well, in how long? If he tried it now for Brock and it worked, he could dare manipulate Matter before the assembled Energy-beings who had so drearily waited over the eons for something new.
The Matter was thin out there between the galaxies, but Ames gathered it, scraping it together over the cubic light-years, choosing the atoms, achieving a clayey consistency and forcing matter into an ovoid form that spread out below.
“Don’t you remember, Brock?” he asked softly. “Wasn’t it something like this?”
Brock’s vortex trembled in phase. “Don’t make me remember. I don’t remember.”
“That was the head. They called it the head. I remember it so clearly, I want to say it. I mean with sound.” He waited, then said, “Look, do you remember that?”
On the upper front of the ovoid appeared HEAD.
“What is that?” asked Brock.
“That’s the word for head. The symbols that meant the word in sound. Tell me you remember, Brock!”
“There was something,” said Brock hesitantly, “something in the middle.” A vertical bulge formed.
Ames said, “Yes! Nose, that’s it!” And NOSE appeared upon it. “And those are eyes on either side,” LEFT EYE-RIGHT EYE.
Ames regarded what he had formed, his lines of force pulsing slowly. Was he sure he liked this?
“Mouth,” he said, in small quiverings, “and chin and Adam’s apple, and
the collarbones. How the words come back to me.” They appeared on the form.
Brock said, “I haven’t thought of them for hundreds of billions of years. Why have you reminded me? Why?”
Ames was momentarily lost in his thoughts, “Something else. Organs to hear with; something for the sound waves. Ears! Where do they go? I don’t remember where to put them!”
Brock cried out, “Leave it alone! Ears and all else! Don’t remember!”
Ames said, uncertainly, “What is wrong with remembering?”
“Because the outside wasn’t rough and cold like that but smooth and warm. Because the eyes were tender and alive and the lips of the mouth trembled and were soft on mine.” Brock’s lines of force beat and wavered, beat and wavered.
Ames said, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”
“You’re reminding me that once I was a woman and knew love; that eyes do more than see and I have none to do it for me.”
With violence, she added matter to the rough-hewn head and said, “Then let them do it” and turned and fled.
And Ames saw and remembered, too, that once he had been a man. The force of his vortex split the head in two and he fled back across the galaxies on the energy-track of Brock-back to the endless doom of life.
And the eyes of the shattered head of Matter still glistened with the moisture that Brock had placed there to represent tears. The head of Matter did that which the energy-beings could do no longer and it wept for all humanity, and for the fragile beauty of the bodies they had once given up, a trillion years ago.
<
* * * *
Speaking of reality, or the lack of it, I think part of the reason the Space Race began to make me yawn was the prepackaged imitation-of-life atmosphere surrounding the whole thing—till recently, at least. Between political ploysmanship and scorekeeping, and the deft image-building of the PR people, everything has (or had) acquired a faintly phony air. (I’m still suspicious; I wonder if the PR men didn’t decide the operation needed a bit more “realism”?)
In any case, when Major White’s walk in space was announced, I couldn’t work up enough interest to find a friendly nearby TV set and watch. I knew it could be done; Soviet Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov had done it a week earlier. And I knew what it would look like: I’d already seen Destination Moon.
I thought I knew. But Ed While went out there and did everything they told him to, until they told him to get back in. And his wife— his wonderful, non-cardboard wife—watched him and understood, and threw the world one happy sentence not (I think) on the prepared script: “He’s having a ball!”
Then there were the Mars pictures. That time, I did look for a TV set—and I am here to tell you the day of the TV bar is over, at least in Washington, D.C
Well, I saw the pictures in the paper: MARS POSES LIFELESSLY. EARTH STANDS ALONE. NO LIFE ON MARS.
Of course, I don’t believe it. (There was all that confusion in interpretation.) I’m holding out for life out there. Somewhere out there, anyhow. And, besides, I had Asimov’s article. The September Esquire arrived on my doorstep right on the heels of those first Mars photos, with Asimov’s article on “The Anatomy of a Man from Mars.” Of course, he started off with a disclaimer! If life on Mars exists at all, it probably resembles only the simplest and most primitive terrestrial plant life. But then he explained what it would be, if it were. . . .
And there’s new hope for the moon too, you know: The U.S. Geological Survey found “permafrost”—a “rock-hard layer of ice that never thaws”—9,000 feet up in the High Sierras; the article said there might be such deposits on the moon. And Venus: Sir Bernard Lovell helped there. When the Soviet ship crashed. Sir Bernard was quoted as concerned about contamination of the planet by Earth bacteria. If it didn’t have life, maybe now it does?
Reality can be changed, you know. Sometimes we have to make it (up) as we go along. There’s life out there; or there will be. I believe it. Asimov believes it. And Arthur Clarke believes it too.
* * * *
MAELSTROM II
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
He was not the first man, Cliff Leyland told himself bitterly, to know the exact second and the precise manner of his death; times beyond number, condemned criminals had waited for their last dawn. Yet until the very end, they could have hoped for a reprieve; human judges can show mercy, but against the laws of nature there was no appeal.
And only six hours ago he had been whistling happily while he packed his ten kilos of personal bagga
ge for the long fall home. He could still remember (even now, after all that had happened) how he had dreamed that Myra was already in his arms, that he was taking Brian and Sue on that promised cruise down the Nile. In a few minutes, as Earth rose above the horizon, he might see the Nile again; but memory alone could bring back the faces of his wife and children. And all because he had tried to save nine hundred fifty sterling dollars by riding home on the freight catapult instead of the rocket shuttle.
He had expected the first twelve seconds of the trip to be rough, as the electric launcher whipped the capsule along its ten-mile track and shot him off the Moon. Even with the protection of the water bath in which he had floated during countdown, he had not looked forward to the twenty g of takeoff. Yet when the acceleration had gripped the capsule, he had been hardly aware of the immense forces acting upon him. The only sound was a faint creaking from the metal walls; to anyone who had experienced the thunder of a rocket launch, the silence was uncanny. When the cabin speaker had announced, “T plus five seconds—speed two thousand miles an hour,” he could scarcely believe it.
Two thousand miles an hour in five seconds from a standing start—with seven seconds still to go as the generators smashed their thunderbolts of power into the launcher. He was riding the lightning across the face of the Moon; and at T plus seven seconds, the lightning failed.
Even in the womblike shelter of the tank, Cliff could sense that something had gone wrong. The water around him, until now frozen almost rigid by its weight, seemed suddenly to become alive. Though the capsule was still hurtling along the track, all acceleration had ceased and it was merely coasting under its own momentum.
He had no time to feel fear, or to wonder what had happened, for the power failure lasted little more than a second. Then, with a jolt that shook the capsule from end to end and set off a series of ominous, tinkling crashes, the field came on again.
When the acceleration faded for the last time, all weight vanished with it. Cliff needed no instrument but his stomach to tell that the capsule had left the end of the track and was rising away from the surface of the Moon. He waited impatiently until the automatic pumps had drained the tank and the hot-air driers had done their work; then he drifted across the control panel and pulled himself down into the bucket seat.
“Launch Control,” he called urgently, as he drew the restraining straps around his waist. “What the devil happened?”
A brisk but worried voice answered at once.
“We’re still checking—call you back in thirty seconds. Glad you’re okay,” it added belatedly.
While he was waiting, Cliff switched to forward vision. There was nothing ahead except stars—which was as it should be. At least he had taken off with most of his planned speed and there was no danger that he would crash back to the Moon’s surface immediately. But he would crash back sooner or later, for he could not possibly have reached escape velocity. He must be rising out into space along a great ellipse—and, in a few hours, he would be back at his starting point.
“Hello, Cliff,” said Launch Control suddenly. “We’ve found what happened. The circuit breakers tripped when you went through section five of the track, so your take-off speed was seven hundred miles an hour low. That will bring you back in just over five hours—but don’t worry; your course-correction jets can boost you into a stable orbit. We’ll tell you when to fire them; then all you have to do is to sit tight until we can send someone to haul you down.”
Slowly, Cliff allowed himself to relax. He had forgotten the capsule’s vernier rockets; low-powered though they were, they could kick him into an orbit that would clear the Moon. Though he might fall back to within a few miles of the lunar surface, skimming over mountains and plains at a breath-taking speed, he would be perfectly safe.
Then he remembered those tinkling crashes from the control compartment, and his hopes dimmed again—for there were not many things that could break in a space vehicle without most unpleasant consequences.
He was facing those consequences, now that the final checks of the ignition circuits had been completed. Neither on manual nor on auto would the navigation rockets fire; the capsule’s modest fuel reserves, which could have taken him to safety, were utterly useless. In five hours, he would complete his orbit—and return to his launching point.
I wonder if they’ll name the new crater after me? thought Cliff. “Crater Leyland—diameter ...” What diameter? Better not exaggerate—I don’t suppose it will be more than a couple of hundred yards across. Hardly worth putting on the map.
Launch Control was still silent, but that was not surprising; there was little that one could say to a man already as good as dead. And yet, though he knew that nothing could alter his trajectory, even now he did not believe that he would soon be scattered over most of Farside. He was still soaring away from the Moon, snug and comfortable in his little cabin. The idea of death was utterly incongruous—as it is to all men until the final second.
And then, for a moment, Cliff forgot his own problem. The horizon ahead was no longer flat; something even more brilliant than the blazing lunar landscape was lifting against the stars. As the capsule curved round the edge of the Moon, it was creating the only kind of Earthrise that was possible—a man-made one. In a minute it was all over, such was his speed in orbit. By that time the Earth had leaped clear of the horizon and was climbing swiftly up the sky.
It was three-quarters full and almost too bright to look upon. Here was a cosmic mirror made not of dull rocks and dusty plains, but of snow and cloud and sea. Indeed, it was almost all sea, for the Pacific was turned toward him, and the blinding reflection of the Sun covered the Hawaiian Islands. The haze of the atmosphere—that soft blanket that should have cushioned his descent in a few hours’ time— obliterated all geographical details; perhaps that darker patch emerging from night was New Guinea, but he could not be sure.
There was a bitter irony in the knowledge that he was heading straight toward that lovely, gleaming apparition. Another seven hundred miles an hour and he would have made it. Seven hundred miles an hour—that was all. He might as well ask for 7,000,000.
The sight of the rising Earth brought home to him, with irresistible force, the duty he feared but could postpone no longer. “Launch Control,” he said, holding his voice steady with a great effort. “Please give me a circuit to Earth.”
This was one of the strangest things he had ever done in his life—sitting here above the Moon, listening to the telephone ring in his own home a quarter of a million miles away. It must be near midnight down there in Africa and it would be some time before there would be any answer. Myra would stir sleepily—then, because she was a spaceman’s wife, always alert for disaster, she would be instantly awake. But they had both hated to have a phone in the bedroom, and it would be at least fifteen seconds before she could switch on the lights, close the nursery door to avoid disturbing the baby, get down the stairs and—
Her voice came clear and sweet across the emptiness of space. He would recognize it anywhere in the Universe, and he detected at once the undertone of anxiety.
“Mrs. Leyland?” said the Earthside operator. “I have a call from your husband. Please remember the two-second time lag.”
Cliff wondered how many people were listening to this call, either on the Moon, the Earth or the relay satellites. It was hard to talk for the last time to your loved ones, not knowing how many eavesdroppers there might be. But as soon as he began to speak, no one else existed but Myra and himself.
“Darling,” he began. “This is Cliff. I’m afraid I won’t be coming home as I promised. There’s been a—a technical slip. I’m quite all right at the moment, but I’m in big trouble.”
He swallowed, trying to overcome the dryness in his mouth, then went on quickly before she could interrupt. As briefly as he could, he explained the situation. For his own sake as well as hers, he did not abandon all hope.
“Everyone’s doing their best,” he said. “Maybe they can g
et a ship up to me in time—but in case they can’t—well, I wanted to speak to you and the children.”
She took it well, as he had known she would. He felt pride as well as love when her answer came back from the dark side of Earth.
“Don’t worry, Cliff. I’m sure they’ll get you out and well have our holiday after all, exactly the way we planned.”
“I think so, too,” he lied. “But just in case—would you wake the children? Don’t tell them that anything’s wrong.”
It was an endless half minute before he heard their sleepy yet excited voices. Cliff would willingly have given these last few hours of his life to have seen their faces once again, but the capsule was not equipped with such luxuries as phonevision. Perhaps it was just as well, for he could not have hidden the truth had he looked into their eyes. They would know it soon enough, but not from him. He wanted to give them only happiness in these last moments together.
The Year's Best Science Fiction 11 - [Anthology] Page 15
