“I was coming to that,” said Captain Norden, running his hands over where his magnificent blond hair had been only a few days before. (Spaceships seldom carry professional barbers, and though there are always plenty of eager amateurs one prefers to put off the evil day as long as possible.) “You all know of Mr. Gibson, of course.”
This remark produced a chorus of replies, not all of them respectful.
“I think his stories stink,” said Dr. Scott. “The later ones, anyway. Martian Dust wasn’t bad, but of course it’s completely dated now.”
“Nonsense!” snorted astrogator Mackay. “The last stories are much the best, now that Gibson’s got interested in fundamentals and has cut out the blood and thunder.”
This outburst from the mild little Scott was most uncharacteristic. Before anyone else could join in, Captain Norden interrupted.
“We’re not here to discuss literary criticism, if you don’t mind. There’ll be plenty of time for that later. But there are one or two points the Corporation wants me to make clear before we begin. Mr. Gibson is a very important man—a distinguished guest—and he’s been invited to come on this trip so that he can write a book about it later. It’s not just a publicity stunt.” (“Of course not!” interjected Bradley, with heavy sarcasm.) “But naturally the Corporation hopes that future clients won’t be—er discouraged by what they read. Apart from that, we are making history; our maiden voyage ought to be recorded properly. So try and behave like gentlemen for a while; Gibson’s book will probably sell half a million copies, and your future reputations may depend on your behaviour these next three months!”
“That sounds dangerously like blackmail to me,” said Bradley.
“Take it that way if you please,” continued Norden cheerfully. “Of course, I’ll explain to Gibson that he can’t expect the service that will be provided later when we’ve got stewards and cooks and Lord knows what. He’ll understand that, and won’t expect breakfast in bed every morning.”
“Will he help with the washing-up?” asked someone with a practical turn of mind.
Before Norden could deal with this problem in social etiquette a sudden buzzing came from the communications panel, and a voice began to call from the speaker grille.
“Station One calling Ares—your passenger’s coming over.”
Norden flipped a switch and replied, “O.K.—we’re ready.” Then he turned to the crew.
“With all these hair-cuts around, the poor chap will think it’s graduation day at Alcatraz. Go and meet him, Jimmy, and help him through the airlock when the tender couples up.”
Martin Gibson was still feeling somewhat exhilarated at having surmounted his first major obstacle—the M.O. at Space Station One. The loss of gravity on leaving the station and crossing to the Ares in the tiny, compressed-air driven tender had scarcely bothered him at all, but the sight that met his eyes when he entered Captain Norden’s cabin caused him a momentary relapse. Even when there was no gravity, one liked to pretend that some direction was “down,” and it seemed natural to assume that the surface on which chairs and table were bolted was the floor. Unfortunately the majority decision seemed otherwise, for two members of the crew were hanging like stalactites from the “ceiling,” while two more were relaxed at quite arbitrary angles in mid-air. Only the Captain was, according to Gibson’s ideas, the right way up. To make matters worse, their shaven heads gave these normally quite presentable men a faintly sinister appearance, so that the whole tableau looked like a family reunion at Castle Dracula.
There was a brief pause while the crew analyzed Gibson. They all recognized the novelist at once; his face had been familiar to the public ever since his first best-seller, Thunder in the Dawn, had appeared nearly twenty years ago. He was a chubby yet sharp-featured little man, still on the right side of forty-five, and when he spoke his voice was surprisingly deep and resonant.
“This,” said Captain Norden, working round the cabin from left to right, “is my engineer, Lieutenant Hilton. This is Dr. Mackay, our navigator—only a Ph.D., not a real doctor, like Dr. Scott here. Lieutenant Bradley is Electronics Officer, and Jimmy Spencer, who met you at the airlock, is our supernumerary and hopes to be Captain when he grows up.”
Gibson looked round the little group with some surprise. There were so few of them—five men and a boy! His face must have revealed his thoughts, for Captain Norden laughed and continued.
“Not many of us, are there? But you must remember that this ship is almost automatic—and besides, nothing ever happens in space. When we start the regular passenger run, there’ll be a crew of thirty. On this trip, we’re making up the weight in cargo, so we’re really travelling as a fast freighter.”
Gibson looked carefully at the men who would be his only companions for the next three months. His first reaction (he always distrusted first reactions, but was at pains to note them) was one of astonishment that they seemed so ordinary—when one made allowance for such superficial matters as their odd attitudes and temporary baldness. There was no way of guessing that they belonged to a profession more romantic than any that the world had known since the last cowboys traded in their broncos for helicopters.
At a signal which Gibson did not intercept, the others took their leave by launching themselves with fascinatingly effortless precision through the open doorway. Captain Norden settled down in his seat again and offered Gibson a cigarette. The author accepted it doubtfully.
“You don’t mind smoking?” he asked. “Doesn’t it waste oxygen?”
“There’d be a mutiny,” laughed Norden, “if I had to ban smoking for three months. In any case, the oxygen consumption’s negligible. Back in the old days we had to be more careful. One tobacco firm once put out a special astronaut's brand, impregnated with some oxygen-carrier so that it didn't use air. It wasn't popular—and one day a batch got an overdose of oxygen. When you lit them, they went off like squibs; and that was the end of that idea.”
Captain Norden, thought Gibson a little ruefully, was not fitting at all well into the expected pattern. The skipper of a space-liner, according to the best—or at least the most popular—literary tradition, should be a grizzled, keen-eyed veteran who had spent half his life in the ether and could navigate across the Solar System by the seat of his pants, thanks to his uncanny knowledge of the spaceways. He must also be a martinet; when he gave orders, his officers must jump to attention (not an easy thing under zero gravity), salute smartly, and depart at the double.
Instead, the captain of the Ares was certainly less than forty, and might have been taken for a successful business executive. As for being a martinet—so far Gibson had detected no signs of discipline whatsoever. This impression, he realized later, was not strictly accurate. The only discipline aboard the Ares was entirely self-imposed; that was the only form possible among the type of men who composed her crew.
“So you’ve never been in space before,” said Norden, looking thoughtfully at his passenger.
“I’m afraid not. I made several attempts to get on the lunar run, but it’s absolutely impossible unless you’re on official business. It’s a pity that space-travel’s still so infernally expensive.”
Norden smiled.
“We hope the Ares will do something to change that. I must say,” he added, “that you seem to have managed to write quite a lot about the subject with ah—the minimum of practical experience.”
“Oh, that!” said Gibson airily, with what he hoped was a light laugh. “It’s a common delusion that authors must have experienced everything they describe in their books. I read all I could about space-travel when I was younger and did my best to get the local colour right. Don’t forget that all my interplanetary novels were written in the early days—I’ve hardly touched the subject in the last few years. It’s rather surprising that people still associate my name with it.”
Norden wondered how much of this modesty was assumed. Gibson must know perfectly well that it was his space-travel novels that had made h
im famous—and had prompted the Corporation to invite him on this trip. The whole situation, Norden realized, had some highly entertaining possibilities. But they would have to wait; in the meantime he must explain to this landlubber the routine of life aboard the private world of the Ares.
“We keep normal Earth-time—Greenwich Meridian—aboard the ship and everything shuts down at ‘night.’ There are no watches, as there used to be in the old days; the instruments can take over when we’re sleeping, so we aren’t on continuous duty. That’s one reason why we can manage with such a small crew. On this trip, as there’s plenty of space, we’ve all got separate cabins. Yours is a regular passenger stateroom; the only one that’s fitted up, as it happens. I think you’ll find it comfortable. Is all your cargo aboard? How much did they let you take?”
“A hundred kilos. It’s in the airlock.”
“A hundred kilos?” Norden managed to repress his amazement. The fellow must be emigrating—taking all his family heirlooms with him. Norden had the true astronaut’s horror of surplus mass, and did not doubt that Gibson was carrying a lot of unnecessary rubbish. However, if the Corporation had OK’d it, and the authorized load wasn’t exceeded, he had nothing to complain about.
“I’ll get Jimmy to take you to your room. He’s our odd-job man for this trip, working his passage and learning something about spaceflight. Most of us start that way, signing up for the lunar run during college vacations. Jimmy’s quite a bright lad—he’s already got his Bachelor’s degree.”
By now Gibson was beginning to take it quite for granted that the cabin-boy would be a college graduate. He followed Jimmy—who seemed somewhat overawed by his presence—to the passengers’ quarters. They glided like ghosts along the brightly lit corridors, which were fitted with a simple device that had done a good deal to make life aboard gravitationless spaceships more comfortable. Close to each wall, an endless belt with hand-holds at regular intervals was continuously moving along at several kilometres an hour. One had only to reach out a hand to strap-hand from one end of the ship to the other without the slightest effortm though a certain amount of skill was required at intersections to change from one belt to another.
The stateroom was small, but beautifully planned and designed in excellent taste. Ingenious lighting and mirror-faced walls made it seem much larger than it really was, and the pivoted bed could be reversed during the “day” to act as a table. There were very few reminders of the absence of gravity; everything had been done to make the traveller feel at home.
For the next hour Gibson sorted out his belongings and experimented with the room’s gadgets and controls. The device that pleased him most was a shaving mirror which, when a button was pressed, transformed itself into a porthole looking out on the stars. He wondered just how it was done.
At last everything was stowed away where he could find it; there was absolutely nothing else for him to do. He lay down on the bed and buckled the elastic belts around his chest and thighs. The illusion of weight was not very convincing, but it was better than nothing and did give some sense of a vertical direction.
Lying at peace in the bright little room that would be his world for the next hundred days, he could forget the disappointments and petty annoyances that had marred his departure from Earth. There was nothing to worry about now; for the first time in almost as long as he could remember, he had given his future entirely into the keeping of others. Engagements, lecture appointments, deadlines—all these things he had left behind on Earth. The sense of blissful relaxation was too good to last, but he would let his mind savour it while he could.
A series of apologetic knocks on the cabin door roused Gibson from sleep an indeterminate time later. For a moment he did not realize where he was; then full consciousness came back; he unclipped the retaining straps and thrust himself off the bed. As his movements were still poorly coordinated he had to make a carom off the nominal ceiling before reaching the door.
Jimmy Spencer stood there, slightly out of breath.
“Captain’s compliments, sir, and would you like to come and see the take-off?”
“I certainly would,” said Gibson. “Wait until I get my camera.”
He reappeared a moment later carrying a brand-new Leica XXA, at which Jimmy stared with undisguised envy, and festooned with auxiliary lenses and exposure meters. Despite these handicaps, they quickly reached the observation gallery, which ran like a circular belt around the body of the Ares.
For the first time Gibson saw the stars in their full glory, no longer dimmed either by atmosphere or by darkened glass, for he was on the night side of the ship and the sun-filters had been drawn aside. The Ares, unlike the space-station, was not turning on her axis but was held in the rigid reference system of her gyroscopes so that the stars were fixed and motionless in her skies.
As he gazed on the glory he had so often, and so vainly, tried to describe in his books, Gibson found it very hard to analyze his emotions—and he hated to waste an emotion that might profitably be employed in print. Oddly enough neither the brightness nor the sheer numbers of the stars made the greatest impression on his mind. He had seen skies little inferior to this from the tops of mountains on Earth, or from the observation decks of stratoliners; but never before had he felt so vividly the sense that the stars were all around him, down to the horizon he no longer possessed, and even below, under his very feet.
Space Station One was a complicated, brightly polished toy floating in nothingness a few meters beyond the port. There was no way in which its distance or size could be judged, for there was nothing familiar about its shape, and the sense of perspective seemed to have failed. Earth and Sun were both invisible, hidden behind the body of the ship.
Startlingly close, a disembodied voice came suddenly from a hidden speaker.
“One hundred seconds to firing. Please take your positions.”
Gibson automatically tensed himself and turned to Jimmy for advice. Before he could frame any questions, his guide said hastily, “I must get back on duty,” and disappeared in a graceful power-dive, leaving Gibson alone with his thoughts.
The next minute and a half passed with remarkable slowness, punctuated though it was with frequent time-checks from the speakers. Gibson wondered who the announcer was; it did not sound like Norden’s voice, and probably it was merely a recording, operated by the automatic circuit which must now have taken over control of the ship.
“Twenty seconds to go. Thrust will take about ten seconds to build up.”
“Ten seconds to go.”
“Five seconds, four, three, two, one…”
Very gently, something took hold of Gibson and slid him down the curving side of the porthole-studded wall on to what had suddenly become the floor. It was hard to realize that up and down had returned once more, harder still to connect their re-appearance with that distant, attenuated thunder that had broken in upon the silence of the ship. Far away in the second sphere that was the other half of the Ares, in that mysterious, forbidden world of dying atoms and automatic machines which no man could ever enter and live, the forces that powered the stars themselves were being unleashed. Yet there was none of that sense of mounting, pitiless acceleration that always accompanies the take-off of a chemically propelled rocket. The Ares had unlimited space in which to manoeuvre: she could take as long as she pleased to break free from her present orbit and crawl slowly out into the transfer hyperbola that would lead her to Mars. In any case, the utmost power of the atomic drive could move her two-thousand-ton mass with an acceleration of only a tenth of a gravity, at the moment it was throttled back to less than half of this small value. Atomic propulsion units operated at such enormous temperatures that they could be used only at low power ratings, which was one reason why their employment for direct planetary take-offs was impossible. But unlike the short-duty chemical rockets, they could maintain their thrust for hours at a time.
It did not take Gibson long to re-orientate himself. The ship’s acceleration was
so low—it gave him, he calculated, an effective weight of less than four kilograms—that his movements were still practically unrestricted. Space Station One had not moved from its apparent position, and he had to wait almost a minute before he could detect that the Ares was, in fact, slowly drawing away from it. Then he belatedly remembered his camera, and began to record the departure. When he had finally settled (he hoped) the tricky problem of the right exposure to give a small, brilliantly lit object against a jet-black background, the station was already appreciably more distant. In less than ten minutes, it had dwindled to a distant point of light that was hard to distinguish from the stars.
When Space Station One had vanished completely, Gibson went round to the day side of the ship to take some photographs of the receding Earth. It was a huge, thin crescent when he first saw it, far too large for the eye to take in at a single glance. As he watched, he could see that it was slowly waxing, for the Ares must make at least one more circuit before she could break away and spiral out towards Mars. It would be a good hour before the Earth was appreciably smaller and in that time it would pass again from new to full.
Well, this is it, thought Gibson. Down there is all my past life, and the lives of all my ancestors back to the first blob of jelly in the first primeval sea. No colonist or explorer setting sail from his native land ever left so much behind as I am leaving now. Down beneath those clouds lies the whole of human history; soon I shall be able to eclipse with my little finger what was, until a lifetime ago, all of Man’s dominion and everything that his art had saved from time.
This inexorable drawing away from the known into the unknown had almost the finality of death. Thus must the naked soul, leaving all its treasures behind it, go out at last into the darkness and the night.
Gibson was still watching at the observation post when, more than an hour later, the Ares finally reached escape velocity and was free from Earth. There was no way of telling that this moment had come and passed, for Earth still dominated the sky and the motors still maintained their muffled, distant thunder. Another ten hours of continuous operation would be needed before they had completed their task and could be closed down for the rest of the voyage.
The Space Trilogy Page 18
