Later—time was beginning to be uncertain—some infinite time later he heard his name called. “Joe! Joe!”
Couldn’t a man die in peace? His eyes wandered around, found the mirror; he struggled to focus.
“Joe! You’ve got to relieve me—I’m groggy.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Make a check, Joe. I’m too goofed up to do it”
“I already did, sir.”
“Huh? When?”
Joe’s eyes swam around to the elapsed-time dial. He closed one eye to read it. “Uh, about six hours ago.”
“What? What time is it?”
Joe didn’t answer. He wished peevishly that Kleuger would go away.
Kleuger added soberly, “I must have blacked out, kid. What’s the situation?” Presently he insisted, “Answer me, mister.”
“Huh? Oh, we’re all right—down the groove. Skipper, is my left leg twisted? I can’t see it.”
“Eh? Oh, never mind your leg! What were the figures?” “What figures?”
“ ‘What figures?’ Snap out of it, mister! You’re on duty.” A fine one to talk, Joe thought fretfully. If that’s how he’s going to act, I’ll just close my eyes and ignore him.
Kleuger repeated, “The figures, mister.”
“Huh? Oh, play ’em off the log if you’re so damned eager!” He expected a blast at that, but none came. When next he opened his eyes Kleuger’s eyes were closed. He couldn’t recall whether the skipper had played his figures back or not— nor whether he had logged them. He decided that it was time for another check, but he was dreadfully thirsty; he needed a drink first. He drank carefully but still got a drop down his windpipe. A coughing spasm hurt him all over and left*him so weak that he had to rest.
He pulled himself together and scanned the dials. Twelve hours and—no, wait a minute! One day and twelve hours— that couldn't be right. But their speed was over ten million miles per hour and their distance more than ninety million miles from Earth; they were beyond the orbit of Mars. “Skipper! Hey! Lieutenant Kleuger!”
Kleuger’s face was a grinning mask. In dull panic Joe tried to find their situation. The coelostat showed them balanced; either the ship had wobbled back or Kleuger had corrected it. Or had he himself? He decided to run over the log and see. Fumbling among buttons he found the one to rewind the log.
Since he didn’t remember to stop it, the wire ran all the way back to light-off, then played back, zipping through silent stretches and slowing for speech. He listened to his record of the first check, then found that Phobos Station, Mars, had answered with, a favorable report—to which a voice added, “Where’s the fire?”
Yes, Kleuger had corrected balance hours earlier. The wire hurried through a blank spot, slowed again—Kleuger had dictated a letter to someone; it was unfinished and incoherent. Once Kleuger had stopped to shout, “Joe! Joe!” and Joe heard himself answer, “Oh, shut up!” He had no memory of it.
There was something he should do, but he was too tired to think and he hurt all over—except his legs; he couldn’t feel them. He shut his eyes and tried not to think. When he opened them the elapsed time was turning three days; he closed them and leaked tears.
A bell rang endlessly; he became aware that it was the general alarm, but he felt no interest other than a need to stop it. It was hard to find the switch, his fingers were numb. But he managed it and was about to rest from the effort, when he heard Kleuger call him. “Joe!”
“Huh?”
“Joe—don’t go back to sleep or I’ll turn the alarm on again. You hear me?”
“Yeah . . So Kleuger had done that—why, damn him!
“Joe, I’ve got to talk to you. I can’t stand any more.”
“Any more what?”
“High boost. I can’t take any more—it’s killing me.”
“Oh, rats!” Turn on that loud bell, would he?
“I’m dying, Joe. I can’t see—my eyes are shot. Joe, I’ve got to shut down the boost. I’ve got to.”
“Well, what’s stopping you?” Joe answered irritably.
“Don’t you see, Joe? You’ve got to back me up. We tried and we couldn’t. We’ll both log it. Then it’ll be all right.”
“Log what?”
“Eh? Damn it, Joe, pay attention. I can’t talk much. You’ve got to say ... to say that the strain became unendurable and you advised me to shut down. I’ll confirm it and it will be all right.” His labored whisper was barely audible.
Joe couldn’t figure out what Kleuger meant. He couldn’t remember why Kleuger had put them in high boost anyhow. “Hurry, Joe.”
There he went, nagging him! Wake him up and then nag him—to hell with him. “Oh, go back to sleep!” He dozed off and was again jerked awake by the alarm. This time he knew where the switch was and flipped it quickly. Kleuger switched it on again, Joe turned it off. Kleuger quit trying and Joe passed out.
He came awake in free fall. He was still realizing the ecstasy of being weightless when he managed to reorient; he was in the Salamander headed for Pluto. Had they reached the end of the run? No, the dial said four days and some hours. Had the tape broken? The autopilot gone haywire? He then recalled the last time he had been awake.
Kleuger had shut off the torch!
The stretched grin was gone from Kleuger’s face, the features seemed slack and old. Joe called out, “Captain! Captain Kleuger!” Kleuger’s eyes fluttered and his lips moved, but Joe heard nothing. He slithered out of the tank, moved in front of Kleuger, floated there. “Captain, can you hear me?” The lips whispered, “I had to, boy. I saved us. Can you get us back, Joe?” His eyes opened but did not track.
“Captain, listen to me. I’ve got to light off again.”
“Huh? No, Joe, no!”
“I’ve got to.”
“No! That’s an order, mister.”
Appleby stared, then with a judo chop caught the sick man on the jaw. Kleuger’s head bobbed loosely. Joe pulled himself between the tanks, located a three-position switch, turned it from “Pilot & Copilot” to “Copilot Only”; Kleuger’s controls were now dead. He glanced at Kleuger, saw that his head was not square in his collar, so he taped him properly into place, then got back in his tank. He settled his head and fumbled for the switch that would put the autopilot back on tape. There was some reason why they must finish this run— but for the life of him he could not remember why. He squeezed the switch, and weight pinned him down.
He was awakened by a dizzy feeling added to the pressure. It went on for seconds; he retched futilely. When the motion stopped he peered at the dials. The Salamander had just completed the somersault from acceleration to deceleration. They had come halfway, about eighteen hundred million miles; their speed was over three million miles per hour and beginning to drop. Joe felt that he should report it to the skipper—he had no recollection of any trouble with him. “Skipper! Hey!” Kleuger did not move. Joe called again, then resorted to the alarm.
The clangor woke, not Kleuger, but Joe’s memory. He shut it off, feeling soul sick. Topping his physical misery was shame and loss and panic as he recalled the shabby facts. He felt that he ought to log it but could not decide what to say. Beaten and ever lower in mind, he gave up and tried to rest.
He woke later with something gnawing at his mind . . . something he should do for the captain . . . something about a cargo robot— '
That was it! K the torch robot had reached Pluto, they could quit! Let’s see—elapsed time from light-off was over five days. Yes, if it ever got there, then . . .
He ran the wire back, listened for a recorded message. It was there: “Earth Station to Salamander—Extremely sorry to report that robot failed rendezvous. We are depending on you.—Berrio.” "
Tears of weakness and disappointment sped down his cheeks, pulled along by three and a half gravities.
It was on the eighth day that Joe realized that Kleuger was dead. It was not the stench—he was unable to tell that from his own ripe body odors. Nor was it
that the captain had not roused since flip-over; Joe’s time sense was so fogged that he did not realize this. But he had dreamed that Kleuger was shouting for him to get up, to stand up—“Hurry up, Joe!” But the weight pressed him down.
So sharp was the dream that Joe tried to answer after he woke up. Then he looked for Kleuger in the mirror. Kleuger’s face was much the same, but he knew with sick horror that the captain was dead. Nevertheless, he tried to arouse him with the alarm. Presently he gave up; his fingers were purple and he could feel nothing below his waist; he wondered if he were dying and hoped that he was. He slipped into that lethargy which had become his normal state.
He did not become conscious when, after more than nine days, the autopilot quenched the torch. Awareness found him floating in mid-room, having somehow squirmed out of his station. He felt deliciously lazy and quite hungry; the latter eventually brought him awake.
His surroundings put past events somewhat into place. He pulled himself to his tank and examined the dials. Good grief!—it had been two hours since the ship had gone into free fall. The plan called for approach to be computed before the tape ran out, corrected on entering free fall, a new tape cut and fed in without delay, then let the autopilot make the approach. He had done nothing and wasted two hours.
He slid between tank and controls, discovering then that his legs were paralyzed. No matter—legs weren’t needed in free fall, nor in the tank. His hands did not behave well, but he could use them. He was stunned when he found Kleuger’s body, but steadied down and got to work. He had no idea where he was; Pluto might be millions of miles away, or almost in his lap—perhaps they had spotted him and were already sending approach data. He decided to check the wire.
He found their messages at once:
“Proserpina to Salamander—Thank God you are coming. Here are your elements at quench-out . . .” followed by time reference, range-and-bearing figures, and doppler data.
And again: “Here are later and better figures, Salamander —hurry!”
And finally, only a few minutes before: “Salamander, why the delay in light-off? Is your computer broken down? Shall we compute a ballistic for you?”
The idea that anyone but a torcher could work a torch ballistic did not sink in. He tried to work fast, but his hands bothered him—he punched wrong numbers and had to correct them. It took him a half hour to realize that the trouble was not just his fingers. Ballistics, a subject as easy for him as checkers, was confused in his mind.
He could not work the ballistic.
“Salamander to Proserpina—Request ballistic for approach into parking orbit around Pluto”
The answer came so quickly that he knew that they had not waited for his okay. With ponderous care he cut the tape and fed it into the autopilot. It was then that he noticed the boost—4.03.
Four gravities for the approach.
He had assumed that the approach would be a normal one —and so it might have been if he had not wasted three hours.
But it wasn’t fair! It was too much to expect. He cursed childishly as he settled himself, fitted the collar and squeezed the button that turned control to the autopilot. He had a few minutes of waiting time; he spent it muttering peevishly. They could have figured him a better ballistic—hell, he should have figured it. They were always pushing him around. Good old Joe, anybody’s punching bag! That so-and-so Kleuger over there, grinning like a fool and leaving the work for him. If Kleuger hadn’t been so confounded eager—
Acceleration hit him and he blacked out.
When the shuttle came up to meet him, they found one man dead, one nearly dead, and the cargo of whole blood.
The supply ship brought pilots for the Salamander and fetched Appleby home. He stayed in sick bay until ordered to Luna for treatment; on being detached he reported to Commodore Berrio, escorted by the flight surgeon. The Commodore let him know brusquely that he had done a fine job, a damn fine job! The interview ended and the surgeon helped Joe to stand; instead of leaving, Joe said, “Uh, Commodore?”
“Yes, son?”
“Uh, there’s one thing I don’t understand. Uh, what I don’t understand is, uh, this: Why do I have to go, uh, to the geriatrics clinic at Luna City? That’s for old people, uh? That’s what I’ve always understood—the way I understand it. Sir?” The surgeon cut in, “I told you, Joe. They have the very best physiotherapy. We got special permission for you.” Joe looked perplexed. “Is that right, sir? I feel funny, going to an old folks’, uh, hospital.”
“That’s right, son.”
Joe grinned sheepishly. “Okay, sir, uh, if you say so.” They started to leave. “Doctor—stay a moment. Messenger, help Mr. Appleby.”
“Joe, can you make it?”
“Uh, sure! My legs are lots better—see?” He went out leaning on the messenger.
Berrio said, “Doctor, tell me straight: will Joe get well?” “No, sir.”
“Will he get better?”
“Some, perhaps. Lunar gravity makes it easy to get the most out of what a man has left.”
“But will his mind clear up?”
The doctor hesitated. “It’s this way, sir. Heavy acceleration is a speeded-up aging process. Tissues break down, capillaries rupture, the heart does many times its proper work. And there is hypoxia, from failure to deliver enough oxygen to the brain.”
The Commodore struck his desk an angry blow. The surgeon said gently. “Don’t take it so hard, sir.”
“Damn it, man—think of the way he was. Just a kid, all bounce and vinegar. Now look at him! He’s an old man— senile.”
“Look at it this way,” urged the surgeon. “You expended one man, but you saved two hundred and seventy.”
“Expended one man? If you mean Kleuger, he gets a medal and his wife gets a pension. That’s the best any of us can expect. I wasn’t thinking of Kleuger.”
“Neither was I,” answered the surgeon.
Arthur C. Clarke’s pink, cherubic appearance conceals an enormously keen and cold intellect, under which in turn is concealed an interested small boy. Clarke was a leading light of the British Interplanetary Society when that group was a small coterie of space nuts meeting in members’ living rooms. He is the author of numerous technical articles on problems of space flight, many of them published before it became socially acceptable to believe in rocket ships. He was the first to describe in print a communications satellite project. He now lives in Ceylon, and on his occasional visits to this country he complains that all the palefaces look alike.
Religion interests Clarke as a psychological phenomenon. When he combines this topic with astronomy, in which he is also deeply interested, something rather explosive occurs.
This story first appeared in Infinity, November 1955.
THE STAR
BY ARTHUR C. CLARKE
It is three thousand light-years to the Vatican. Once I believed that space could have no power over faith. Just as I believed that the heavens declared the glory of God’s handiwork. Now I have seen that handiwork, and my faith is sorely troubled.
I stare at the crucifix that hangs on the cabin wall above the Mark VI computer, and for the first time in my life I wonder if it is no more than an empty symbol.
I have told no one yet, but the truth cannot be concealed. The data are there for anyone to read, recorded on the countless miles of magnetic tape and the thousands of photographs we are carrying back to Earth. Other scientists can interpret them as easily as I can—more easily, in all probability. I am not one who would condone that tampering with the truth which often gave my order a bad name in the olden days.
The crew is already sufficiently depressed, I wonder how they will take this ultimate irony. Few of them have any religious faith, yet they will not relish using this final weapon in their campaign against me—that private, good-natured but fundamentally serious war which lasted all the way from Earth. It amused them to have a Jesuit as chief astrophysicist Dr. Chandler, for instance, could never get over it (why ar
e medical men such notorious atheists?). Sometimes he would meet me on the observation deck, where the lights are always low, so that the stars shine with undiminished glory. He would come up to me in the gloom and stand staring out of the great oval port, while the heavens crawled slowly round us as the ship turned end over end with the residual spin we had never bothered to correct.
“Well, Father,” he would say at last “It goes on forever and forever, and perhaps Something made it. But how you can believe that Something has a special interest in us and our miserable little world—that just beats me.” Then the argument would start, while the stars and nebulae would swing around us in silent endless arcs beyond the flawlessly clear plastic of the observation port.
It was, I think, the apparent incongruity of my position which, yes, amused the crew. In vain I would point to my three papers in the Astrophysical Journal, my five in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. I would remind them that our order has long been famous for its scientific works. We may be few now, but ever since the eighteenth century we have made contributions to astronomy and geophysics out of all proportion to our numbers.
Will my report on the Phoenix Nebula end our thousand years of history? It will end, I fear, much more than that.
I do not know who gave the nebula its name, which seems to me a very bad one. If it contains a prophecy, it is one which cannot be verified for several thousand million years. Even the word “nebula” is misleading; this is a far smaller object than those stupendous clouds of mist—the stuff of unborn stars—which are scattered throughout the length of the Milky Way. On the cosmic scale, indeed, the Phoenix Nebula is a tiny thing—a tenuous shell of gas surrounding a single star.
Or what is left of a star . . .
The Rubens engraving of Loyola seems to mock me as it hangs there above the spectrophotometer tracings. What would you, Father, have made of this knowledge that has come into my keeping, so far from the little world that was all the universe you knew? Would your faith have risen to the challenge, as mine has failed to do?
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