The Unicorn Trade

by Poul Anderson

  Goodbye, Roger.

  “Well, Mars and Jupiter are there, and so are the stars—do we have to go to them, too?” he was asked. “Of course we do,” Chaffee replied as if shrugging off a silly question.

  —Karen Anderson

  PLANH ON THE DEATH OF WILLY LEY: JUNE 23, 1969

  Only a month before the dream comes true

  That all his life was shaped to, and his labor,

  Death unannounced as lightning from the blue

  Has struck his hand from the cup about to brim.

  If nought exists but what we touch and see,

  Nor hells nor heavens there where the pulsars quaver,

  Of a god unreal we ask what cannot be:

  Grant afterlife. Just for a month. For him.

  He built his rockets while the zeppelins flew

  And worked as many years as Moses wandered

  To teach the promise of a world still new,

  A shining land not barred by seraphim,

  A shore that we may touch as well as see

  Where in a month men will at last have landed.

  We wish what we cannot believe: that we

  Live past our death. Just for a month. For him.

  Now the moon waxes broad above that crew

  Who will, as next the sun lights Alphonse Crater,

  Send back a month too late the Pisgah view

  He earned so well, missed by a span so slim,

  Of what he taught us they would touch and see.

  Might he but watch the skies of their equator,

  Our lungfish in the sea Tranquillity—

  Might a heaven be! Just for a month. For him.

  —Karen and Poul Anderson

  (with Tim Courtney)

  MURPHY’S HALL

  This is a lie, but I wish so much it were not.

  Pain struck through like lightning. For an instant that went on and on, there was nothing but the fire which hollowed out his breast and the body’s animal terror. Then as he whirled downward he knew:

  Oh, no! Must I Only a month,

  leave them already? a month.

  Weltall, verweile doch, du bist so schön.

  The monstrous thunders and whistles became a tone, like a bell struck once which would not stop singing. It filled the jagged darkness, it drowned all else, until it began to die out, or to vanish into the endless, century after century, and meanwhile the night deepened and softened, until he had peace.

  But he opened himself again and was in a place long and high. With his not-eyes he saw that five hundred and forty doors gave onto black immensities wherein dwelt clouds of light. Some of the clouds were bringing suns to birth. Others, greater and more distant, were made of suns already created, and turned in majestic Catherine’s wheels. The nearest stars cast out streamers of flame, lances of radiance; and they were diamond, amethyst, emerald, topaz, ruby; and around them swung glints which he knew with his not-brain were planets. His not-ears heard the thin violence of cosmic-ray sleet, the rumble of solar storms, the slow patient multiplex pulses of gravitational tides. His not-flesh shared the warmth, the blood-beat, the mega-years of marvelous life on uncountable worlds.

  Six stood waiting. He rose. “But you—” he stammered without a voice.

  “Welcome,” Ed greeted him. “Don’t be surprised. You were always one of us.”

  They talked quietly, until at last Gus reminded them that even here they were not masters of time. Eternity, yes, but not time. “Best we move on,” he suggested.

  “Uh-huh,” Roger said. “Especially after Murphy took this much trouble on our account.”

  “He does not appear to be a bad fellow,” Yuri said.

  “I am not certain,” Vladimir answered. “Nor am I certain that we ever will find out. But come, friends. The hour is near.”

  Seven, they departed the hall and hastened down the star paths. Often the newcomer was tempted to look more closely at something he had glimpsed. But he recalled that, while the universe was inexhaustible of wonders, it would have only the single moment to which he was being guided.

  They stood after a while on a great ashen plain. The outlook was as eerily beautiful as he had hoped—no, more, when Earth, a blue serenity swirled white with weather, shone overhead: Earth, whence had come the shape that now climbed down a ladder of fire.

  Yuri took Konstantin’s hand in the Russian way. “Thank you,” he said through tears.

  But Konstantin bowed in turn, very deeply, to Willy.

  And they stood in the long Lunar shadows, under the high Lunar heaven, and saw the awkward thing come to rest and heard: “Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

  Stars are small and dim on Earth. Oh, I guess they’re pretty bright still on a winter mountaintop. I remember when I was little, we’d saved till we had the admission fees and went to Grand Canyon Reserve and camped out. Never saw that many stars. And it was like you could see up and up between them—like, you know, you could feel how they weren’t the same distance off, and the spaces between were more huge than you could imagine. Earth and its people were just lost, just a speck of nothing among those cold sharp stars. Dad said they weren’t too different from what you saw in space, except for being a lot fewer. The air was chilly too, and had a kind of pureness, and a sweet smell from the pines around. Way off I heard a coyote yip. The sound had plenty of room to travel in.

  But I’m back where people live. The smog’s not bad on this rooftop lookout, though I wish I didn’t have to breathe what’s gone through a couple million pairs of lungs before it reaches me. Thick and greasy. The city noise isn’t too bad either, the usual growling and screeching, a jet-blast or a burst of gunfire. And since the power shortage brought on the brownout, you can generally see stars after dark, sort of.

  My main wish is that we lived in the southern hemisphere, where you can see Alpha Centauri.

  Dad, what are you doing tonight in Murphy’s Hall?

  A joke, I know. Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong, will.” Only I think it’s a true joke. I mean, I’ve read every book and watched every tape I could lay hands on, the history, how the discoverers went out, further and further, lifetime after lifetime. I used to tell myself stories about the parts that nobody lived to put into a book.

  The crater wall had fangs. They stood sharp and grayish white in the cruel sunlight, against the shadow which brimmed the bowl. And they grew and grew. Tumbling while it fell, the spacecraft had none of the restfulness of zero weight. Forces caught nauseatingly at gullet and gut. An unidentified loose object clattered behind the pilot chairs. The ventilators had stopped their whickering and the two men breathed stench. No matter. This wasn’t an Apollo 13 mishap. They wouldn’t have time to smother in their own exhalations.

  Jack Bredon croaked into the transmitter: “Hello, Mission Control … Lunar Relay Satellite … anybody. Do you read us? Is the radio out too? Or just our receiver? God damn it, can’t we even say goodbye to our wives?”

  “Tell ’em quick,” Sam Washburn ordered. “Maybe they’ll hear.”

  Jack dabbed futilely at the sweat that broke from his face and danced in glittering droplets before him. “Listen,” he said. “This is Moseley Expedition One. Our motors stopped functioning simultaneously, about two minutes after we commenced deceleration. The trouble must be in the fuel integrator. I suspect a magnetic surge, possibly due a short circuit in the power supply. The meters registered a surge before we lost thrust. Get that system redesigned! Tell our wives and kids we love them.”

  He stopped. The teeth of the crater filled the entire forward window. Sam’s teeth filled his countenance, a stretched-out grin. “How do you like that?” he said. “And me the first black astronaut.”

  They struck.

  When they opened themselves again, in the hall, and knew where they were, he said, “Wonder if he’ll let us go out exploring.”

  Murphy’s Halt? Is that the real name?

  Dad used to shout, “Murphy take it!�
�� when he blew his temper. The rest is in a few of the old tapes, fiction plays about spacemen, back when people liked to watch that kind of story. They’d say when a man had died, “He’s drinking in Murphy’s Hall.” Or he’s dancing or sleeping or frying or freezing or whatever it was. But did they really say “Hall”? The tapes are old. Nobody’s been interested to copy them off on fresh plastic, not for a hundred years. I guess, maybe two hundred. The holographs are blurred and streaky, the sounds are mushed and full of random buzzes. Murphy’s Law has sure been working on those tapes.

  I wish I’d asked Dad what the astronauts said and believed, way back when they were conquering the planets. Or pretended to believe, I should say. Of course they never thought there was a Murphy who kept a place where the spacefolk went that he’d called to him. But they might have kidded around about it. Only was the idea, for sure, about a hall? Or was that only the way I heard? I wish I’d asked Dad. But he wasn’t home often, these last years, what with helping build and test his ship. And when he did come, I could see how he mainly wanted to be with Mother. And when he and I were together, well, that was always too exciting for me to remember those yarns I’d tell myself before I slept, after he was gone again.

  Murphy’s Haul?

  By the time Moshe Silverman had finished writing his report, the temperature in the dome was about seventy, and rising fast enough that it should reach a hundred inside another Earth day. Of course, water wouldn’t then boil at once; extra energy is needed for vaporization. But the staff would no longer be able to cool some down to drinking temperature by the crude evaporation apparatus they had rigged. They’d dehydrate fast. Moshe sat naked in a running river of sweat.

  At least he had electric light. The fuel cells, insufficient to operate the air conditioning system, would at least keep Sofia from dying in the dark.

  His head ached and his ears buzzed. Occasional dizziness seized him. He gagged on the warm fluid he must continually drink. And no more salt, he thought. Maybe that will kill us before the heat does, the simmering, still, stifling heat. His bones felt heavy, though Venus has in fact a somewhat lesser pull than Earth; his muscles sagged and he smelled the reek of his own disintegration.

  Forcing himself to concentrate, he checked what he had written, a dry factual account of the breakdown of the reactor. The next expedition would read what this thick, poisonous inferno of an atmosphere did to graphite in combination with free neutrons; and the engineers could work out proper precautions.

  In sudden fury, Moshe seized his brush and scrawled at the bottom of the metal sheet: “Don’t give up! Don’t let this hellhole whip you! We have too much to learn here.”

  A touch on his shoulder brought him jerkily around and onto his feet. Sofia Chiappellone had entered the office. Even now, with physical desire roasted out of him and she wetly agleam, puffy-faced, sunken-eyed, hair plastered lank to drooping head, he found her lovely.

  “Aren’t you through, darling?” Her tone was dull but her hand sought his. “We’re better off in the main room. Mohandas’ punkah arrangement does help.”

  “Yes, I’m coming.”

  “Kiss me first. Share the salt on me.”

  Afterward she looked over his report. “Do you believe they will try any further?” she asked. “Materials so scarce and expensive since the war—”

  “If they don’t,” he answered, “I have a feeling—oh, crazy, I know, but why should we not be crazy?—I think if they don’t, more than our bones will stay here. Our souls will, waiting for the ships that never come.”

  She actually shivered, and urged him toward their comrades.

  Maybe I should go back inside. Mother might need me. She cries a lot, still. Crying, all alone in our little apartment. But maybe she’d rather not have me around. What can a gawky, pimply-faced fourteen-year-old boy do?

  What can he do when he grows up?

  O Dad, big brave Dad, I want to follow you. Even to Murphy’s … Hold?

  Director Saburo Murakami had stood behind the table in the commons and met their eyes, pair by pair. For a while silence had pressed inward. The bright colors and amateurish figures in the mural that Georgios Efthimakis had painted for pleasure—beings that never were, nymphs and fauns and centaurs frolicking beneath an unsmoky sky, beside a bright river, among grasses and laurel trees and daisies of an Earth that no longer was—became suddenly grotesque, infinitely alien. He heard his heart knocking. Twice he must swallow before he had enough moisture in his mouth to move his wooden tongue.

  But when he began his speech, the words came forth steadily, if a trifle flat and cold. That was no surprise. He had lain awake the whole night rehearsing them.

  “Yousouf Yacoub reports that he has definitely succeeded in checking the pseudovirus. This is not a cure; such must await laboratory research. Our algae will remain scant and sickly until the next supply ship brings us a new stock. I will radio Cosmocontrol, explaining the need. They will have ample time on Earth to prepare. You remember the ship is scheduled to leave at … at a date to bring it here in about nine months. Meanwhile we are guaranteed a rate of oxygen renewal sufficient to keep us alive, though weak, if we do not exert ourselves. Have I stated the matter correctly, Yousouf?”

  The Arab nodded. His own Spanish had taken on a denser accent, and a tic played puppet-master with his right eye. “Will you not request a special ship?” he demanded.

  “No,” Saburo told them. “You are aware how expensive anything but an optimum Hohmann orbit is. That alone would wipe out the profit from this station—permanently, I fear, because of financing costs. Likewise would our idleness for nine months.”

  He leaned forward, supporting his weight easily on fingertips in the low Martian gravity. “That is what I wish to discuss today,” he said. “Interest rates represent competition for money. Money represents human labor and natural resources. This is true regardless of socioeconomic arrangements. You know how desperately short they are of both labor and resources on Earth. Yes, many billions of hands—but because of massive poverty, too few educated brains. Think back to what a political struggle the Foundation had before this base could be established.

  “We know what we are here for. To explore. To learn. To make man’s first permanent home outside Earth and Luna. In the end, in the persons of our great-grandchildren, to give Mars air men can breathe, water they can drink, green fields and forests where their souls will have room to grow.” He gestured at the mural, though it seemed more than ever jeering. “We cannot expect starvelings on Earth, or those who speak for them, to believe this is good. Not when each ship bears away metal and fuel and engineering skill that might have gone to keep their children alive a while longer. We justify our continued presence here solely by mining the fissionables. The energy this gives back to the tottering economy, over and above what we take out, is the profit.”

  He drew a breath of stale, metallic-smelling air. Anoxia made his head whirl. Somehow he stayed erect and continued:

  “I believe we, in this tiny solitary settlement, are the last hope for man remaining in space. If we are maintained until we have become fully self-supporting, Syrtis Harbor will be the seedbed of the future. If not—”

  He had planned more of an exhortation before reaching the climax, but his lungs were too starved, his pulse too fluttery. He gripped the table edge and said through flying rags of darkness: “There will be oxygen for half of us to keep on after a fashion. By suspending their other projects and working exclusively in the mines, they can produce enough uranium and thorium so that the books at least show no net economic loss. The sacrifice will … will be … of propaganda value. I call for male volunteers, or we can cast lots, or—Naturally, I myself am the first.”

  —That had been yesterday.

  Saburo was among those who elected to go alone, rather than in a group. He didn’t care for hymns about human solidarity; his dream was that someday those who bore some of his and Alice’s chromosomes would not need solidarity. It was perhaps we
ll she had already died in a cinderslip. The scene with their children had been as much as he could endure.

  He crossed Weinbaum Ridge but stopped when the dome-cluster was out of sight. He must not make the searchers come too far. If nothing else, a quick duststorm might cover his tracks, and he might never be found. Someone could make good use of his airsuit. Almost as good use as the alga tanks could of his body.

  For a time, then, he stood looking. The mountainside ran in dark scaurs and fantastically carved pinnacles, down to the softly red-gold-ocher-black-dappled plain. A crater on the near horizon rose out of its own blue shadow like a challenge to the deep purple sky. In this thin air—he could just hear the wind’s ghostly whistle—Mars gave to his gaze every aspect of itself, diamond sharp, a beauty strong, subtle, and abstract as a torii gate before a rock garden. When he glanced away from the shrunken but dazzling-bright sun, he could see stars.

  He felt at peace, almost happy. Perhaps the cause was simply that now, after weeks, he had a full ration of oxygen.

  I oughtn’t to waste it, though, he thought. He was pleased by the steadiness of his fingers when he closed the valve.

  Then he was surprised that his unbelieving self bowed over both hands to the Lodestar and said, “Namu Amida Butsu.”

  He opened his faceplate.

  That is a gentle death. You are unconscious within thirty seconds.

  —He opened himself and did not know where he was. An enormous room whose doorways framed a night heaven riotous with suns, galaxies, the green mysterious shimmer of nebulae? Or a still more huge ship, outward bound so fast that it was as if the Milky Way foamed along the bow and swirled aft in a wake of silver and planets?

  Others were here, gathered about a high seat at the far end of where-he-was, vague in the twilight cast by sheer distance. Saburo rose and moved in their direction. Maybe, maybe Alice was among them.

  But was he right to leave Mother that much alone?

  I remember her when we got the news. On a Wednesday, when I was free, and I’d been out by the dump playing ball. I may as well admit to myself, I don’t like some of the guys. But you have to take whoever the school staggering throws up for you. Or do you want to run around by yourself (remember, no, don’t remember what the Hurricane Gang did to Danny) or stay always by yourself in the patrolled areas? So Jake-Jake does throw his weight around, so he does set the dues too high, his drill and leadership sure paid off when the Weasels jumped us last year. They won’t try that again—we killed three, count ’em, three!—and I sort of think no other bunch will either.