The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF

by Mike Ashley

  Helmuth, looking forward into another night of dreams, said: “That’s the way I look at it now.”

  3

  There were three yellow “Critical” signals lit on the long gang board when Helmuth passed through the gang deck on the way back to duty. All of them, as usual, were concentrated on Panel 9, where Eva Chavez worked.

  Eva, despite her Latin name – such once-valid tickets no longer meant anything among Earth’s uniformily mixed-race population – was a big girl, vaguely blonde, who cherished a passion for the Bridge. Unfortunately, she was apt to become enthralled by the sheer Cosmicness of it all, precisely at the moments when cold analysis and split-second decisions were most crucial.

  Helmuth reached over her shoulder, cut her out of the circuit except as an observer, and donned the co-operator’s helmet. The incomplete new shoals caisson sprang into being around him. Breakers of boiling hydrogen seethed 700 feet up along its slanted sides – breakers that never subsided, but simply were torn away into flying spray.

  There was a spot of dull orange near the top of the north face of the caisson, crawling slowly towards the pediment of the nearest truss. Catalysis –

  Or cancer, as Helmuth could not help but think of it. On this bitter, violent monster of a planet, even the tiny specks of calcium carbide were deadly. At these wind velocities, such specks imbedded themselves in everything; and at fifteen million pounds per square inch, pressure ice catalyzed by sodium took up ammonia and carbon dioxide, building protein-like compounds in a rapid, deadly chain of decay:

  For a second, Helmuth watched it grow. It was, after all, one of the incredible possibilities the Bridge had been built to study. On Earth, such a compound, had it occurred at all, might have grown porous, bony, and quite strong. Here, under nearly eight times the gravity, the molecules were forced to assemble in strict aliphatic order, but in cross-section their arrangement was hexagonal, as if the stuff would become an aromatic compound if it only could. Even here it was moderately strong in cross-section – but along the long axis it smeared like graphite, the calcium atoms readily surrendering their valence hold on one carbon atom to grab hopefully for the next one in line –

  No stuff to hold up the piers of humanity’s greatest engineering project. Perhaps it was suitable for the ribs of some Jovian jellyfish, but in a Bridge-caisson, it was cancer.

  There was a scraper mechanism working on the edge of the lesion, flaking away the shearing aminos and laying down new ice. In the meantime, the decay of the caisson-face was working deeper. The scraper could not possibly get at the core of the trouble – which was not the calcium carbide dust, with which the atmosphere was charged beyond redemption, but was instead one imbedded sodium speck which was taking no part in the reaction – fast enough to extirpate it. It could barely keep pace with the surface spread of the disease.

  And laying new ice over the surface of the wound was worthless. At this rate, the whole caisson would slough away and melt like butter, within an hour, under the weight of the Bridge above it.

  Helmuth sent the futile scraper aloft. Drill for it? No – too deep already, and location unknown.

  Quickly he called two borers up from the shoals below, where constant blasting was taking the foundation of the caisson deeper and deeper into Jupiter’s dubious “soil”. He drove both blind, fire-snouted machines down into the lesion.

  The bottom of that sore turned out to be forty-five metres within the immense block. Helmuth pushed the red button all the same.

  The borers blew up, with a heavy, quite invisible blast, as they had been designed to do. A pit appeared on the face of the caisson.

  The nearest truss bent upward in the wind. It fluttered for a moment, trying to resist. It bent farther.

  Deprived of its major attachment, it tore free suddenly, and went whirling away into the blackness. A sudden flash of lightning picked it out for a moment, and Helmuth saw it dwindling like a bat with torn wings being borne away by a cyclone.

  The scraper scuttled down into the pit and began to fill it with ice from the bottom. Helmuth ordered down a new truss and a squad of scaffolders. Damage of this order took time to repair. He watched the tornado tearing ragged chunks from the edges of the pit until he was sure that the catalysis had stopped. Then, suddenly, prematurely, dismally tired, he took off the helmet.

  He was astounded by the white fury that masked Eva’s big-boned, mildly pretty face.

  “You’ll blow the Bridge up yet, won’t you?” she said evenly, without preamble. “Any pretext will do!”

  Baffled, Helmuth turned his head helplessly away; but that was no better. The suffused face of Jupiter peered swollenly through the picture-port, just as it did on the foreman’s desk.

  He and Eva and Charity and the gang and the whole of satellite V were falling forward towards Jupiter; their uneventful cooped-up lives on Jupiter V were utterly unreal compared to the four hours of each changeless day spent on Jupiter’s ever-changing surface. Every new day brought their minds, like ships out of control, closer and closer to that gaudy inferno.

  There was no other way for a man – or a woman – on Jupiter V to look at the giant planet. It was simple experience, shared by all of them, that planets do not occupy four-fifths of the whole sky, unless the observer is himself up there in that planet’s sky, falling, falling faster and faster –

  “I have no intention,” he said tiredly, “of blowing up the Bridge. I wish you could get it through your head that I want the Bridge to stay up – even though I’m not starry-eyed to the point of incompetence about the project. Did you think that rotten spot was going to go away by itself when you’d painted it over? Didn’t you know that – ”

  Several helmeted, masked heads nearby turned blindly towards the sound of his voice. Helmuth shut up. Any distracting conversation or activity was taboo, down here in the gang room. He motioned Eva back to duty.

  The girl donned her helmet obediently enough, but it was plain from the way her normally full lips were thinned that she thought Helmuth had ended the argument only in order to have the last word.

  Helmuth strode to the thick pillar which ran down the central axis of the shack, and mounted the spiralling cleats towards his own foreman’s cubicle. Already he felt in anticipation the weight of the helmet upon his own head. Charity Dillon, however, was already wearing the helmet; he was sitting in Helmuth’s chair.

  Charity was characteristically oblivious of Helmuth’s entrance. The Bridge operator must learn to ignore, to be utterly unconscious of anything happening around his body except the inhuman sounds of signals; must learn to heed only those senses which report something going on thousands of miles away.

  Helmuth knew better than to interrupt him. Instead, he watched Dillon’s white, blade-like fingers roving with blind sureness over the controls.

  Dillon, evidently, was making a complete tour of the Bridge – not only from end to end, but up and down, too. The tally board showed that he had already activated nearly two-thirds of the ultraphone eyes. That meant that he had been up all night at the job; had begun it immediately after last talking to Helmuth.

  Why?

  With a thrill of unfocused apprehension, Helmuth looked at the foreman’s jack, which allowed the operator here in the cubicle to communicate with the gang when necessary, and which kept him aware of anything said or done at gang boards.

  It was plugged in.

  Dillon sighed suddenly, took the helmet off and turned.

  “Hello, Bob,” he said. “Funny about this job. You can’t see, you can’t hear, but when somebody’s watching you, you feel a sort of pressure on the back of your neck. ESP, maybe. Ever felt it?”

  “Pretty often, lately. Why the grand tour, Charity?”

  “There’s to be an inspection,” Dillon said. His eyes met Helmuth’s. They were frank and transparent. “A mob of Western officials, coming to see that their eight billion dollars isn’t being wasted. Naturally, I’m a little anxious to see that they find everything
in order.”

  “I see,” Helmuth said. “First time in five years, isn’t it?”

  “Just about. What was that dust-up down below just now? Somebody – you, I’m sure, from the drastic handiwork involved – bailed Eva out of a mess, and then I heard her talk about your wanting to blow up the Bridge. I checked the area when I heard the fracas start, and it did seem as if she had let things go rather far, but – What was it all about?”

  Dillon ordinarily hadn’t the guile for cat-and-mouse games, and he had never looked less guileful now. Helmuth said carefully, “Eva was upset, I suppose. On the subject of Jupiter we’re all of us cracked by now, in our different ways. The way she was dealing with the catalysis didn’t look to me to be suitable – a difference of opinion, resolved in my favour because I had the authority, Eva didn’t. That’s all.”

  “Kind of an expensive difference, Bob. I’m not niggling by nature, you know that. But an incident like that while the commission is here – ”

  “The point is,” Helmuth said, “are we to spend an extra ten thousand, or whatever it costs to replace a truss and reinforce a caisson, or are we to lose the whole caisson – and as much as a third of the whole Bridge along with it?”

  “Yes, you’re right there, of course. That could be explained, even to a pack of senators. But – it would be difficult to have to explain it very often. Well, the board’s yours, Bob. You could continue my spot-check, if you’ve time.”

  Dillon got up. Then he added suddenly, as if it were forced out of him:

  “Bob, I’m trying to understand your state of mind. From what Eva said, I gather that you’ve made it fairly public. I . . . I don’t think it’s a good idea to infect your fellow workers with your own pessimism. It leads to sloppy work. I know that regardless of your own feelings you won’t countenance sloppy work, but one foreman can do only so much. And you’re making extra work for yourself – not for me, but for yourself – by being openly gloomy about the Bridge.

  “You’re the best man on the Bridge, Bob, for all your grousing about the job, and your assorted misgivings. I’d hate to see you replaced.”

  “A threat, Charity?” Helmuth said softly.

  “No. I wouldn’t replace you unless you actually went nuts, and I firmly believe that your fears in that respect are groundless. It’s a commonplace that only sane men suspect their own sanity, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a common misconception. Most psychopathic obsessions begin with a mild worry.”

  Dillon made as if to brush that subject away. “Anyhow, I’m not threatening; I’d fight to keep you here. But my say-so only covers Jupiter V; there are people higher up on Ganymede, and people higher yet back in Washington – and in this inspecting commission.

  “Why don’t you try to look on the bright side for a change? Obviously the Bridge isn’t ever going to inspire you. But you might at least try thinking about all those dollars piling up in your account every hour you’re on this job, and about the bridges and ships and who knows what-all that you’ll be building, at any fee you ask, when you get back down to Earth. All under the magic words, ‘One of the men who built the Bridge on Jupiter!’”

  Charity was bright red with embarrassment and enthusiasm. Helmuth smiled.

  “I’ll try to bear it in mind, Charity,” he said. “When is this gaggle of senators due to arrive?”

  “They’re on Ganymede now, taking a breather. They came directly from Washington without any routing. I suppose they’ll make a stop at Callisto before they come here. They’ve something new on their ship, I’m told, that lets them flit about more freely than the usual uphill transport can.”

  An icy lizard suddenly was nesting in Helmuth’s stomach, coiling and coiling but never settling itself. The room blurred. The persistent nightmare was suddenly almost upon him – already.

  “Something . . . new?” he echoed, his voice as flat and non-committal as he could make it. “Do you know what it is?”

  “Well, yes. But I think I’d better keep quiet about it until – ”

  “Charity, nobody on this deserted rock-heap could possibly be a Soviet spy. The whole habit of ‘security’ is idiotic out here. Tell me now and save me the trouble of dealing with senators; or tell me at least that you know I know. They have antigravity! Isn’t that it?”

  One word from Dillon, and the nightmare would be real.

  “Yes,” Dillon said. “How did you know? Of course, it couldn’t be a complete gravity screen by any means. But it seems to be a good long step towards it. We’ve waited a long time to see that dream come true – But you’re the last man in the world to take pride in the achievement, so there’s no sense exulting about it to you. I’ll let you know when I get a definite arrival date. In the meantime, will you think about what I said before?”

  “Yes, I will.” Helmuth took the seat before the board.

  “Good. With you, I have to be grateful for small victories. Good trick, Bob.”

  “Good trick, Charity!”

  4

  Instead of sleeping – for now he knew that he was really afraid – he sat up in the reading chair in his cabin. The illuminated micro-film pages of a book flipped by across the surface of the wall opposite him, timed precisely to the reading rate most comfortable for him, and he had several weeks’ worry-conserved alcohol and smoke rations for ready consumption.

  But Helmuth let his mix go flat, and did not notice the book, which had turned itself on, at the page where he had abandoned it last, when he had fitted himself into the chair. Instead, he listened to the radio.

  There was always a great deal of ham radio activity in the Jovian system. The conditions were good for it, since there was plenty of power available, few impeding atmosphere layers, and those thin, no Heaviside layers, and few official and no commercial channels with which the hams could interfere.

  And there were plenty of people scattered about the satellites who needed the sound of a voice.

  “. . . anybody know whether the senators are coming here? Doc Barth put in a report a while back on a fossil plant he found here, at least he thinks it was a plant. Maybe they’d like a look at it.”

  “They’re supposed to hit the Bridge team next.” A strong voice, and the impression of a strong transmitter wavering in and out; that would be Sweeney, on Ganymede. “Sorry to throw the wet blanket, boys, but I don’t think the senators are interested in our rock-balls for their own lumpy selves. We could only hold them here three days.”

  Helmuth thought greyly: Then they’ve already left Callisto.

  “Is that you, Sweeney? Where’s the Bridge tonight?”

  “Dillon’s on duty,” a very distant transmitter said. “Try to raise Helmuth, Sweeney.”

  “Helmuth, Helmuth, you gloomy beetle-gooser! Come in, Helmuth!”

  “Sure, Bob, come in and dampen us.”

  Sluggishly, Helmuth reached out to take the mike, where it lay clipped to one arm of the chair. But the door to his room opened before he had completed the gesture.

  Eva came in.

  She said, “Bob, I want to tell you something.”

  “His voice is changing!” the voice of the Callisto operator said. “Ask him what he’s drinking, Sweeney!”

  Helmuth cut the radio out. The girl was freshly dressed – in so far as anybody dressed in anything on Jupiter V – and Helmuth wondered why she was prowling the decks at this hour, halfway between her sleep period and her trick. Her hair was hazy against the light from the corridor, and she looked less mannish than usual. She reminded him a little of the way she had looked when they first met.

  “All right,” he said. “I owe you a mix, I guess. Citric, sugar, and the other stuff is in the locker . . . you know where it is. Shot-cans are there, too.”

  The girl shut the door and sat down on the bunk, with a free litheness that was almost grace, but with a determination which Helmuth knew meant that she had just decided to do something silly for all the right reasons.

  “I don’t need a
drink,” she said. “As a matter of fact, lately I’ve been turning my lux-R’s back to the common pool. I suppose you did that for me by showing me what a mind looked like that is hiding from itself.”

  “Eve, stop sounding like a tract. Obviously, you’ve advanced to a higher, more Jovian plane of existence, but won’t you still need your metabolism? Or have you decided that vitamins are all-in-the-mind?”

  “Now you’re being superior. Anyhow, alcohol isn’t a vitamin. And I didn’t come to talk about that. I came to tell you something I think you ought to know.”

  “Which is?”

  She said, “Bob, I mean to have a child here.”

  A bark of laughter, part sheer hysteria and part exasperation, jack-knifed Helmuth into a sitting position. A red arrow bloomed on the far wall, obediently marking the paragraph which, supposedly, he had reached in his reading, and the page vanished.

  “Women!” he said, when he could get his breath back. ‘Really, Evita, you make me feel much better. No environment can change a human being much, after all.’

  “Why should it?” she said suspiciously. “I don’t see the joke. Shouldn’t a woman want to have a child?”

  “Of course she should,” he said, settling back. The flipping pages began again. “It’s quite ordinary. All women want to have children. All women dream of the day they can turn a child out to play in an airless rock-garden, to pluck fossils and get quaintly star-burned. How cosy to tuck the little blue body back into its corner that night, promptly at the sound of the trick-change bell! Why, it’s as natural as Jupiter-light – as Earthian as vacuum-frozen apple pie.”

  He turned his head casually away. “As for me, though, Eva, I’d much prefer that you take your ghostly little pretext out of here.”

  Eva surged to her feet in one furious motion. Her fingers grasped him by the beard and jerked his head painfully around again.