by Chad Oliver
“My people, they were Indians not long ago,” he said. “You are an anthropologist, Evan. Maybe you would like to study me?”
“I might learn something at that.”
Sandoval laughed, and the room was free of tension.
“How long do we have, Ben?” Schaefer asked Moravia.
Moravia looked at him with dark, clouded eyes. “Three weeks,” he said.
The three men fell silent.
Schaefer thought of a child’s face, a child’s hungry body.
That child would be dead by now, his solemn eyes forever closed.
But there were other children.
How many would die in three weeks?
How many would die in five years?
“Come on,” he said. “There’s lots to do.”
III
The ship had a number, not a name.
It lifted away from the Earth on a column of silence, and yet the silence was filled with the tautness of power almost beyond comprehension. It lifted through rain and white clouds and blue skies, and then it was in the star-bright stillness where the winds never blew.
It passed the metallic doughnut of the old space station, useless now with antigrav takeoffs.
And then the heavily shielded atomics cut in with a hushed Niagara of sun-flame, and the journey had begun.
Schaefer and Lee and Sandoval sat in Sandy’s room, which was hardly more than a big closet, and felt the immensity that surrounded them. It was the same feeling you had when you climbed to the top of a mountain and looked over the edge, down and down and down, but there was nothing to see.
There are no windows on spaceships.
They gradually relaxed, as the vibration of the atomics steadied and soothed. They looked at each other and spoke in low voices and thought about the icebox.
When they were four ship-days out, they knew it was time.
Admiral Hurley sent for them, as was the custom.
Until that moment, they had never met the man.
Hurley’s cabin was not large, but it seemed spacious after their own. It was neat and clean and a trifle barren. There were pictures on the walls, all of ships: sailing craft leaning into the wind and spray, sharklike submarines surfacing into the sunlight, a shaft of steel against a lunar background, the squat mother-ship that had been the first to send her children for the touch-down on Mars.
The admiral was in full uniform. He was a tall, thin man, with a balding head that was pinkish in the light. His face was all sharp lines and crags; there was no softness in it. His eyes were an icy green, as though they concealed a bitterness he had long ago learned to live with.
He was neither friendly nor unfriendly. He was scrupulously polite, holding a chair for Lee, and he gave an impression of a man who would do his duty although the world collapsed around him.
Hurley waited until they were all seated and uncomfortable, and then he spoke. Even talking to them, he kept his distance. He addressed them as a group, not as individuals.
“We’re about to switch over to the inertialess drive. It is our custom on shipboard to drink a toast before any passenger goes into the icebox for the first time. It helps to keep you warm, over the years.”
He smiled a wintry smile, and they all laughed politely. Schaefer was certain that the man had made the same little joke every single time he had gone through this ceremony. Still, he could not dislike the admiral. They were different kinds of people, and that was all.
Hurley produced a bottle of sherry and four surprisingly fragile glasses. He poured the drinks, raised his in a toast: “To a successful mission.”
They sipped. Sherry is not the most powerful drink in the world, but it warmed things up a trifle.
“You understand, of course, about the icebox. There is nothing to fear. We have never had an accident. You will all be injected with shots—a substance derived from the lymphoid tissue of hibernating animals, an absorbent of vitamin D, insulin, some simple drugs. Then your body temperature will be chilled. All your bodily processes will be suspended, and you will actually age only a week or so in the five years it will take us to reach our destination.”
He poured more sherry. None of this was news to Schaefer, but since Hurley was enjoying his role of giving the scientists some elementary facts he did not interrupt.
“Naturally,” Hurley went on, “there will be men on duty at all times. I myself can be at my post within an hour if need be; that is part of our training. We work in relays of several months each. Since you are civilians, you will not be called until we reach the Aldebaran system.”
When he used the word civilians his voice was carefully neutral.
“We know we’re in good hands, Admiral,” Lee said, giving him her best smile. “We wish we could be of more help to you. We know this trip is not entirely to your liking.”
Hurley thawed slightly, but did not reply.
Schaefer thought: Ten years and more on a mission that must seem to him a mush-mouthed waste of time. Ten years to help some people he doesn’t even think of as human. Ten years while others are out on the great adventure. Ten years with fuddy-duddy social scientists. No, Hurley doesn’t relish this assignment—and who can blame him?
“How many women are on this ship, Admiral?” Lee asked. “Some of the men seem a bit hungry, even when they look at an old crone like me.”
Hurley took the bait, pouring some more sherry. “You’re a most attractive woman, Mrs. Schaefer, if I may say so. I trust none of my men have—”
Lee blushed, synthetically. “Oh, no. They are perfect gentlemen. I’m just curious.” She used her smile again.
“All the officers have their wives along,” he said brusquely. “Privileges of rank, you know.” He chuckled, and Schaefer decided that the admiral was probably a pretty good guy—in the Officers’ Club, with other admirals.
“Isn’t that—well, unstable?” asked Sandoval.
Hurley looked at him, and some of the ice came back. “There is only so much room on a spaceship, sir. And your party, with all the UN men, is taking up a good bit of it. The other men on this cruise were selected in part because they were unmarried. We had no choice.”
Sandoval nodded, frowning.
“It isn’t as bad as it seems, Mr. Sandoval. We’re frozen most of the time, if I may remind you. On shipboard, the wives go along mainly so that there will be no age discrepancy when we return. There is no real problem—unless we have to stay in the Aldebaran system over a protracted period of time. On that matter, of course, I am under your orders.”
Schaefer grinned. “You tossed that one right back in our laps, sir.”
“That’s the way it is.”
Hurley stood up, indicating that the meeting was adjourned.
Schaefer was curious about why the time-deceleration effect did not apply on shipboard, since they were moving faster than the speed of light. He had read an explanation somewhere, and knew that it had something to do with the nature of the drive, but was ashamed to ask about it. The admiral had little enough respect for him now, and if he didn’t even know about that …
Lee’s skin glowed with the sherry. “Sweet dreams,” she said to Hurley as they left.
His door closed behind them.
Schaefer and Sandoval kept Lee between them as they walked. It was almost as though they were huddled together for warmth, and despite the fact that there was no change in the temperature inside the spaceship a cold wind seemed to blow through the sterile white corridors….
“There is nothing to fear.”
Whenever a man told him that, Schaefer knew that it was time to get worried.
They took them separately, to avoid scenes.
When a man saw his wife seem to die before his eyes, when her breathing slowed until he couldn’t see it, when the frost began to form on the tips of her hair—
It was better not to watch.
Sandoval went first, smoking a last cigarette in his jaunty holder.
Then Lee. She smile
d at him, and he was acutely aware that he still loved his wife after twenty years of marriage. She still caught at his heart, still made him want to reach out and touch her just to be sure she was there. It wasn’t just the hair or the eyes or the body. It was the warm certainty that she would understand, and her faith that he too could always accept her for what she was.
In a universe of miracles, that was the best one.
Then it was his turn.
They took him through an airlock into a small cold room. There was a white slab in it, more like an operating table than anything else. He took off his clothes and stretched out on it. His back tensed for the chill, but the table surface was warmed.
The doctor gave him his best bedside smile, checked his medical history a final time.
“See you in five years,” the doctor said.
He used the needle, a big one. It stung, but not much.
Schaefer felt nothing at first, but when the medics lifted him onto a stretcher he found he had no sensation in his body. He tried to wiggle his fingers. Nothing happened.
The other lock opened.
The medics zipped up their suits and carried him through.
They were in the icebox. It must have been cold, for vapor clouds came out of the suits. His naked body did not feel it. He couldn’t turn his head, but he saw enough. He saw more than he wanted to see.
Catacombs.
Glistening walls lined with cubicles. Forms in them, stiff and still. He could not see their faces, the faces were covered with masks and tubes.
They lifted him into his slot, and he felt nothing. He saw them insert two thin flexible tubes into his nostrils.
Then the mask.
He could not see. This is the way death is. I cannot see or feel or smell. I cannot hear. There is no panic, no fear, no cold. There is nothing. I do not exist.
His mind begin to blur. He could no longer think coherently, and then, from somewhere deep down inside of him, he found a new respect for the admiral, and for all men who sailed this strangest of all strange seas….
That was all.
He ceased to be.
At first, it was no worse than waking up after a long nap on a hot, sticky afternoon. He hovered between sleep and awareness and dreamed rapid and pointless dreams. A part of him knew that he had been asleep and that he would be awake soon.
It was all rather pleasant and drowsy.
It stayed that way for what seemed to be a long time.
Funny. So hard to wake up. Tired? Hangover? Sick?
Sick! No, worse than sick. What …
Ice. White. Cold.
Vaults, slabs, bodies.
I’m dead, it’s over, don’t let me wake up underground, in a box, with wet earth all around me, with my body—
He was out of it.
He opened his eyes. There was the doctor’s face, smiling. He moved his head. He was on the white table under the white light. The table was warm under him, but the room was cold, and he was cold.
“Easy now, Dr. Schaefer,” the doctor said. “It’s always hard the first time, but you’re perfectly all right.”
He tried to move, couldn’t.
His lips shaped a word. “Lee?” His voice was the voice of a stranger.
“Your wife is fine, just fine. She’s waiting for you in your cabin. You’ll be carried there on a stretcher. We’ll have some hot broth waiting. A special diet for a day or two and you’ll be your old self again.”
My old self, but I know what death is now. I’ll remember. I’ll always remember.
Then he was in his cabin, in the bed, with Lee next to him. They could hardly talk, but the hot broth helped.
It was two days before he felt human again.
Then there were notes to go over with Sandy, notes and plans and charts.
When they were getting close, an officer appeared. “The admiral’s compliments, sir. Aldebaran is visible in the control room viewer, if you would like to have a look at it.”
They were escorted to the control room, a spotless oval chamber filled with computers. One entire wall was lined with dials, their surfaces red and green and yellow. A black bank of switches had four men on duty before it, seated in contour chairs, earphone bands across their heads.
Schaefer felt like an intruder, but he was fascinated.
Admiral Hurley stepped forward with a smile. “Have a good sleep?”
“I must have set the wrong dial,” Sandoval said. “I think I overslept.”
Hurley chuckled, very much at home here in his control room.
Schaefer thought, On Earth, five years have passed. All my students will have gone, all my friends will be older.
The admiral took Lee’s arm and guided her to a panel as tall as she was. He nodded at a technician, and the slide rolled back.
They were looking out.
They saw beauty beyond belief, and loneliness that was almost painful to see.
A giant red sun blazed against a backdrop of night, with distant stars like diamonds around it. Streamers and fountains of brilliant gases erupted in flaring bursts. Scarlet prominences streaked the edges like the clouds of nightmare.
Distance was a word without a meaning. There was vastness everywhere, an endless depth that clutched at your stomach. Even that sun, 72 times the size of the sun Earth knew, was a brave candle burning in a cave of Stygian gloom.
“It’s best not to look too long,” Hurley said.
The panel closed.
They were back in the control room, back in familiar dimensions that a mind could grasp and understand.
“I thought you ought to see it,” Hurley said.
“Thank you,” Schaefer whispered. “It was worth the trip.”
“We land in two days,” the admiral said.
They were escorted back to their rooms.
There were few sensations in the hours that followed, but they could tell when the ship’s power system switched over to antigravity. They waited the long wait.
In his mind’s eye, Schaefer saw a planet, a blue world floating in space. He saw it grow larger, a balloon inflating. He saw continents and seas take form, and then trees and rivers and snow-kissed mountains.
He saw a strange, slim people, with long arms and eyes that watched and wondered—
A bell rang,
“We’ve landed,” Sandoval said.
IV
A world is many worlds, and many peoples. A world is flame and ice, lush tropical jungles and brown desert sands, laughter and hate and boredom.
Their mission concerned just one part of one continent. They had no authority to visit the rest, no matter what fascinating things might be waiting there. But even one part of one continent was a large chunk of real estate; a man couldn’t trot over it the way he could spring the length of a football field.
It was going to take time, and lots of it. Time to check on the inevitable changes that five years had brought. Time to find out the key facts the first expedition had not been authorized to investigate. Time to work out a solution to the problem faced by these people, and time to put that solution into effect.
Time, and more time.
The first contact ship had made some recordings of the local languages and dialects, and had mapped them. That was an enormous help, but it did not give conversational fluency, which was imperative.
There were no interpreters on Aldebaran IV.
And there could be no mistakes.
It would be pleasant, Schaefer thought, if it could have been done the flashy tri-di Space Patrol way. No pain, no trouble. You landed on Mudball VII, which looked just like Earth except that it had jagged mountains that it never could have had with an atmosphere. You stepped out in your razor-sharp uniform, mowed down a horde of slithering reptiles with your blaster, rescued a lovely but chaste female, and whipped up a jim-dandy whiz-bang invention on the spur of the moment. Then, as the enemy fled in consternation, you smiled your enigmatic smile and faded into stars and a word from your sponsor.
>
The actual plan was somewhat different.
The crew was to stay aboard the ship. Schaefer and Sandoval were to take copters and make extended studies of their special aspects of the problem. The UN men were to fan out with cameras and other recording devices and check for specific items of information.
It was going to take plenty of sweat, among other things.
Lee, of course, had to stay in the ship, at least at first. The whole business was tricky, and it was senseless to multiply the risks they would have to take.
When the time came, Schaefer adjusted his oxygen mask and went through the airlock to the waiting copter. The heat hit him like a fist when he stepped outside. A glare of sunlight almost blinded him until he got used to it, and swirls of gritty brown dust pulled at his clothes.
He stood blinking for a moment, watching Sandoval as the ecologist grinned at the dust with anticipation. He felt his boots sink into the shifting stuff, but not far; it was solid as a rock slab underneath.
He thought: This is the step of no return. This is the step into a new world, the step that Cortés and Pizarro and all the others took. This is the step that breaks the law, breaks the precedent. Who will follow in these footsteps, if word ever leaks out? Who will swarm on these people, with honeyed words and grabbing hands?
“Come on, Mac,” a man yelled. “This crate’s blowing away.”
Schaefer waved, swung up into the cabin. He settled himself and nodded at the man. The man let go, and Schaefer lifted the copter into the sky, up past the shining obelisk of the great ship.
He headed west, keeping low enough to spot details beneath him. From here, the land was a vast baked mud-flat, checkered with dark crack-lines. Dirty blown dust-eddies played over the surface, and the mighty red sun beat down on it all like a malevolent furnace.
At first, there was no sign of life.
Within twenty minutes, however, he passed over what had once been a town. Broken adobe walls were drifted high with sand, and the square ruins of houses had black gaping holes for windows. The place was utterly lifeless now, just as the once-alive land around it was dead.
Once, he knew, all this had been green farmland, with trees and streams and fields of grain.
Now, it was nothing.
