by Jerry
More than ever he felt the giddiness as of a man falling from a vast height with the acceleration of gravity drawing his body at endlessly increasing speed. Thousands and thousands of the light-clusters emerged, grouped themselves around him, receded at a terrific rate, then at a specific but unknown moment, again began to diminish in apparent size and dwindle out of sight somewhere far away.
The period of blackness returned for the flash of an instant, the myriad little clusters vanished at infinite distances. Now, single tiny flecks of fire streamed out of him and whirled away, growing larger for awhile as they hurtled, then at a fixed moment decreasing in apparent size. They were the stars of the galactic universe, rearranging themselves in the sky. The old, familiar landmarks shone again, by countless hordes they crept out and sprinkled space, diverging more and more slowly in proportion as they receded to a greater distance from him. It was as though the skies had expanded with immeasurable rapidity until they were so remote that the motions of the stars became less apparent and finally invisible to his intensest scrutiny.
With a distinct shock, he noticed an increasing cloudiness before him, a cloudiness that receded, until he was able again to discern the features of Mertin. Bob’s anger returned. Without thinking, he lunged at the scientist. What he intended to be a smashing blow ended as a weak tap that caused both Mertin and himself to flounder grotesquely out of reach of each other. A kind of wild exasperation at his helplessness gripped Bob, he strove to force himself toward the astrophysicist, but there was nothing against which he could secure leverage.
And always he was falling, collapsing, shrinking, like an enormous balloon from which the gas was surging. A last group of light-points was flung forth, a shining dot swelled to a brilliant, burning orb, and he knew it was the sun—his own sun. A myriad of stars blazed with a pure and steady radiance in the great sphere of space, more lustrous than he had ever seen them from Earth. He could no longer detect the faintest sign of movement in them. They looked motionless, eternal.
Beside him, growing ever more solid, hung Mertin. A tenseness settled upon both men. The sensation of buoyancy rapidly turned to one of imminent embodiment. They could feel the pull of gravity commence to operate once more. Warned by their preceding failures, they waited alert for the welcome pressure of solid earth under their feet, knowing that there would be no quarter asked or given.
Again Bob felt a pang of piercing cold. There came a frenzied rush, a blur of shifting landscape, a sudden clearness of outlines. The detached impression was wholly gone, he no longer seemed like a disembodied wraith.
❖ ❖ ❖
His eyes saw everything in a flash—the night sky above him, the silver-black plate, vacant of radioactivity, that faced him, and beyond it the tubes that were still filled with swirling vapors but that had ceased to crackle. He noticed the control-panel, and beside it the sight that gave him his greatest relief—Claire, with her arm still against the switches that she had thrown open when she saw the two men rematerialize on the neutral ground. He was conscious of another sinking sensation, and of the laboratory roof closing overhead.
In the same instant he realized that Mertin, solid flesh and blood once more, stood beside him. Warily they stumbled off the danger zone and halted facing each other. Dazed and shaken and overwhelmed by their tremendous experience, there was no question of settling their score until they had somewhat recovered their strength. This was no truce. It was the breathing spell before the storm.
Bob scarcely recognized as his own the hard, low voice that checked Claire’s cry of gladness and told her: “I’ll talk later, Claire. Close those switches, then step off the movable section and wait for me at my car.”
Her words of protest came to him as in a dream, so intent was his watch on Mertin. The same hard voice interrupted her objections: “There’s a little matter to be done here. Please do as I say. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.” And he gave her a brief direction to his car.
Loyalty to his wishes and faith in his ability to take care of himself overcame her fears. She did as he asked.
Again the roar of electrical energy thundered through the tubes and the lights flared up brilliantly in strange beauty. The underlying hum went shrilling to a thin, high whine, a misty glow suffused the silver-black plate. Bob caught a fleeting glimpse of Claire as she leaped from the rising section, and he was alone with Mertin.
His clear, hard voice cut through the sounding crackle:
“I can’t kill you in cold blood, unfortunately, and you know as well as I do what would happen if I preferred charges against you. I couldn’t prove anything. No one would believe my story and an alienist would think that I instead of you was crazy if I tried to tell it. I’d let you go free would merely be to commit the folly of allowing a dangerous menace to remain loose.
“Neither of us is armed, Mertin, and we’re going to begin all over. One of us is going back there, back into space, for good. On your guard!”
Like a jungle cat leaping for prey, Mertin dove sidewise to place Bob between himself and the neutral ground. A streak of human lightning shot after him but Bob miscalculated the angle and his fist only raked the side of Mertin’s cheek as he crashed into him.
Of all the maneuvers he might have expected, the next one took Bob wholly by surprise. Mertin’s hand flashed down, there was a ripping of cloth, a stab of pain, an ominous plop—and an artery on Bob’s left arm was torn, bitten into by a pair of very heavy pliers Mertin had evidently snatched up during that breathing spell. A jet of blood spouted out. Bob made a wild clutch, but his hand was sticky and slid off the scientist who twisted away.
Mertin raced like the wind. For an instant Bob’s arm hung down, and the blood trickled off his fingers, and the coldest fury he had ever known gripped him. Unless the fight was over quickly, loss of blood might weaken him until he would fall an easy victim. Yet he could not take time to make a tourniquet for there was no telling what deviltry Mertin had in mind next. Awkwardly pressing the artery with his good hand, he hurtled across the floor after Mertin.
The scientist, still carrying the pliers, continued his flight. Obviously he was trying to keep out of Bob’s reach until the torn artery had done its work. Running like a deer, he circled around, dodging, twisting, turning. Bob did not even try to find a weapon. The deadly rage that possessed him was concentrated all upon Mertin, and, hampered though he was by his injured arm, he gained with every step.
Mertin’s erratic course now brought him in the opposite direction from which he had started. The flying figures were speeding toward the neutral ground, Bob drawing ever closer.
Sensing that his pursuer was catching up with him, and apparently deciding that with the pliers and aided by Bob’s loss of blood, he would now be an easy victor, Mertin whirled around in his stride and hurled the heavy tool.
He skidded, lost his balance, and slid with a hoarse cry onto the neutral ground. The pliers with which he intended to crush Bob sailed off tangently in a parabola. His features contorted desperately. Even as he tried to leap out of the danger zone, he swelled like a puff of smoke, his outlines blurred, and he was gone.
In a bewildered daze, Bob looked at the floor. Mertin had skidded on the little splash of blood that first dripped from the torn artery. The scientist’s own trickery had spelled his defeat.
He heard a tinkling crash and jerked around. The sailing pliers smashed through the giant vacuum tube. A deafening roar split the air, a blinding blaze of lightning seared Bob’s eyes, and a wave of baking heat swept toward him.
Without another glance at the molten mechanism and wrecked apparatus, he darted from the building. Had he waited a moment longer, the thundering explosion of the dynamo would have caught him.
The handkerchief that Bob knotted around his arm sufficed as a rough tourniquet until he reached the car and Claire whose skilful fingers made a more satisfactory substitute out of a ripped shirt. And on the way home, it was not until Claire told him of the travesties of human be
ings that she had seen on the neutral ground after Bob and Mertin had disappeared that he realized how close was his escape. Then he recalled the non-Euclidean mathematics of Einstein—space affected with a curvature so that it ultimately returned upon itself. In the four-dimensional space-time continuum, a human body would be turned inside out without breaking its surface or otherwise harming it. And the rays had kept pouring out, and the rereversal had come about with terrific acceleration before the spark of life had had time to be extinguished.
So close had he been to never returning alive from his trip to infinity . . .
THE HARD WAY
Robert Rohrer
Lieutenant Percy thumbed the layer of grease from the fuel gauge and squinted at the indicator. He calculated. There was maybe five days’ worth of fuel left. The last two days would be hell. He decided it was time to tell his passengers the bad news.
HE sidled between the huge pipes that crooked down like spiders’ legs from the fuel storage tanks which squatted on either side of him. He pulled his leatheroid jacket off and slung it over his shoulder. Things were getting hot already. He pushed the rusty door of the tank room open and stepped into the cell room.
His passengers, who were prisoners being shipped from a penitentiary on Earth to one on Mercury, were lying across the steel plates of the floor. They were manacled, and their respective chains were attached at different points on the walls so that they could not possibly gang up on Percy. Not that they would have tried. They knew that Percy was quick, and wouldn’t hesitate to use his gun. Percy had let them know that.
Percy closed the door and leaned back against it. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Hot. He’d have to turn the air conditioning up.
The prisoner whose name was Fuller was glaring dully at Percy. They all glared dully at Percy whenever they had to look at him. Fuller said, “What’s the word, Looey?”
Percy opened his eyes. “ ‘Lieutenant Percy’,” he said.
“Lieutenant Percy,” said Fuller.
Percy compressed his lips. He was trying to think of the best way to tell them, so he would get the most reaction. Finally he said, “Well, there isn’t much to say, Fuller. We’ll all be dead in five days.” He said it casually.
The prisoners jerked to sitting positions. The expressions on their faces made Percy laugh inside.
“You kidding, Lieutenant?” said Haig at Percy’s side.
“No,” said Percy. “The lead ship misjudged. We missed our Mercury orbit. We’re caught in the gravitational pull of the sun, and our rockets don’t have enough power to pull us out.”
“Then why aren’t we dead already?” said Fuller.
“I saw the lead ship go, and I knew what was happening,” said Percy, stretching and walking toward the door to the control room. There were only three rooms in the tiny ship. “I heeled us around so the rockets are pushing into the force of the gravity. But we’re too far in. We’re being dragged back slowly. We’ll be close enough to burn in five days, I calculate.”
“My God!” said Haig. Percy looked at Haig. Haig was shaking and wide-eyed. Percy half-smiled.
For the first time Maitland, a graying man with a face that had once been “distinguished,” spoke. “It’ll be slow then,” he said, calmly stating a fact.
Percy was irritated by Maitland’s calmness. He said, “It’ll be slow, all right.” He had already decided to tell the prisoners what they should do, but suddenly he got an idea. It was a good idea, and he was glad he had thought of it.
HE sat on the floor in front of the control room door and leaned forward confidentially. He said, “Listen. Listen, there’ll be a lot of pain involved if we just sit here and wait for the sun to kill us. There’s a way that’s a lot easier.”
Fuller was lying back against a wall again, apparently relaxed. He said, “What are you getting at?”
Percy cocked his head toward the main air lock. The main air lock was in the center of the wall to Percy’s right. There was a long lever at the top of the air lock, well out of the prisoners’ reaches. The lever would open the inner and the outer panels of the air lock simultaneously. Its intended use was as a means of quick escape in the event of an emergency.
“It would be a lot quicker to open that lock,” said Percy. “There’d be hardly any pain. It would be over like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Why don’t you let me throw the lever?” Fuller laughed. He said, “Let you!”
“That’s right,” said Percy. “We’re all going to die anyway. I’ll let you vote on it.” Percy was excited. He was already imagining what their faces would look like when he stood with his hand on the lever. He would stand that way for a long time, watching them, before he pulled. And he was glad he had thought of taking a vote. He wanted to pull the switch after they had all openly submitted to him. “I just want to make sure, to let you all—well, decide yourselves, before I—”
“No! I don’t want to die!”
shouted Haig suddenly. He was chewing on his knuckles.
Percy said, “Well, we’re all going to die, Haig. We may as well—”
“No! No!” said Haig, pushing his back up against the wall with his feet and staring fixedly at nothing. “I don’t want to die now! I’ve got to wait! I’ve got to wait, I’ve got to think!” Then he began to mutter to himself, “Oh no. Oh no. No. No. No. Die.” Percy frowned. He liked the way Haig was reacting, but the man was a fool as well as a coward. “Haig, you may as well face it,” said Percy, “you’re going to die—”
Haig shuddered. Fuller said, “Why don’t you let him alone?” Percy turned to Fuller and said, “Shut up! He’s a coward, he’s so scared he can’t see it’s better since we’re going to die, to get it over with—”
“I don’t want to ‘get it over with’,” said Maitland.
Percy was amazed. “What!” he said.
“Not that way,” said Maitland. “You talk about cowardice. Well, what you’re suggesting is cowardice.”
“What? Cowardice! It’s the smart thing to do, the best thing, why, do you know—”
“I’m voting no,” said Maitland firmly. “I can’t take suicide, no matter how—terrible this is going to be. I rejected suicide once before for something worse. I’m doing it again. I could not die with my honor if—”
“Honor!” Percy mocked. “What do you know about honor! What did you do to get here, did you do that with honor?”
MAITLAND blinked and wiped his forehead with his fists and said, “I—I’m talking about the integrity of the individual—within the context of his own code of—”
“My, such big, big words,” said Percy. “You must have had a college education, Mr. Maitland. And look what you’ve done with yourself, oh, my! You’ve come a long way since college, Maitland, a long, long way!” Percy glanced at Fuller. Fuller was tensed forward slightly. Percy could see that Fuller was almost ready to tell him to go to hell. Go ahead, Fuller, thought Percy. Do it. Just do it.
“I don’t care what you think of me,” said Maitland hoarsely. “I have my own—my own personal honor. My honor tells me that suicide is the coward’s way—”
“It’s the smart man’s way,” spat Percy. “You’re hollow inside, you know that Maitland? You’ve got a hollow honor, a hollow soul. You’ve shot your potential to hell, whatever promise you had in—college. You’re a dead man right now, Maitland, you, you don’t even deserve a vote in this.” Percy could see that Fuller’s jaws were grinding together. Come on, Fuller, do it.
Then Fuller opened his mouth and Percy’s heart skipped. But Fuller said, “You want my vote, Lieutenant? Well I vote ‘no,’ because I just don’t want you pulling the switch for me, Lieutenant. So there it is. Three against one. We wait.” He said it all between his teeth in a very taut voice.
Percy was furious. That wasn’t what he’d wanted Fuller to say. He said, “You scum, do you know what it’s like, do you know what it’ll be like? First it’ll get hot in here, get up to a hundred, like a bad summer on Earth.
But it won’t stop there, oh no, the closer we get the hotter the ship’ll get, and the walls’ll start getting red hot, and then they’ll get yellow and bright, and you may think the fuel’ll explode but it won’t, the insulation on the tanks’ll take care of that, we’ll keep on sliding in slow and easy, and it’ll get hotter and hotter, your hair’ll catch, and the skin’ll peel off your flesh and your flesh’ll boil off your bones but you’ll still be alive, you’ll be nothing but big globs of blood that can scream, until the heat finally shrivels you up. You hear me? That’s what it’ll be like!”
Maitland said in an undertone, “It doesn’t sound much worse than what we’ve already gone through.”
Percy said, “What do you mean by—”
Fuller said, “Look, as long as we’ve got any hope, we got to hang on. We don’t know who’s where out there, there could be a ship ten minutes from us right now. Hear that, Haig?”
“No, no,” said Percy, “there were only small ships like this one in the convoy. Either they’re in the sun now or they got away, but they can’t help us because they’d end up in the same fix. And what can you hope for, if we should be rescued, anyway? What, a prison cell?”
“We can hope maybe you’ll die and we won’t,” said Fuller.
Percy said, “Now that isn’t a nice thing to say.” He stood up. “That isn’t nice at all, is it? You shouldn’t say things like that.” He kicked Fuller a couple of times. Fuller doubled up on the floor and gulped air. Percy kicked Fuller a few more times, hard. He had wanted very much to kick Fuller.
FINALLY Percy stopped kicking Fuller and sat down. He still wasn’t satisfied with how things were happening. He had expected them all to accept his proposition almost without hesitation. And Fuller hadn’t whined or even groaned under Percy’s beating.
Percy decided to end the whole damned thing. He said, “Look, I’m in command here, all I have to do is pull that switch if I want to.”