Time Exposures

by Wilson Tucker

  “But what are you trying to do?”

  “Bring it in on manual. Change orbit. Figure the deceleration and find a new orbit. Then keep right on orbiting until I can find the Tombaugh and set her down.”

  “I thought you were being overly melodramatic,” she replied cheerfully. “We can land on the Tombaugh, after all. I have confidence in you, Webb.”

  He seemed to find that funny but the weak attempt at laughter was no more than a choking gurgle. “Oh, hell no, there’s nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. Do you suppose they’ll wait for us?”

  “Who?”

  “Those jokers on the Tombaugh? Those star-peeps sweating out their new gear? How long do you think they’ll sit there, watching us whirl around over their heads? A week? Two weeks? Damn it, woman, I have to find a favorable orbit to get near them, and I have to find the Tombaugh plateau to land on—without coming down smack on top of their lousy telescopes.”

  “But you know where it is, you’ve been there.”

  “I’ve always found it with updated tapes, you stupid idiot. I’ve always orbited by the tape and sat down by the tape. I’ve never hit the Tombaugh wild before.” He relapsed into the choking, feeble laughter. “I know where it is—I’ve been there. Bristol, you stink.”

  His legs buckled, throwing him to the deck.

  Kate Bristol picked him up and carried him to the board. There was no chair for him to sit in so she had to hold him there.

  The aged freighter lifted over the trailing limb of Pluto, climbing away from perigee and beginning its seventy-second circuit of the frozen planet. Below it, somewhere on the barren wastes, the radio tower alongside the Tombaugh Station hurled a steady guidance signal into the skies. As the Xanthus cleared the horizon, voice signals resumed, offered up by the personnel of the half dozen ships already nesting on the plateau.

  “Webb—hey there, Webb, ain’t you ever coming down?”

  “Shut up, Busby,” Webb retorted. “I’m sweating.”

  “Sweating!” the master of the Yandro whooped. And to all those listening he added, “Webb’s got a woman up there—he’s afraid to bring her down and let us look-see.”

  “Come on, Webb, you can’t stay up there forever.”

  “Tell you what,” said a new voice, “give him an even hundred passes and then we’ll shoot him down.”

  “Send the woman down, Webb. You stay there.”

  “Shuddup!” Webb roared at them. “Busby—you there? Listen, Busby, I figured two more passes and I can pull her tail feathers. Lend a hand now.”

  The voices fell silent and Busby was heard again. “Sure, Webb. Come on in—they want your gear.”

  Watching the chronometer and listening to the guidance signal from the plateau, Webb poised an expectant thumb over the firing button and waited. The bucket hurtled tail first along its useless orbit, driving now for the ridiculous apogee. Webb hung over the board, his nerves taut. He was no longer conscious of the woman behind him, holding him there. At that moment when the radio signal reached its peak and broke he stabbed at the button, holding it down four seconds. The engines burst into brief and noisy life and then they were done, throwing the vessel back into free fall in a new orbit.

  The four seconds had been painful, sharply reminding him of his battered groin and he was grateful for the respite when they were over. The radio signal faded as the ship passed over the far horizon. Webb’s head sank to his chest and he rediscovered the arms around him.

  “Brace yourself, Bristol. Rough one coming up.”

  “I’m ready, Webb. Good luck.”

  “Luck!” was the muttered reply.

  The Xanthus rounded the planet and shot for the new horizon, seeking the feeble light of the distant sun. It lifted over the trailing limb of Pluto, climbing away from perigee and beginning the seventy-fourth circuit of the ice-locked world. The radio signal came in loud.

  “Webb,” the voice reached his ears, “you’re over the horizon on a direct line. Keep it there.” A short period of tense silence. “Soon now, Webb. You’re skinning the ice mountains. Set up your trim.”

  “Not yet—not yet. I’ve got eighteen seconds.”

  “I don’t think so, Webb. Less than fifteen from the line of it.”

  “Eighteen here, Busby. Figured down to the decimal.”

  The freighter plunged heavily onward, climbing out of perigee in a shallow arc and soaring without sound to a high point above the Tombaugh tower. Webb trimmed the cold jets fore and aft, setting up for positional change. He watched the chronometer and kept an ear tuned to the beeping signal, calculating the precise instant the tone would break. Sweat beaded his forehead and blurred vision.

  “Webb?” the nervous talker broke in.

  “Six seconds,” Webb flung back at the ground.

  “I think you’re overshooting, Webb.”

  “Now five, four, three, two, one—” and he rammed his thumb down on the firing button, unwittingly cursing it in his anxiety to drive it home. The engines hesitated and then coughed when they should have flamed.

  “Webb, damn you, goose it!” Webb pushed the harder, seeking inanely to recapture the lost moment. The vacillating engines fired. His free hand swept out and punched for the jet trim and then he clung to the board, knowing the jolt that was coming. The woman clung to him, bracing him. The shock came when the old ship reared skyward and then sat down on its flaming tail, riding it down. Webb hung on and watched the radar screen.

  Busby screamed at him. “Webb—overshoot!”

  “Pull out!” someone else bellowed in his ears. “Pull your trim or you’ll hit the rocks. Pull out now!”

  Webb stared at the screen and discovered the plateau and its huddle of ships far to starboard. The Tombaugh and its radio tower jutted up behind them. Savagely, quickly, with the instinctive movement born of naked fear, Webb worked the jets and sought to turn the ship on its axis, parallel to the ground below him. He felt the cold jets firing, exerting a minute lift on the vessel, and then the still flaming tail section struck a mountain peak. A harsh buckling sound reverberated through the ship.

  Webb clung to the board, knowing the worst had hit him. He felt a shudder run through the hull, accompanied by a drumming crack even in the absence of an outside atmosphere, and the entire tail section of the bucket fell away. The engines were lost. The freighter paused and seemed to hang suspended, and then dropped. The man and woman toppled to the pitching deck, both of them grabbing for any handhold to offer itself.

  The Xanthus fell on the rugged slope of the mountain that had speared it and rolled with sickening motion, tumbling downward until it struck and ricocheted off a boulder pack at the bottom. The portside tanks splintered and fell away. Still pushed by its own momentum, the freighter skidded wildly across an unseen shoreline and then shot outward over a sea of frozen methane. A great rock thrusting up through the sea ripped the ship from bow to stem, scattering cargo over the ice. The Xanthus skidded wildly across the sea.

  Against a sky rich with stars the distant sun was a bright giant, an incredibly large and brilliant star but yet one without a perceptible disc. It cast a puny light over the packed snow and marked a dull reflection on the frozen sea. Near at hand slim needles of rock jutted up through the ice while beyond the needles and beyond the alien sea, an unknown number of miles away, massive mountain ranges ringed the horizon and built up solid white peaks to catch the meager sunlight. The little world was motionless and deathly still.

  She could look back along their path and distinguish dark objects scattered in the wake; she could see the sun, remote and barely friendly, lying now in a shallow dish between two mountain crags; she could glance about her and see a world which had not changed—except for a mote known as the Tombaugh Station—in all the years that man had known it existed. She turned and stared at the wretched hulk behind her. The wreck of the Xanthus was beached well above the shoreline of a nameless island, twisted and broken in crazy fashion. The full sunlight enabled her to p
ick out the name painted on the hull.

  She stared down at her radio, resting on a rock. If they were fortunate its clamoring signal could be heard.

  Kate Bristol clambered over the wreckage and entered the ship, pulling the hatch snug behind her. Darkness enveloped the cabin, for which she was thankful. That tiny portion of the vessel was still tight.

  “Bristol?”

  “Are you still alive? Are you unkillable, Webb?” She inched along the unseen deck until she found his body. “I was afraid your suit had ripped.”

  “What were you doing outside?”

  “Setting up my radio. A distress signal, Webb, not a telemeter gimmick.”

  “Radio,” he repeated thoughtfully. “Well—maybe.”

  She understood his meaning. “We shouldn’t be too difficult to find.”

  “Maybe,” he said again and lapsed into silence.

  “Try to stay awake; it’s very cold in here.”

  “Still want to hang me, cop?” There was no rancor.

  “For the last time, Webb: I am not a police agent. I was put aboard for a purpose, but not a police purpose.”

  “Who else is interested?” he asked cynically.

  “Your insurance company. And what a loss this is!”

  Webb stared into the blackness above him. “Ah!” The sound carried many subtle meanings. “They don’t want to pay off for Singleton’s death—they’re going to screw me out of my break-off money!”

  Bristol said, “They don’t intend to pay a beneficiary who happens to be a murderer.”

  “What’s the difference? You’ve tapped me.”

  “Wrong again, Webb. I’ve tapped Jimmy Cross.”

  “Bull.” The two words ran together sounded like one.

  “Please stop using that vulgar term.” She located his shoulder on the deck near her knee and tapped it for emphasis. “Listen to this, Webb. I am going to say it once and only once. It makes little difference whether you choose to believe it or not; I don’t have to convince you, only my superiors.

  “James Cross deliberately rigged your auto pilot to cause Singleton’s death, and to cause yours as well. If you weren’t such a stubborn idiot you would have discovered that for yourself, as I did. Time and again, Webb, you were taken by surprise when the tapes stopped or started without giving prior warning. You were caught off guard when you leaped the rail for me, and went into free fall.”

  “Old-age—the damn ship was falling apart.”

  “It has fallen apart,” she pointed out. “But the auto pilot was given a helpful push. I found a printed circuit in the base of that machine, and I found a short loop of thinly insulated wire touching a part of the circuit. I think you call the wire a jumper. The jumper had been so placed that it rubbed against one channel; insulation had burned off the jumper at that point and the channel had burned through. Your warning system operated fitfully at first, Webb, and then it failed to operate at all. I have also read your ship’s manuals and the diagrams. There should be no jumper at that point.”

  “When the hell did you do all that?”

  “While you were visiting the derelict, and again while you lay unconscious in your bunk a few hours ago. I know what I am saying, Webb. Your partner sabotaged the ship.”

  “It could be a patching job,” he said thinly.

  “It was a patching job, a most ingenious patching job. But there’s more, Webb. I did something more while you were visiting the derelict. I experimented with the drain valves. I tried in every possible manner to trip both levers simultaneously, using only one hand and arm—even using one leg and foot. It is impossible. The levers are positioned in such a manner that it is impossible. You would have realized that if you weren’t so insistent on branding Singleton a dunce. A simultaneous flushing can be accomplished only by using both hands, or by a man falling across them. A man standing in the cubicle could be caught off guard, and be knocked across the levers.”

  She felt Webb’s body stiffen with surprise.

  “You’re catching on, Webb. Singleton died because he lacked your experience. You warned me when time was drawing near to quit the orbit, you knew by the feel and the sounds what was to happen. But Singleton lacked your experience, and perhaps your common sense, and when the device failed that first time he was trapped and thrown. It was his terrible bad luck to be in the cubicle when it failed.” She shook her head, forgetting that he could not see in the darkness. “Not you, Webb. Jimmy Cross. My report will name Jimmy Cross.”

  Webb broke the silence. “I’m sorry, Bristol.”

  “No apologies accepted. I bought my passage.”

  “You’ve got a refund coming,” he said with faint bitterness. “Everybody’s got a refund coming.” When she said nothing to that, he asked, “What do you think of the place—outside?”

  “I want to go home,” she answered truthfully.

  “Me, too.” He squirmed on the deck, seeking but not finding a more comfortable position. “Wish to hell I could sit up.”

  “Stay where you are. There is some heavy object pinning your legs. We need a rescue party.”

  “If it comes,” Webb grunted, and knew why he had lost all sense of feeling in his legs. He wondered blackly if he would also lose his legs. “Grounded, dammit.”

  “I suggest that you stay home, after this debacle.”

  “Last trip—I’ve got break-off money.”

  After a time he asked wearily, “Hear anything on your radio? Mine’s busted.”

  “I thought I heard voices a bit ago. I’m not sure.”

  “Say, Bristol?”

  “Yes, Webb?”

  “Where did you hide that distress radio?”

  “Don’t be naive, Webb.”

  Webb dozed off and then became aware of what he was doing. He jerked himself awake with a start.

  “Maybe we’ll run into each other again,” he offered hopefully. His moving fingers found her knee.

  “I doubt that very much,” Bristol said and moved the knee.

  The End

  ************************************

  The Recon Man,

  by Wilson Tucker

  If Jan. 1965

  Short Story - 7272 words

  He only lived for one day—

  and perhaps it was too long!

  I

  Owen Hall’s one day of life began with uncertainty.

  In that first moment of total awareness he found himself standing outside a door, facing a road that moved.

  The door had slammed shut behind him—after he had been shoved through it—although there was no distinct recollection of his passage through the doorway, or who had done the shoving. It was reasonable to assume that the same hand was responsible for both. A thrust against the small of his back, a slam—and awareness of self and surroundings began with that.

  The light hurt his eyes.

  The sun was shining, the weather was bland and summery. Airy brightness engulfed him, contrasting sharply with the blackness behind that door and the blackness which replaced memory.

  Owen turned his attention to the road. It rolled.

  The moving roadway was actually a street, a wide and smoothly surfaced street which flowed toward the rising sun at a speed equal to a fast walk. It appeared from the southwest, curving gently around an endless series of low buildings as it approached, and vanished into the southeastern distance. Owen inspected the street with a growing sense of wonder; he guessed that it completely encircled the city, and he knew without proof what it was. He had never before seen a Heinlein rolling road, but there it was.

  There was no telling what science would do next!

  In the following moment that mysterious door behind him was yanked open and a woman shouted belligerently. Owen turned around to examine the newest discovery.

  The woman popped through the door. She was perhaps thirty-five or forty years of age, and rather chunky about the middle. Her hair was brown, her eyes were angry and her hands were large enough to push
him through any door with ease. She was clad from neck to sandals in form-fitting pink clothing. Baby pink. The single garment resembled mechanic’s coveralls and it was reasonably flattering except for that bulge in the middle. The woman staggered as she approached him.

  ‘What you doing here?” she shouted at him. “Told you to go to work. Go!”

  Owen murmured politely. “Honey, you’re loaded.”

  Ignoring the accusation or perhaps not understanding it, the belligerent woman strode close, leaned over to peer into his eyes and splashed him with eighty-six proof breath. She bellowed. “What’s wrong with you? What went wrong? How is your equilibrium? Huh?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my equilibrium,” Owen retorted. “Did you shove me through that door? What’s the big idea?”

  “Can you walk without falling down?”

  “I might ask you the same thing.”

  Owen discovered that he possessed a baritone voice, and was pleased. He realized the pushy, loudmouthed woman wasn’t his wife; he didn’t have a wife. And he found time to wonder what he was doing there—wherever there was. The city was a new one on him.

  “Show me you can walk,” the woman demanded.

  Owen obediently marched back and forth along the path between the door and the street His legs were strangely weak and for a brief moment he felt like an infant learning to walk, but then he mastered the technique as familiarity returned. It was like regaining an old skill.

  “Nothing to it,” Owen said.

  “Ready to go to work?”

  “Work?” Owen blinked. He didn’t particularly care whether he worked or not. It was a nice day; he’d just as soon go fishing if there was a stream handy. But he was certain he didn’t want to go back inside that door with the old harridan. “I guess so. What work? Where?”