In spite of my initial indecision, I liked the challenge. I still had enough adolescent enthusiasm to enjoy the idea of space stations and matter transmitters. True, they were only machines, not Dr. Merril’s organisms. Dr. Merril might find the artist in him inhibited by machines, but the artist in me, held at bay by the more disciplined engineer in me, wanted nothing more than to get his hands on those machines. If I was ever going to contribute anything more than the valves and swivels I had been designing at Standard Engineering, I would do it now. I remembered Mr. Merryweather, examining the model of Jenson’s Gate. At sixty, his expression could have been described as adolescent enthusiasm.
Dr. Merril returned, glancing over a computer printout. At least he let some machines help him. I had imagined him running my blood tests with a large magnifying glass.
“Low blood sugar,” he said.
“Is it serious?”
“Have you eaten yet today?”
“No.”
“Hm-m-m,” he said, giving the sound an amorphous sort of hopeless flavor.
“What does it mean?”
“It means,” he said, scowling at me, “you haven’t eaten today.”
“That’s all?”
“For now,” he answered, coughing twice.
“But later, something might get me later.”
“Young man, something gets everyone later. See the nurse on your way out. She’ll give you my report to return to personnel.”
He coughed again. I thanked him and left. I imagined Smith, listening to that cough. Unhealthy doctor—there’s something to it.
The rest of the day, I filled out forms, collected essentials for the trip and examined the library catalog, punching up items that applied to Jenson Gate physics or engineering. It required little augmentation. Somewhere in the process, my enthusiasm waned. Doubts surfaced. Just mastering the essentials of Norton’s job was an imposing task. Going beyond the essentials to Norton’s brand of engineering would take two or three engineers.
I talked briefly with Wilkins, the space station commander, by phone. His jaw actually was square, or close enough to pass for it. Age had muted its sharp line. His responsibilities included the station, its life-support system and personnel. Mine included the Gate, construction personnel and development. I also talked to the company geologist, the company astronomer and assorted company engineers and technicians. The engineers were the- hardest to handle. With anyone else, I could postpone the always urgent consideration their problems deserved. The engineers insisted on being first in line. Testing me? Who knows? I demonstrated sound judgment. I begged off until I knew more.
After each call, I mentally retallied the amount of midnight oil. I would need. The quantity was vast. Norton kept everything in his head, leaving nothing to fill mine. Until I got my feet on the ground—or off the around, as Dolores correctly pointed out—I would be working in a vacuum in more ways than one.
Tuesday morning, I said goodbye to Dolores. She cried, hugging me.
“Bobby, don’t go.”
“Don’t go! What am I supposed to do? Call them up and quit? Wouldn’t that look nice.”
“I just don’t want you to leave.”
I broke free and picked up my suitcases, starting for the door. Dolores blocked my exit, arms stretched across the doorway.
“Dolores, please.”
“Promise you’ll think of me.”
“I’ll think of you.”
“Promise you won’t play around with_any of those flivvers, up there.”
“I promise. Now can I go, or do you want it in blood?”
“Kiss me first.”
I tried, Dolores and I and the suitcases struggling.
I arrived at the Merryweather Building early, staggering up the entrance steps with my suitcases. Two suitcases are awkward—put down, open door, pick up, walk through, put down, close door—three are a juggling act. Duff, exiting the elevator, saw me coming. His scowl disappeared, replaced by something that was either a smile or a sneer.
“Going somewhere?”
I lowered the left-hand suitcase to the carpet and rested the hugged suitcase on top. My left arm felt several inches longer than my right. Slowly, I regained use of it. I glanced at the ceiling. “Up there.”
“He’s not in.”
“I meant to the Merryweather Enterprize. Someone was supposed to drive me to the Gate.”
He looked at my bags. “Ballast?”
“Very funny. I would like to change underwear once in a while.”
The receptionist, listening, looked up at me. Duff looked from suitcase to suitcase.
“Did you have three suitcases full of underwear at your last job, Mr. Collins?”
Clearly enjoying himself, he continued in this vein, speculating what sort of psychological fetish could account for a man wanting to change underwear so often. Unless Duff wore his clothes for three months straight, his preoccupation seemed misplaced. I began to suspect Duff knew some critical fact, one he liked keeping from me.
“I was under the impression,” I interrupted, “correct me if I’m wrong—that the Earthside rotation is about three months.”
“We don’t recommend longer than three months,” answered Duff, sharing his joke with the blond.
“It seems to me—and again I may be wrong—that one changes one’s underwear at least once in three months.”
“I should hope so,” clucked Duff, coat pushed back, hands in his pockets, nodding vigorous agreement.
“Then what’s so damned funny about three suitcases?”
“You don’t plan to go home tonight like everyone else?”
“Home? I—”
With Norton’s solution of the matter transmitter phase-shift, Duff explained—glowing with satisfaction at catching the child-engineer in what he evidently considered an Earth-shaking piece of technical ignorance—the solid electrical ground of the Jenson Gate was no longer necessary. Merryweather Enterprises used the standard first leg of any space journey, Earth to Moon by Jenson Gate, then a series of one hundred relay stations, orbiting the Sun at two-hundred-thousand-mile intervals, took over. I had been so intent on understanding the present problems of the Big Gate—most of them power supply problems—that I ignored anything considered solved: Phase-shift was solved. In one ear and out the other. The possibility of applying former solutions to different problems eluded me.
“Relay stations,” I said, chagrined.
“Norton’s idea.”
“How long does it take?”
“About two minutes.”
I will simply record that I felt foolish. I blushed. I looked at the blond. She, at least, had sympathy for me. Duff, busy enjoying himself, had none.
“Don’t worry about it, Mr. Collins. They’ve only been in operation six months. Prior to that, we did have a three-month rotation policy.”
“Thanks.”
I left the suitcases with the receptionist. Duff drove me to the company Gate in Corona del Mar. I saw the focusing ring first, the great-grandson of the ring I had seen in Mr. Merryweather’s office. Unlike commercial Gates, architecturally camouflaged, the company Gate showed bare bones, its eighty-foot tantalum focusing ring resting back on a framework of struts and supports, pointing skyward. It reminded me of a grossly constructed radio telescope. I say “pointing skyward” only because I knew it was. It could have as easily been focused at the core of the Earth. Physically “aiming” a Jenson Gate, though once thought essential, is superfluous. Electronically aiming it, the way “holes” are aimed in a transistor, is more accurate. Anything less would be like trying to hit an orbiting satellite with a slingshot. Chancy.
A blockhouse at the base of the focusing ring housed the integration equipment. A red Ferrari was parked by the door.
“Smith’s here,” said buff. Any residual good humor he had from making the kid-engineer look foolish disappeared. “I’ll drop you outside.”
“Fine.” I watched the Gatekeeper suit Smith up. He c
hecked wrist couplings and attached the air-conditioning hose. It trailed from a metal cart. The air-conditioning only worked with the helmet in place. Smith, his head micro-cephalic within the helmet coupling ring, watched intently, manipulating a dead cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.
“Is all this hardware necessary?” asked Smith.
The Gatekeeper, a chunky man with the reassuring air of a doctor asked whether something would hurt, glanced up, hunkering next to Smith’s leg and checking his outsized boots. “Is insurance necessary?”
“Not particularly.”
A bad analogy. To an actuarial table, Smith didn’t exist.
“But nice to have.”
“Yes.”
“So’s the suit.”
I wondered about the odds on a faulty transmission. It happens occasionally, even on commercial jumps. Halfway between Los Angeles and New York, someone materializes in Des Moines. Defective transoceanic transmissions must be worse. Expecting the Arc de Triomphe and getting the Sargasso Sea could be annoying, especially with only a suitcase for a raft.
Smith cradled the helmet in the crook of his arm, lumbering around the suit room. “I feel like a zombi in this thing.”
He looked more like a cross between the abominable snowman and the hunchback of Notre Dame. The white suit, arms and legs puffed, life-support backpack rising past his shoulders to ear level, gave him an imposing physique. Why Merryweather Enterprises kept old-style spacesuits was beyond me. Presumably new ones, light and efficient, would add nothing to the safety margin but expense. I could see Duff’s hand in that decision.
While I was being suited up, Smith got a call. He lumbered into the adjoining room to take it, the metal air-conditioning cart following him. When he returned, I was almost ready, suited and sweating. The Gatekeeper connected me to the cart. Air began to circulate around my limbs. Smith’s expression, pensively munching his cigar, attracted my attention.
“What’s eating you?”
“Hm-m-m?” He stared at the floor, thinking.
“What’s bothering you?”
“Norton,” answered Smith, brow wrinkled.
“He bothers me, too.”
“I can’t figure it.”
“He’s turned up?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
According to Duff, who relayed the information to Smith, pieces of Norton had been turning up for several hours, an arm here, a leg there.
Once the police got the idea, they put out an all points bulletin for stray limbs and organs. Someone had fed Norton’s body through a spray-focused Jenson Gate, someone who knew very little about matter transmitters.
The idea had probably been to dematerialize Norton. Commercial Gates, stabilized by fail-safe feedback systems, seldom slip out of focus. Only manual override allows it. Even manual override never completely defocuses the field. Instead of spraying Norton over Los Angeles, a stream of subnuclear particles, it sprayed him in chunks and pieces.
“Norton gets around,” I said. “Yep. But—”
“But what?”
“We still haven’t answered the big one.”
“What big one?”
“Why? Alive, old Norton may have been the smartest engineer since Berzelius, but—”
“Berzelius was a chemist.”
He ignored me, continuing. “Dead he’s just a hunk of meat like anybody else.” Smith mused, twirling the cigar in his puckered mouth. “Live genius.” He looked at me. “Dead idiot?”
“What are you getting at?”
“All dead men are idiots, aren’t they?”
“I suppose so.”
“There’s something to it, buddy boy.”
“What?”
He grinned. “Who knows? With a joker like Norton, who knows? But we’re making progress.”
“We are?”
The Gatekeeper led us to an elevator, the conditioning cart trailing. On the way up to the transfer surface, we received his memorized spiel.
“Both of you have used commercial Gates?”
We nodded.
“The only difference here is the suits. If there’s a malfunction, don’t panic. Press the red plate on your chest. It activates a homing beacon. You will be rescued within thirty-six hours. Do you understand?”
“The red plate.” I looked at it. Square, red, not much to it.
The longer I thought about it, the more apprehensive I got. A three-thousand-mile jump to New York is one thing. A twenty-million-mile jump to an orbiting space station is something else. New York, at least, stands still, relatively speaking. The Gatekeeper mentioned only transmission interruption. He never said anything about spray-focus. I wondered about the maintenance requirements on privately-owned Gates. The thought of Norton, most of his organs still loose in Los Angeles, impinged. No red plates to be pushed after dematerialization. No red plates.
The elevator stopped, opening. A foot in front of us, the air shimmered. Through the wavering air, I could see the rooftops of Corona del Mar. The Gate framework was out of view. I felt as though I was about to walk the plank. Commercial Gates usually have a garden on the other side of the transmission surface. “Walk toward the fountain,” the girl says. The fountain you reach is a duplicate at your destination. Most people find the illusion comforting. The Merryweather Gate, designed for corporate use only, lacked frills. No fountains, just air. Acrophobia set in.
“What if it shuts off?” I asked, trying to see over the edge.
“It never has,” answered the Gatekeeper.
The Merryweather Enterprize, I tried to assure myself, in spite of orbiting the Sun near Mars, was closer than the ground. The station was only three steps away. I still felt dizzy.
“Helmets.”
I hoisted my helmet into place. The Gatekeeper locked it onto the suit. When I was ready, he stepped around in front and signaled for me to go first.
“Smith?” I said into the helmet mike. My voice echoed around me. “What is it, buddy boy?”
“Do you have your cigar in there?”
Above the elevator door, the green “Go” light blinked. The Gatekeeper thumped my helmet, nudging me toward the end of the platform. I took a deep breath and walked toward Corona del Mar.
Part 2
VII
“Yep,” answered Smith, stepping through behind me.
What did I expect? Sudden weightlessness? Perhaps. I lumbered forward in Corona del Mar and finished lumbering near the orbit of Mars. I remember reading about Neil Armstrong. One small step. What did he know about it?
“Yep what?” I asked.
“Yep, I got my cee-gar in here.” The shimmering air behind me disappeared. In front of me, Captain Wilkins—every inch the captain; there was no mistaking him—silently mouthed a conversation with the station Gatekeeper. The technician nodded and walked toward me, reaching for my helmet. Captain Wilkins touched an intercom plate. The suitphone popped.
“As soon as we get you out of that suit, I’ll give you the grand tour, Mr. Collins.”
“We” meant the Gatekeeper. Captain Wilkins, probably from seeing too many movies about spacecraft commanders, watched, hands behind his back, legs firmly planted on the deck, his expression, between his distinguished gray sideburns, resolute. With the station in permanent orbit, Captain Wilkins had little to do but look resolute.
Out of the suits, we followed Captain Wilkins. He led us from room to room, doggedly explaining everything in sight, intercoms, plumbing, station policy on food in the rooms. The station, a standard wheel construction a half-mile across, seemed endless. Even the slightly reduced “gravity,” caused by the rotation of the wheel, added little to the speed of the tour.
After the first few rooms, identical to offices and workshops on Earth, I began to fade out. I was still interested, but you can only absorb so much information at once. Try seeing all the Louvre in one day. I followed the drone of Captain Wilkins’ monotonous voice rather than the content. How many times had he given this tou
r to visiting VIP’s? Too many. The spontaneity had long since died from his lecture.
Smith nudged me.
“Wake up, buddy boy. You’re gonna walk into a wall.”
“Bulkhead.” I remembered that much. The walls were bulkheads.
“Looks like a wall to me.”
I grunted something exculpatory. I felt sure we had circled the station twice. Captain Wilkins must have noticed my glazed expression. I noticed his disapproval, both of my inattention and of me, personally. I was half his age. Obviously a man half his age was incapable of commanding a boy with an erector set, much less the Big Gate construction.
“Mr. Collins,” said Captain Wilkins, halting the tour, “if you find this too much of a burden, we can postpone—”
“Let’s get the damn thing over with, Willis.”
“Wilkins.”
“Sorry.”
Watching us, Smith grinned. He had detected the hostility between Captain Wilkins and me. The tour proceeded.
Only in the control room did I feel something of what I expected, awe and excitement. I revived quickly. Three walls of equipment, computer displays, oscilloscopes, assorted screens and winking readouts, gave way to a fourth wall, transparent and stunning. I walked toward it, mounting the low observation platform. I stopped when the equipment disappeared from my peripheral vision. Stars, constant pinpricks of light on a black field, stared at me. I felt none of the acrophobia I had in Corona del Mar. Looking at a forty-foot drop can make you queasy. Looking at millions of miles of “drop” is meaningless.
On a clear winter night you might feel what I felt, a sense of perspective, a sense of direct confrontation with man’s insignificance.
“Sure is a hell of a lot of it,” said Smith, next to me.
“What?”
“Space.”
I nodded. A hell of a lot of it and more.
To our left, the Big Gate focusing ring came into view, a nearly completed “O” of solid tantalum. It floated, catching the sunlight from behind us, its apparent diameter no more than a quarter of an inch. From time to time, light reflected from specks near the incomplete section of the “O.” I pointed at the ring.
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