20 Million Miles to Earth

by Henry Slesar

  “You are indeed your mother’s daughter,” Dr. Leonardo said tenderly. “Always having pity for even the meanest of God’s creatures. I must confess—even I could not call this a ‘poor little thing.’ There is something of Hell about the beast ...”

  He put his thin arm about her shoulder, and they returned, confused and fearful, to the trailer.

  While Bob Calder, alone with the dead body of Doctor Sharman in the Rome Hospital room, stared dully at the wall and relived the chain of events that had caused all this to be the strange sequence that was responsible.

  CHAPTER IV The Things That Went Before

  THERE were eagles on Robert Calder’s shoulders.

  He was young for the rank, but he was in a young man’s business. He had started as a child to yearn for the freedom of the air, the upper sky, and then space. But he had been luckier than General McIntosh, his commanding officer. His dreams had become realities. From box kites to model aircraft, from home-made gliders to circus stunting in the Flying School of Kansas, from the P-40’s of World War II to the Thunderjets of Korea, Calder had known the sky first-hand.

  Then he started having bigger dreams—dreams as big as the blue bowl that covered the night sky. A vision of winking stars and mysterious alien worlds, of a flying mission greater and more daring than Man had ever attempted before. He had had few hopes to see that dream come true in his lifetime, until the sudden arrival of orders from the headquarters of the Global Air Force. It was then he learned that other men shared the dream, and were willing to work for its reality.

  He never forgot his first interview, when he learned the requirements of a crewman on the first spaceship. His interviewer was a gentle-faced, balding man with nervous hands. His name had been Dr. Judson Uhl.

  “How much do you weigh, Major?”

  “Hundred and seventy-five pounds.”

  “Think you need all that weight? You’re what, five-eleven, six?”

  “Six-one, sir.”

  “Drawback right there,” Dr. Uhl said casually. “Our ideal spaceman would be a midget about so high and forty pounds in weight.”

  “Sorry, sir. I’m not a midget.”

  “Yes, so I see. But you can understand our point. Every less ounce of payload will help greatly to get this ship of ours off the Earth. And how old are you, Major?”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Too bad. We’d prefer it if you were eighteen. But then, you probably wouldn’t have the know-how or education we require. It’s all a matter of balancing out the various factors, you see.”

  “So far, I feel like a total loss.”

  Dr. Uhl smiled. “That can’t be decided until after a series of tests are made. Physical, mental, and psychological. We’re going to find out your reaction to weighing nothing, or weighing five hundred pounds. We’re going to test your orientation to loneliness, to no-gravity, to a lot of other things.”

  “Sounds rugged.”

  “It will be, Major. You’ll have to want this thing awfully bad in order to go through with the examinations. But let’s face it, Major Calder. Standards on paper are one thing. Human judgment is another. But let’s say you come through with flying colors. Let’s say you make the grade. Do you know the consequence of passing our tests?”

  “Sure I do.” He stiffened. “Space.”

  “Yes, space. Sounds good, sounds grandiose. But you may find it full of a lot of dirty, unpleasant problems. While you’re waiting around for your examinations to begin, think them over. The little things, Major. The problems of food and drink in a weightless ship. The possibility of sterility caused by cosmic radiation out in the void. The problem of excessive carbon dioxide in the air you breathe; your own breath poisoning you. Think of the problems of personal hygiene, of living and breathing in a space suit. Think about waste elimination. All a lot of grimy, dirty problems, Major. Think about them. We have.”

  “You trying to scare me off, Dr. Uhl?”

  “Not in the least. I’m trying to give you a portrait of the future, Major Calder. Believe me, you won’t have enough time in the next few weeks to think these things over. So start now. If anything really troubles you, come to me and we’ll talk things over. Maybe I’ll ease your mind—or maybe I won’t.”

  He grinned, and unfolded his arms.

  “By the way, what’s your aim in this project of ours? What job do you want to fill?”

  “Only one,” Calder said. “Pilot.”

  “That’s a tall order. We plan to have only one pilot, Major. Each crew member will be taught the rudiments of flying the ship, in case of emergency. But we still plan only one official pilot. And he’ll be commander of the expedition as well.”

  “I know that.”

  “And that’s your only aim. You’ve got a lot of competition.”

  “Yes, sir. But that’s the job I want.”

  Dr. Uhl turned his back. “That’s all, Major.”

  He was still smiling when Calder was out of the room. He knew his man.

  Calder’s life had changed drastically that day. He was subjected to a series of grueling examinations that made DCS training seem like an ROTC picnic. He almost flunked them, too, during a psychological tryout that caught him unprepared, and revealed a significant flaw in his makeup.

  The inquisitor had been a sour-faced Colonel with red-tape mentality written all over him. From the moment the interview began, Calder was on edge.

  The Colonel said: “Flyboy, huh?”

  “Pardon, sir?”

  “I said flyboy, glamour pants, plane jockey. You heard me, Major.”

  Calder said nothing, but his lean face began to redden.

  “Bet you think you’re a privileged character, don’t you? Think that Air Force patch gives you special rights. You’re too good for us earth-bound joes, aren’t you, Major?”

  “I don’t see what you mean, sir.”

  “You know damn well what I mean. I met your type before, Major. Cocky young punks. Make Captain at twenty-one, Major at twenty-four. Got the world by the short hairs. Now you’re angling for a real cozy assignment. Real movie-star stuff. Spaceships. Buck Rogers—”

  Calder was flushing so hard that he looked ready to explode. He let out a gust of air and said: “Are you kidding? I didn’t ask for this assignment—”

  “That mean you don’t want it?”

  “Sure I want it! Think I’d let ’em push me around this way if I didn’t? Did you ever sit in that centrifuge gadget of theirs. Colonel? That’s no picnic—sir.”

  “Why do you want it? So you can sell your story to the movies? Big hero stuff?”

  “No!”

  The Colonel just sneered.

  “All right, maybe I do!” Calder shouted. “I don’t know myself! But what the hell’s the difference? We’ve all got reasons for everything we want.”

  “You realize how slim your chances are? Of surviving such a trip?”

  “Sure. But I know how to handle myself. If this thing can fly, I can fly it.”

  “Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you? And maybe a bit immature?”

  Calder stood up, and the chair he was sitting on scraped back so hard that it thudded against the wall.

  “Listen, sir,” he said hotly. “If you want to talk, talk. If you want to poke around in my private life, and ask me if I like girls, and stuff like that—ask. But if you want me to fly that crate of yours —sir—”

  “That’s enough!” the Colonel snapped. “Stand at attention, Major!”

  Calder was shaking with rage, but stiffened at the command.

  When he walked out of the room, his face was glum.

  Later that day, he received orders to report to General McIntosh’s quarters. He went down the corridor slowly, trying to delay the inevitable bad news.

  The General’s salute was absent-minded, his eyes fixed on Calder’s face.

  “Received a note about you, Major. Not a good report. Seems you have a hot temper.”

  “Yes, sir.”

>   “A hot temper has its place, Major. In combat, maybe. But for the mission we have in mind—” He sighed, and got up to walk to the window of the office. The night sky was clear, and the stars sharp and brilliant.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Calder said. “I realize now that I was being deliberately baited. But I didn’t like his slurs about the Air Force—”

  The General turned to him, amused. “You trying to butter me up, Major?”

  “No, sir,” Calder flushed. “It’s just that—well, I love flying, sir.”

  The General nodded. “So do I, Calder. So do I. But I’ve never been anything more than a glorified passenger. You’ve been lucky. You can be even luckier, if you really wanted to be.”

  “I do, sir.”

  “This ship we plan to launch will require seventeen crewmen and one pilot. One pilot, Calder. That man is very important to us. He must be as perfect a man as we can find.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He must be able to keep his head at all times. He will be performing an unprecedented feat. He will meet conditions no man has met before. A perfect man, Calder.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Major said unhappily.

  Then the General was grinning.

  “But I doubt if there is such an animal on Earth, Major Calder. Flawless. Emotion-proof. Humans aren’t as perfect as the stars.”

  Calder’s heart thudded, but still he said nothing.

  “The final decision on the man awaits the recommendation of three men. Dr. Uhl, the civilian scientist in charge, is one of them. Another is Dr. Sharman, our medical officer. Both have already made up their minds, so the outcome rests with the third man. Myself.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The General walked towards him, and put his hand on Calder’s shoulder.

  “Fly it for me,” he said softly. “Fly it for me, Major.”

  Two months later, before the sun had risen over the hills of the Nevada space station, the XY-21 was poised and ready.

  Thunder began to roll over the mountains, thunder man-made and rich with promise of the things to come.

  The huge spaceship shuddered, and its rocket fire spilled over the ground beneath it. Slowly, it raised itself from the giant grip of the earth, and slowly it climbed upwards with gathering speed. Then, as if flinging off the shackles of gravity, the vessel ripped into the clouds overhead, tearing at the heavens with its sharp-pointed nose. At last, only the faint glow of its exhaust could be seen by the spectators below.

  Inside the ship, Robert Calder, now with a Colonel’s insignia sewn to his ballooning gray space-clothing, lay flat in the chair that was to be his home for many weeks ahead.

  The sixteen members of the ship’s crew were similarly prisoners of the iron force of the ship’s acceleration. The force crushed their bodies, squeezed their hearts and lungs, flattened the contours of their faces. Brennschluss was reached in two interminable minutes, and then the acceleration began again, with a new supply of atomic fuel blazing in the rocket’s underbelly.

  Some came out of the acceleration coma without difficulty ; others took many hours before they could accept the new horror of the journey: weightlessness.

  Their minds hazy, their fingers not behaving as their training demanded, with movements awkward and slow, their behavior irrational, their tempers short... weightlessness was the true horror. But even these were finally conquered, conquered by months of pre-conditioning in the Earth laboratories below.

  But despite all the preparation, there were problems. Even the ingenious devices created by Dr. Uhl and the others couldn’t recreate the identical conditions of spaceflight to the nth degree. The true answers to man’s reaction would be found only in space. And Colonel Calder found them.

  First there was Jensen, the hard-muscled blond boy with the incredible head for calculus and the unblinking eyes of a cobra. He had been the quietest of all the candidates for the XY-21, and his quietness had caused concern among the psychologists. But they had given him the decision, reasoning that his lack of gregariousness was well compensated by his sober, intelligent outlook on life, his physical stamina and his keen mathematical brilliance.

  But Jensen went wrong in space.

  At first, he reacted to the zero gravity of the ship by a surprisingly gay attitude. Of all the crew, it was Jensen who grinned widest when pencils floated and poured coffee remained in a pulsating ball of liquid in the cabin. He had laughed, and talked of the free-fall sensation as if it were a great joke. Later, Colonel Calder cursed himself for not realizing that Jensen had laughed too much.

  On the fourth day of the trip, Calder woke to find Dr. Sharman’s hand on his shoulder.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s Jensen. Monkeyshines. Or maybe something else—”

  Calder clamped his magnetic shoes on the floor beside his bunk, and looked in the direction of Sharman’s troubled eyes. He saw Jensen floating near the top of the ship’s “ceiling,” pushing his way along the roof with his fingers, giggling foolishly.

  “He took off his magna-shoes,” Sharman told the commander. “Acting like it’s a great game. Only there’s more to it than that, Bob. Jensen; he’s no schoolkid you know—”

  “Jensen!” the Colonel barked. “Grab on to a ladder and get down. That’s an order.”

  Jensen only chuckled. “Come on up, Colonel. Enjoy yourself.”

  “I said it’s an order, Jensen—”

  “Hey, Colonel, you’re upside down. You’re the one that’s topsy-turvy, Colonel, not me. It’s all a matter of viewpoint. How about that, Colonel?” He laughed in his throat, and the laugh went on a long time.

  “Haffner,” Calder said to the first engineer. “Go up and pull him down. Dr. Sharman, you get a sedative ready.”

  Jensen fought off the engineer’s approach. It took three men to get him under control, and four to hold him down while the chief scientist applied the point of a hypodermic to his arm. They rubbed his flesh, trying to get the sedative to circulate in the weightless atmosphere. Finally, Jensen relaxed, and fell into a labored, delirious sleep.

  When he awoke, Jensen was his silent self again. Colonel Calder was never to tell Jensen’s family that the blond man had never spoken again. When he died on Venus, he went silent to the grave in that distant planet.

  There were other personal mishaps before the XV-21 made landfall on the cloud-shrouded planet that was their destination.

  Bailey, the youngest member of the crew, whose cheerfulness had inspired them all during the dreary weeks of the trip, was stricken by a strange fever for which they had no palliative. He had been one of the first to die when the poisonous vapours of Venus infiltrated their breathing apparatus. Key Kyoto, the young Chinese physicist, had gone berserk just before the landing, and had to be restrained forcibly. Mason and Cardell, who had begun an abiding friendship during the days of examination on Earth, suddenly began quarreling bitterly over trifles, and refused to speak to each other again. Even Mason’s death on Venus didn’t soften Cardell’s heart; he continued to curse him on the return flight, and died in the Mediterranean Sea without forgiveness for his friend.

  But despite all, the day came when the planet Venus hovered in the viewscope—and for a moment, harmony had been restored on the ship.

  The landing had gone far more smoothly than had been anticipated. The heavy clouds that blanketed the planet were considered to be the major hazard of the entire flight. Using infra-red sighting equipment, they had scouted the globe for a safe surface area, and the descent had been made with unexpected ease. For a moment, it almost seemed as if the yellow clouds of Venus had parted, like the Red Sea of Moses, to permit their entry on the silent, sandy world. The event had an almost mystical quality, and Colonel Calder found himself uttering a prayer of thankfulness when the rocket’s fire carved out a landing surface beneath them, and the ship came to rest.

  Excitement crackled in the atmosphere of the vessel as they prepared for debarkation. Suddenly, everyone was helpful and h
appy; even the tight-lipped Jensen had an added gleam in his eyes as he strapped on the breathing apparatus that had been provided for them. Mason and Cardell forgot their feud for the minutes before the hatch opened on Venus. Key Kyoto seemed calm once more, and Bailey’s fever not so debilitating.

  Dr. Sharman repeated the brief orientation speech that had been heard a dozen times since the voyage began.

  Then Colonel Calder turned the wheel that opened the hatch.

  They came out in single file, with Calder having the duty, the honor, and the danger of stepping forth first on the spongy, sandy terrain of the planet. He described his impression later as: “A yellow-reddish. mist all around us, like a fire burning on a foggy night. No stars visible. Mist everywhere; mist around your ankles so that you couldn’t see your feet. It was cold and damp, too; even through the spacesuit you could feel the cold clinging to your skin. The ground seemed to be of sand, yet it felt wet and mossy, spongy somehow. You were never really sure of your footing, and yet you never lost your balance.”

  The first words spoken on the planet were those of Shuster, the chief geologist of the expedition. He flicked his radio switch and said:

  “Dis mus’ be de place.”

  It was good to hear the responsive laughter of the men, despite his nervous overtones.

  Calder said: “Looks like our big problem might be darkness. When we bivouac around the ship, we’ll have to break out the electric torches first thing. Then if it doesn’t brighten up, I think we’ll have to erect some kind of lighting system around the ship, so we can find it at all times. Dr. Sharman—”

  “Yes, Colonel?”

  “Would you take charge of setting that up?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Okay. We won’t do any exploring right now. Every man knows his duties; let’s get the right supplies unloaded. Keep everything close to the ship, and don’t anybody decide to wander off. Any man found more than twenty yards from the XY gets a summary court-martial.”

  There was a great deal to do in the next eight hours. The crew members set about their jobs with little waste motion and much enthusiasm. Dr. Sharman and two others set up the portable generator and a string, of powerful floodlights outside tire ship, and their cheerful glow helped dispell some of the gloom that surrounded them.