Spaceships at best -- I mean the regular spaceships -- can't afford extra people on board. The crew is always at a minimum. That means that in emergencies everyone must be able to do someone else's job. As well as being a radio officer I had been fourth pilot. I had taken up and landed ships -- big ships, ships they trusted me not to smash. But always I had an experienced pilot at my side, ready to take over. Always I'd had painstaking, quadruple-checked calculations on which I could and did trust the ship and my life and everybody else's life. Always, most important of all, I'd had plenty of fuel in reserve, so that if I was at all doubtful I could blast clear and try again.
In those circumstances I wasn't a bad pilot. I had been passed without hesitation -- indeed, with the utmost confidence -- as a lifeship pilot, and the question of further training and practice hadn't arisen. After all, seven hundred thousand pilots had to be found. If any had to be trained specially for the job, it certainly wasn't the few men who had actually flown a regular ship, ever.
But I knew that Mart Browne or Colin Mitchell, say, two of the pilots I'd worked with, would merely glance at the controls of the lifeship and at Mars and know exactly what they could do and what they couldn't. By feel they could put the ship in an orbit, with the fuel I had, if that seemed the best thing to do. And either of them, I felt, could have a healthy stab at the job of setting the ship down -- again, on the fuel I had.
Some lifeships would be lucky that way. They would have trained, experienced pilots, and men like that, given half a chance, would do the almost impossible. Others, perhaps, would be lucky in having in charge someone who didn't know the difficulties, someone who would come through without having any idea of the various disasters he'd just missed.
I had the little learning that was a dangerous thing. I knew what could be done, and I didn't know which of those things I could do and which I couldn't.
The effect of Mars's gravity wasn't really being felt yet. When it was, the ship would swing into position to blast against it.
"I don't see any ships coming out to help us," said Sammy, as we looked at the world that was to be our home or our grave.
"Write that off, Sammy," I said. "Take us as being the average ship. The average lifeship won't get any help -- only the lucky ones."
"I thought we were supposed to be one of the lucky ones, said Sammy, with a grin. Sammy was like that -- if others were optimistic, he was gloomy; if others were gloomy, he was cheerful.
"So we are lucky. Here we are, heading straight for Mars, taken all the way by three minutes' blast from Earth. That's luck. Nobody could count on it. But on the other hand, it's not by any means fantastic or incredible, considering that's precisely what they were planning for every lifeship, back on Earth, for months. I mean, if you aim for a clay pipe at a fairground and ring a gold watch, that's blind luck. But if you aim carefully for the gold watch, and get it, that's -- "
"I get your point. So we're not going to get any help?"
"Doesn't look like it. And it doesn't look at all likely that we're going to orbit, either. The course was too good. If we were going to miss Mars we might be captured by it -- but we're not."
"That leaves us to try for orbit or landing. Which is it going to be?"
"Landing," I said promptly.
Sammy raised his eyebrows. "Isn't the other the better chance?"
"Yes. But if we fail to orbit, we lose the chance to try to land soft. If we try to land . . . well, we certainly land. Depends how hard, that's all."
I had thought there would be all sorts of last-minute things to do, things to clear up. But I found myself suddenly, without warning, talking to everyone in the lounge and telling them the trip was over bar the question of success or failure.
"I never told you why I slammed on the acceleration when we were coming unstuck," I said, and there was sudden attention that I hadn't quite had until then. When I began to speak, they probably thought it was just Bill talking to them, not Lieutenant Easson. "I saw we weren't going to have enough fuel, and I tried to save some. You knew when Jim went to that other ship that he was looking for fuel, but I didn't say then that under no circumstances could the fuel I had land us safely on Mars."
"We guessed that, son," said Harry. "Bad news travels fast. I think we all knew. But thanks all the same. It was a nice thought."
I looked around at them. Yes, nobody seemed surprised. Betty was clutching Morgan tightly, as though, if they were close enough together, nothing could harm them. Leslie was playing with Bessie, and though I knew she was listening intently to what was going on, she showed no sign of it. Stowe nodded slowly, and clasped Caroline's hand. Jim couldn't help looking rather disappointed that everyone knew what he had been carefully guarding as a secret.
"Well, that saves a lot of trouble," I said briskly. "All right, get strapped up now and into your couches and be patient. I'm going to wait until I think the time's right, and then blast with all we've got in the way that gives us the best chance."
I looked at them intently. "It'll be cruel," I warned them. "Far worse than when we left Earth. You'll feel the floor's trying to push its way right through you. Don't think you have to bear it silently. Scream all you like -- it'll help."
"How many Gs will it be, Lieutenant Bill?" asked Jim, interested.
"I don't know, Jim. I'll tell you this -- it'll be more than the human frame is supposed to be able to stand. But that's something that's been put up time and again. Let's see if we can put it up once more. People who traveled at twelve miles an hour didn't have their heads blown off, remember."
"Will the linings stand it?" Jim asked.
I made a face at him. "Think about that after we land, Jim," I told him. "Just at the moment, please keep that and any other interesting questions to yourself."
"How long have we got?" asked Sammy.
"Plenty of time, I suppose, but better start strapping each other up now. There may not be as much time as I think."
Imprex was developed primarily for this job. It's a binding tape that sticks only to itself, easily torn off when there's no strain, and stronger and stronger as the strain is put on it. It's elastic and equalizes the strain against it throughout its length. For support against acceleration or deceleration, it's better than anything else.
I waited in the control room while Leslie helped the others, then came back to strap her up myself. That was the only time on the trip that Leslie got special consideration from me. I wanted to be sure that she was as well prepared to stand the deceleration as she could be.
She wanted to be with me in the control room, but we couldn't shift her couch in there. I taped her very carefully, probing delicately at the imprex and taking it off again if it was a fraction too tight or too loose.
"None of the others are done as carefully as this," Leslie whispered. "Shouldn't I . . . ?"
"It won't make all that difference," I said. "But while I've got a certain responsibility to you all, I feel I have a special responsibility for my wife."
Now I couldn't see Mars any more. It was beneath our jets as the ship dropped. I was letting it drop.
Mars had an air pressure of between six and seven pounds -- quite enough for life on a world that called for little effort. Since there wasn't any air until much nearer the surface, my altimeter was useless. I didn't know, couldn't know, exactly where we were in relation to Mars. My calculations were based on a constant speed, and checked by Phobos and Deimos, which I could see.
I had known all along that it was liable to be like this -- blasting for a short time, too little, too late. There had been dramatic last-minute rescue. None of us had been able to construct a superdrive out of the sole of a shoe and a couple of hairpins. We didn't, unfortunately, carry an amateur Einstein who was able to work out on the back of an envelope a way of landing safely without using any fuel at all.
Far from all this, what it came to in the end was that I sat with my hand poised over the firing button, waiting till it felt right to close it.
/> I've known men who trusted their lives to their instinct for the right moment. They did it because they had found it paid off. I only did it because I had to.
Now, I thought, and closed the switch. There was no sound. There was nothing outside for the blast to thunder against.
But I didn't miss sound in the welter of tortured vision, crushing gravity, drumming in my brain, and shooting pains. It was much worse than I had expected, worse than I had been able to imagine. My teeth ached, there was a fire in my belly, someone seemed to be tearing my skin off with pincers. There were sensations that I couldn't explain afterward.
It was a thousand tortures all at once. I remembered reading that some worlds were so dense that a steel bar would flow like liquid. I felt like the steel bar. I felt as if I was on the point of collapsing into the constituent elements of my body, but something was stubbornly holding me together to suffer more.
I never thought of the others below suffering the same thing. There comes a point when nothing exists but one's own pain -- it shuts out the rest of the universe.
I clung at first to the idea that this couldn't last long. Soon, however, I had to give that up. To the creature I had been before I started the blast, a few seconds were a mere breath of existence. But now every instant was an eternity of agony.
I was actually praying for the last dregs of fuel to be used up and the deceleration to stop. Instead of wishing we had more fuel I wished we had less and that the ordeal would be over.
I watched the dials every millimeter of the way. I split their remaining traverse into imaginary divisions, so that I could tell myself: Now there's only a quarter to go. An eighth. A sixteenth. A thirty-second . . .
I prepared myself for the awful moment of helplessness I'd been anticipating the whole trip -- the moment when the drive stopped and the ship went on and I couldn't do a thing about it. I was both dreading it and waiting impatiently for it. When the needles touched the mark my impatience for the ordeal to be over had almost won, and I tried to draw in a breath of thankfulness.
But it didn't come, for though the instruments said the fuel was finished -- the blast went on.
I looked around the dials again, thinking that under the strain I had miscalculated. There wasn't a simple 30-20-10-0 type of gauge -- you had to balance two or three things to calculate the actual quantity of fuel left. I was still right. There was no fuel left.
And the drive still went on.
So there was a safety margin. After all, there might be enough. In one blinding instant I experienced every emotion I had ever experienced in my life. There was wild hope that we were going to be safe after all. There was fury that we had been tricked, that all my calculations had been ruined by this revelation that there had been something in reserve. There was an apathetic desire that we would crash and die and it would all be over. There was misery, self-pity, regret, disgust, fear.
Everything that was in me was being squeezed out. I was an organ on which every stop was out, every note sounding together in shattering cacophony. I realized that if I lived through this any horror that ever happened to me subsequently would be a pale ghost beside it -- but that thought was swept away by the passionate conviction that no one, nothing, could live through this. I was dead, we were all dead, squirming in our last agony like a crushed insect.
And then, unexpectedly, came a blessed release. The torture went on, but it suddenly seemed unimportant. I could think again. I could wonder whether the extra fuel was a mere accident, the result of faulty equipment on the lifeship, or if it was a deliberately concealed reserve which every lifeship had, a safety margin to turn the impossible into the just barely possible. I could think of Leslie and hope fervently that what had happened to Mary Stowe hadn't happened to her. I could marvel that our rocket linings had stood the strain. I could think gleefully of what I might, after all, be able to say to Sammy about whether we had been lucky or not.
And just as I realized that the thousand-to-one chance had swelled and swelled until it threatened to explode, we crashed. I had time to appreciate no more than the fact that we were down, when I bounced out of the couch as if I'd fallen on it from a great height, and smashed the dials in front of me with my face.
When I became conscious again, two things registered at once, jamming each other. There was gravity; and I couldn't see. For a second or two they fought with each other, then a feeling of peace and relief flowed over me.
Even before I knew I wasn't blind, I realized that I'd much rather be alive and blind than not alive at all. So it was with real pleasure that I found that even through closed eyelids and bandages I could see light. It must be bright. This was Mars, lit by the new, brighter sun.
I moved, and though I was sore all over it was quite a pleasant soreness -- like rest after long, back-breaking labor. My arms, my legs, my head, everything moved. I was in bed, and the sheets were cool.
"Leslie," I said. I don't know how I knew she was there, but I did. I drew my arms clear of the sheets, ignoring the stiffness, reached out -- and Leslie was in them.
"Bill," she whispered. I sensed her bending over me, and her lips brushed mine lightly. I felt her anxiously. She had an arm in a sling, but as far as her knees I couldn't feel anything else wrong.
"No, I'm all right," she said. "So are you, except for perhaps a scar or two that'll make you look distinguished."
For long seconds we just held each other. But then I had to ask:
"How many of us are safe?"
She laughed breathlessly. "All," she said. "Every one. Sammy, Harry, Bessie, Morgan, Betty, the Stowes. And you and me. The lifeship didn't come through too well, but . . ."
"The other ships?" I demanded. "How many of them are getting through?"
"Hundreds," she said lightly. "They're dropping all over Mars. Most of them are dropping too hard, though. Don't think of that now, Bill. We don't know the picture yet. We don't know how many lifeships are going to land safely, but you were right enough -- it can only be one out of quite a lot."
She laughed again, and I felt her lay her cheek against my bandaged face.
"Still, with you piloting the ship, how could we help but be the one?"
One Too Many
1
"You and I ought to be friends, Bill," said Alec Ritchie, in his usual good-humored tone, "because the two best-looking girls in what's left of the human race come and visit us."
I grinned involuntarily. "Is that a good reason?" I asked. "Anyway, I didn't know I was being unfriendly."
"You weren't," Ritchie said cheerfully, "but you don't like me and you make only halfhearted attempts to hide it."
I didn't answer that, because it was perfectly true. Ritchie was one of those fortyish, stocky, even-tempered men who laugh a lot with their faces but never with their eyes, and whom hardly anyone ever does like very much. Lieutenant Porter was dead, killed in the lifeship crash that had broken Ritchie's leg, but he probably hadn't liked Ritchie either. Why he had chosen Ritchie and brought him to Mars was all too obvious. Ritchie's daughter Aileen was almost certainly one of the two most beautiful girls on Mars, just as he said.
Whether Leslie was the other I couldn't say. I was biased. Besides, I hadn't seen all the others. Neither had Ritchie, but he was evidently prepared to guess. I imagined he would al- ways be ready to guess, particularly if there was any percentage in it. Coming to Mars would have made no difference to that.
Earth by this time was dead, boiled sterile. Ritchie and I were two of the few thousand lucky people who had not only got a place on one of the lifeships but had also landed safely on Mars. Fairly safely, anyway.
And Mars?
Take one small, moribund planet, cold, dry, brittle, dark, and cheerless. Turn on spit for two months, one complete turn every twenty-four and a half hours. Serve piping hot to fourteen thousand hungry and uncritical guests just in from space.
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