by Anthology
Frank felt the intense anguish of trying to decide somebody else's quandary that might be a life or death matter which would surely involve them all. Damn, weak-kneed kid! How had he ever gotten so far?
"We should have set up his bubb first, put him inside, and spun it to kill that sense of fall!" Gimp said. "We'll do it, now! He should be all right. He did pass his space-fitness tests, and the experts ought to know."
With the three of them at it, and with the Kuzaks joining them in a moment, the job was quickly finished.
Meanwhile, the sharp, commanding voice of Ground Control sounded in their phones, again: "GOs-11 and -12 returning to port. Is all in order among delivered passengers? Sound out if true. Baines, George?..."
David Lester's name was called just before Frank Nelsen's, and he managed to say, "In order!" almost firmly, creating a damnable illusion, Frank thought. But for a moment, mixed with his anger, Frank felt a strange, almost paternal gentleness, too.
At the end of the roll call, the doors of the GO rockets closed. Stubby wings, useful for the ticklish operation of skip-glide deceleration and re-entry into the atmosphere, slid out of their sheaths. Little, lateral jets turned the vehicles around. Their main engines flamed lightly; losing speed, they dipped in their paths, beginning to fall.
Watching the rockets leave created a tingling sense of being left all alone, at an empty, breathless height from which you could never get down--a height full of dazzling, unnatural sunshine, that in moments would become the dreadful darkness of Earth's shadow.
"Hey--our spare drum--it'll drift off!" Ramos shouted.
The Kuzaks dived to retrieve the cylinder. Others followed. But there was a peculiar circumstance. The friction cover at one of its ends hung open. There was a trailing wisp of stellene--part of the bubb packed inside--and a thin, angry face with rather hysterical eyes, within the helmet of an Archer Five.
"Shhh--it ain't safe for me to come out yet," Glen Tiflin hissed threateningly. "Damn you all--if you dare queer me...!"
"Cripes--another Jonah!" Charlie Reynolds growled.
Frank Nelsen looked at the Kuzaks, floating near.
"Well--what could we do?" Joe Kuzak, the gentler twin, whispered. "He came back to Jarviston, to our rooming house, one night. We promised to help him a little. What are you going to do with a character nuts enough about space to armor up and stuff himself inside a blastoff drum? Of course he didn't come that way from home. There's that electronic check of drum contents at the gate of the port. But he was there on a visitor's pass, waiting--having hitchhiked all the way to here. After the electronic check, he figured on stowing away, while the drums were waiting to be loaded. The only thing we did to help was to take a little of the stuff out of the spare drum and stow it in our two drums, to leave him some room. We thought sure he'd be caught, quick. But you can see how he got away with it. Those U.S.S.F. boys at the port don't really give a damn who gets Out Here."
"Okay--I'll buy it," Reynolds sighed heavily. "Good luck with the stunt, Tif."
Tiflin only gave him a poisonous glare, as the nine fragile, gleaming rings, the drifting men and the spare drum, orbited on into the Earth's shadow, not nearly as dark as it might have been because the Moon was brilliant.
"We'd better rig the parabolic mirrors of the ionics to catch the first sunshine in about forty minutes, so we can start moving out of orbit," Ramos said. "We'll have to think of food, sometime, too."
"Food, yet--ugh!" Art Kuzak grunted.
Frank felt the fingers of spasm taking hold of his stomach. Most everybody was getting fall-sick, now, their insides not finding any up or down direction. But the guys wavered back to their bubbs. The shoulder ionics of their Archers, though normally sun-energized, could draw power from the small nuclear batteries of the armor during the rare moments when there could be darkness anywhere in solar space.
The Planet Strappers stood in the rigging of their fragile vehicles, setting the full-sized ionics to produce increased acceleration which would gradually push the craft beyond orbit. Joe Kuzak ran a steel wire from a pivot bolt at the hub of his ring, to tow Tiflin and his drum.
Then everybody crawled into their respective bubbs, most of them needing the centrifugal gravity to help straighten out their fall-sickness.
"My neck is swelling, too," Frank Nelsen heard Charlie Reynolds say. "Lymphatic glands sometimes bog down in the absence of weight. Don't worry if it happens to some of you. We know that it straightens out."
For a few minutes it seemed that they had a small respite in their struggle for adjustment to a fantastic environment.
"Well--I got cleaned up, some--that's better," Two-and-Two said. "But look at the fuzzy lights down on Earth. Hell, is it right for a fella to be looking down on the lights of Paris, Moscow, Cairo, and Rangoon--when he hasn't ever been any farther than Minneapolis?" Two-and-Two sounded fabulously befuddled.
David Lester started screaming again. They had left him alone and apparently unconscious, inside his ring, because all ionics, including his, had had to be set. Then, in the pressure of events, they had almost forgotten him.
"I'll go look," Frank Nelsen said.
Mitch Storey was there ahead of him. Mitch's helmet was off; his dark face was all planes and hollows in the moonlight coming through the thin, transparent walls of the vehicle. "Should we call the U.S.S.F. patrol, Frank?" he asked anxiously. "Have them take him off? 'Cause he sure can't stand another devil-killer."
"We'd better," Frank answered quickly.
But now Tiflin, having deserted his blastoff drum, was coming through the airlock flaps, too. He stepped forward gingerly, along the spinning, ring-shaped tunnel.
"Poor bookworm," he growled in a tone curiously soft for Glen Tiflin. "Think I don't understand how it is? And how do you know if he wants to get sent back?"
Mitch had removed Lester's helmet, too. Tiflin knelt. His arm moved with savage quickness. There was the crack of knuckles, in a rubberized steel-fabric space glove, against Lester's jaw. His hysterical eyes glazed and closed; his face relaxed.
For a second of intolerable fury, Frank wanted to tear Tiflin apart.
But Mitch half-grinned. "That might be an answer," he said.
They plopped where they were, and tried to rest until the orbiting cluster of rings emerged from Earth's shadow into blazing sunshine, again. Then Mitch and Frank returned to their own bubbs to check on the acceleration.
It was soon plain that Joe Kuzak's bubb, towing Tiflin's drum, would lag.
"Hell!" Art Kuzak snapped. "Get that character out here to help us inflate and rig his own equipment! We did enough for him! So if the Force notices that there are ten bubbs instead of nine, the extra is still just our spare... Hey--Tiflin!"
"Nuts--I'm looking after Pantywaist," Tiflin growled back.
"Awright," Art returned. "So we just cast your junk adrift! Come on, boy!" There was no kidding in the dry tone.
Tiflin snarled but obeyed.
Ions jetting from the Earthward hub-ends of the rotating rings, yielded their steady few pounds of thrust. The gradual outward spiral began.
"Cripes--I'm not sure I can even astrogate to the Moon," Two-and-Two was heard to complain.
"I'll check your ionic setting for you, Two-and-Two," Gimp answered him. "After that the acceleration should continue properly without much attention. So how about you and me taking first watch, while the others ease off a little...?"
Frank Nelsen crept carefully back into his own rotating ring, still half afraid that an armored knee or elbow might go right through the thin, yielding stellene. Prone, and with his helmet still sealed, he slipped into the fog which the tranquilizer now induced in his brain, while the universe of stars, Moon, sun and Earth tumbled regularly around him.
He dreamed of yelling in endless fall, and of climbing over metal-veined chunks of a broken world, where once there had been air, sea, desert and forest, and minds not unlike those of men, but in bodies that were far different. Gurgling thickly, he
awoke, and snapped on his helmet phone to kill the utter silence.
Someone muttered a prayer in a foreign tongue:
"... Nuestra Dama de Guadalupe--te pido, por favor... Tengo miedo--I'm scared... Pero pienso mas en ella--I think more of her. Mi chula, mi linda... My beautiful Eileen... Keep her--"
The prayer broke off, as if a switch was turned. It had been brash Ramos... Now there were only some fragments of harmonica music...
Frank slipped into the blur, again, awakening at last with Two-and-Two shaking his shoulder. "Hey, Frankie--we're five hours out, by the chronometers--look how small the Earth has got...! We're all gonna have brunch in Ramos' vehicle... Know what that goof ball Mex was doing, before? Stripped down to his shorts, and with the spin stopped for zero-G, he was bouncing back and forth from wall to wall inside his bubb! The sun makes it nice and warm in there. Think I might try it, myself, sometime. Shucks, I feel pretty good, now... Frankie, ain't you hungry?"
Frank felt limp as a rag, but he felt much better than before, and he could stand some nourishment. "Lead on, Two-and-Two," he said.
Ramos' bubb was spinning once more, but he was wearing just dungarees. The Bunch--the Planet Strappers--with only their helmets off, were crouched, evenly spaced, around the circular interior of the ring. Dave Lester was there, too--staring, but fairly calm, now. In this curious place, there was a delicious and improbable aroma of coffee--cooked by mirror-reflected sunlight on a tiny solar stove.
"So that's the way it goes," Charlie Reynolds commented profoundly. "We reach out for strangeness. Then we try to make it as familiar as home."
"Stew, warmed in the cans, too," Ramos declared. "Enough for a light one-time-around. I brought the stew along. Hope you birds remember. Then we're back on dehydrates. Hell, except for that weight problem and consequent cost of stuff from Earth, we'd have it made, Out Here. The Big Vacuum ain't so tough--no storms in it, even, to tear our bubbs apart. I guess we won't ever have a bigger adventure than finding out for ourselves that we can get along with space."
"If we had a beef roast, we'd put it in a sealed container of clear plastic," Gimp laughed. "Set it turning, outside the bubb, on a swiveled tether wire. It would rotate for hours like on a spit--almost no friction. Rig some mirrors to concentrate the sun's heat. Space Force men do things like that."
"Shut up--I'm getting hong-gry!" Art Kuzak roared.
Ramos poured the coffee in the thin magnesium cups that each of the Bunch had brought. Their squeeze bottles, for zero-G drinking, were not necessary, here. Their skimpy portions of stew were spooned on magnesium plates. Knife and fork combinations were brought out. An apple purée which had been powder, followed the stew. Brunch was soon over.
"That's all for now, folks," Ramos said ruefully.
Tiflin snaked a cigarette out from inside the collar of his Archer.
"Hey!" Reynolds said mildly. "Oxygen, remember? Shouldn't you ask our host, first?"
Ramos had eased up on ribbing Tiflin months ago. "It's okay," he said. "The air-restorers are new."
But Tiflin's explosive nerves, under strain for a long time, didn't take it. He threw down the unlighted fag. He snicked his switch blade from a thigh pocket. For an instant it seemed that he would attack Reynolds. Then the knife flew, and penetrated the thin, taut wall, to its handle. There was a frightening hiss, until the sealing gum between the double layers, cut off the leak.
The Kuzaks had Tiflin helpless and snarling, at once.
"Get a patch, somebody--fix up the hole," Joe, the mild one, growled. "Tiflin--me and my brother helped you. Now we're gonna sit on you--just to make sure your funny business doesn't kill us all. Try anything just once, and we'll feed you all that vacuum--without an Archer. If you're a good boy, maybe you'll live to get dumped on the Moon as we pass by."
"Nuts--let's give this sick rat to the Space Force right now." Art Kuzak hissed. "Here comes their patrol bubb."
The glinting, transparent ring with the barred white star was passing at a distance.
"All is well with you novices?" The enquiring voice was a gruff drawl, mingled with crunching sounds of eating--perhaps a candy bar.
"No!" Tiflin whispered, pleading. "I'll watch myself!"
The United Nations patrol was out, too, farther off. Another, darker bubb, with other markings, passed by, quite close. It had foreign lines, more than a bit sinister to the Bunch's first, startled view. It was a Tovie vehicle, representing the other side of the still--for the most part--passively opposed forces, on Earth, and far beyond. But through the darkened transparency of stellene, the armored figures--again somewhat sinister--only raised their hands in greeting.
In a minute, Frank Nelsen emerged from Ramos' ring. Floating free, he stabilized himself, fussed with the radio antenna of his helmet-phone for a moment, making its transmission and reception directional. On the misty, shrinking Earth, North America was visible.
"Frank Nelsen to Paul Hendricks," he said. "Frank Nelsen to Paul Hendricks..."
Paul was waiting, all right. "Hello, Frankie. Some of the guys talked already--said you were asleep."
"Hi, Paul--yeah! Terra still looks big and beautiful. We're okay. Amazing, isn't it, how just a few watts of power, beamed out in a thin thread, will reach this far, and lots farther? Hey--will you open and shut your front door? Let's hear the old customer's bell jingle... Best to you, to J. John, to Nance Codiss, Miss Parks--everybody..."
The squeak of hinges and the jingling came through, clear and nostalgically.
"Come on, Frank," Two-and-Two urged. "Other guys would like to talk to Paul... Hey, Paul--maybe you could get my folks down to the store to say hello to me on your transmitter. And I guess Les would appreciate it if you got his mother..."
When the talk got private, Frank went to Mitch Storey's bubb.
"I wanted to show you," Mitch said. "I brought seeds, and these little plastic tubes with holes in them, that you can string around inside a bubb. The weight is next to nothing. Put the seeds in the tubes, and water with plant food in solution. The plants come up through the holes. Hydroponics. Gotta almost do it, if I'm going way out to Mars without much supplies. Maybe, before I get there, I'll have even ripe tomatoes! 'Cause, with sun all the time, the stuff grows like fury, they say. I'll have string beans and onions and flowers, anyhow! Helps keep the air oxygen-fresh, too. Wish I had a few bumble bees! 'Cause now I'll have to pollenate by hand..."
Nope--Mitch couldn't get away from vegetation, even in space.
The Planet Strappers soon established a routine for their journey out as far as the Moon. There were watches, to be sure that none of the bubbs veered, while somebody was asleep or inattentive. Always at hand were loaded rifles, because you never knew what kind of space-soured men--who might once have been as tame as neighbors going for a drive on Sundays with their families--might be around, even here.
Neither Kuzak slept, if the other wasn't awake. They were watching Tiflin, whose bubb rode a little ahead of the others. He was ostracized, more or less.
Everybody took to Ramos' kind of exercise, bouncing around inside a bubb--even Lester, who was calmer, now, but obviously strained by the vast novelty and uncertainty ahead.
"I gave you guys a hard time--I'm sorry," he apologized. "But I hope there won't be any more of that. The Bunch will be breaking up, soon, I guess--going here and there. And if I get a job at Serenitatis Base, I think I'll be okay."
Frank Nelsen hoped that he could escape any further part of Lester, but he wasn't sure that he had the guts to desert him.
It wasn't long before the ionics were shut off. Enough velocity had been attained. Soon, the thrust would be needed in reverse, for braking action, near the end of the sixty hour journey into a circumlunar orbit.
Sleep was a fitful, dream-haunted thing. Food was now mostly a kind of gruel, rich in starches, proteins, fats and vitamins--each meal differently flavored, up to the number of ten flavors, in a manufacturer's attempt to mask the sameness. Add water to a powder--heat and ea
t. The spaceman's usual diet, while afield...
One of the functions of the moisture-reclaimers was a rough joke, or a squeamishness. A man's kidneys and bowels functioned, and precious water molecules couldn't be wasted, here in the dehydrated emptiness. But what difference did it really make, after the sanitary distillation of a reclaimer? Accept, adjust...
Decision about employment or activity in the immediate future, was one thing that couldn't be dismissed. And announcements, beamed from the Moon, emphasized it:
"Serenitatis Base, seventeenth month-day, sixteenth hour. (There was a chime) Lunar Projects Placement is here to serve you. Plastics-chemists, hydroponics specialists, machinists, mechanics, metallurgists, miners, helpers--all are urgently needed. The tax-free pay will startle you. Free subsistence and quarters. Here at Serene, at Tycho Station or at a dozen other expanding sites..."
Charlie Reynolds sat with Frank Nelsen while he listened. "The lady has a swell voice," said Charlie. "Otherwise, it sounds good, too. But I'm one that's going farther. To Venus--just being explored. All fresh, and no man-made booby traps, at least. Maybe they'll even figure out a way to make it rotate faster, give it a reasonably short day, and a breathable atmosphere--make a warmer second Earth out of it... Sometimes, when you jump farther, you jump over a lot of trouble. Better than going slow, with the faint-hearts. Their muddling misfortunes begin to stick to you. I'd rather be Mitch, headed for heebie-jeebie Mars, or the Kuzaks, aiming for the crazy Asteroid Belt."
That was Charlie, talking to him--Frank Nelsen--like an older brother. It made a sharp doubt in him, again. But then he grinned.
"Maybe I am a slow starter," he said. "The Moon is near and humble, but some say it's good training--even harsher than space. And I don't want to bypass and miss anything. Oh, hell, Charlie--I'll get farther, soon, too! But I really don't even know what I'll do, yet. Got to wait and see how the cards fall..."
Several hours before the rest of the Bunch curved into a slow orbit a thousand miles above the Moon, Glen Tiflin set the ionic of his bubb for full acceleration, and arced away, outward, perhaps toward the Belt.