I continued my flowing climb toward the Surface. From time to time, I paused to perform the Morpt exercises. The volume of gas I released from my swim-bladder was amazing. I remember thinking, in somewhat the ironic manner of Morpt himself, that if ever Shadi possessed so vast an immortal part, the central bubble must be greater than Honda itself! The creatures inside the Object now watched their instruments incredulously.
‘We are up to nine thousand feet,’ said the man dazedly. ‘We dropped to eighteen thousand, the greatest depth in this part of the world.’
The thought ‘world’ approximates the Shadi conception of ‘universe’, but there are puzzling differences.
‘We’ve risen half of it again,’ the man added.
‘Do you think that the ballast dropped off and we will float to the Surface?’ asked the woman anxiously.
The thought of ballast’ was of things fastened to the Object to make it descend, and that if they were detached, the Object
would rise. This would seem to be nonsense, because all substances descend, except gas. However, I report only what I sensed.
‘But we’re not floating,’ said the man. ‘If we were, we’d rise steadily. As it is, we go up a thousand feet or so and then we’re practically shaken to death. Then we go up another thousand feet. We’re not floating. We’re being carried. But only the fates know by what or why.’
This, I point out, is rationality. They knew that their rise was unreasonable. My curiosity increased. I should explain how the creatures knew of their position. They have no spatial sense or any sense of pressure. For the latter they used instruments -artifacts - which told of their ascent. The remarkable thing is that they inspected those instruments by means of a light which they did not make themselves. The light was also made by an artifact. And this artificial light was strong enough to be reflected, not only perceptibly, but distinctly, so that the instruments were seen by reflection only.
I fear that Kanth, whose discovery that light is capable of reflection made his scientific reputation, will deny that any light could be powerful enough to make unlighted objects appear to have light, but I must go even further. As I learned to share not only consciously formed thoughts but sense-im-pressions of the creatures in the Object, I learned that to them, light has different qualities. Some lights have qualities which to them are different from other lights.
The light we know they speak of as ‘bluish’. They know additional words which they term ‘red’ and ‘white’ and ‘yellow’ and other terms. As we perceive difference in the solidity of rocks and ooze, they perceive differences in objects by the light they reflect. Thus, they have a sense which we Shadi have not. I am aware that Shadi are the highest possible type of organism, but this observation - if not insanity - is important matter for meditation.
But I continued to flow steadily upward, pausing only to perform the necessary Morpt exercises to release gas from my swim-bladder when its expansion threatened to become uncontrollable. As I went higher and ever higher, the man and woman were filled with emotions of a quite extraordinary nature. These emotions were unbearably poignant to them, and it is to be doubted that any Shadi has ever sensed such sensations before. Certainly the emotion they call ‘love’ is inconceivable to Shadi, except by reception from such a creature. It led to peculiar vagaries. For example, the woman put her twin tentacles about the man and clung to him with no effort to rend or tear.
The idea of two creatures of the same species pleasurably anticipating being together without devouring each other -except during the Peace Tides, of course - is almost inconceivable to a Shadi. However, it appeared to be part of their normal psychology.
But this report grows long. I flowed upward and upward. The creatures in the Object experienced emotions which were stronger and ever stronger, and more and more remarkable. Successively the man reported to the woman that they were but four thousand of their ‘feet’ below the Surface, then two thousand, and then one. I was now completely possessed by curiosity. I had barely performed what turned out to be the last needed Morpt exercise and was moving still higher when my spatial sense suddenly gave me a new and incredible message. Above me, there was a barrier to its operation.
I cannot convey the feeling of finding a barrier to one’s spatial sense. I was aware of my surroundings in every direction, but at a certain point above me there was suddenly - nothing! Nothing! At first it was alarming. I flowed up half my length, and the barrier grew nearer. Cautiously - even timorously - I flowed slowly nearer and nearer.
‘Five hundred feet,’ said the man inside the Object. ‘My heavens, only five hundred feet! We should see glimmers of light through the ports. No, it’s night now.’
I paused, debating. I was close enough to this barrier to reach up my first tentacle and touch it. I hesitated a long time. Then I did touch it. Nothing happened. I thrust my tentacle boldly through it. It went into Nothingness. Where it was there was no water. With an enormous emotion, I realized that above me was the central bubble and that I alone of living Shadi had reached and dared to touch it. The sensation in my tentacle within the bubble, above the Surface, was that of an enormous weight, as if the gas of departed Shadi would have thrust me back. But they did not attack, they did not even attempt to injure me.
Yes, I was splendidly proud. I felt like one who has overcome and consumed a Shadi of greater size than himself. And as I exulted, I became aware of the emotions of the creatures within the Object.
‘Three hundred feet!’ said the man frantically. ‘It can’t stop here! It can’t! My dear, fate could not be so cruel!’
I found pleasure in the emotions of the two creatures. They felt a new emotion, now, which was as strange as any of my other experiences with them. It was an emotion which was the anticipation of other emotions. The woman named it.
‘It is insane,’ she told the man, ‘but somehow I feel hope again.’
And in my pleasure and intellectual interest it seemed a very small thing for one who had already dared so greatly to continue the pleasures I felt. I flowed further up the slope. The barrier to my spatial sense - the Surface - came closer and ever closer.
SA hundred feet,’ said the man in an emotion which to him was agony, but because of its novelty was a source of intellectual pleasure to me.
I transferred the Object to a forward tentacle and thrust it ahead. It bumped upon the solidity which here approached and actually penetrated the Surface. The man experienced a passion of the strong emotion called ‘hope’.
sTwenty-five feet!’ he cried. ‘Darling, if we start to go down again, I’ll open the hatch, and we’ll go out as the bathysphere floods. I don’t know whether we’re near shore or not, but we’ll try.’
The woman was pressed close against him. The agony of hope which filled her was a sensation which mingled with the high elation I felt over my own daring and achievement. I thrust the Object forward yet again. Here the Surface was so near the solidity under it that a part of my tentacle went above the Surface. And the emotions within the Object reached a climax. I thrust on, powerfully, against the weight within the Bubble, until the Object broke the surface, and then on and on until it was no longer in water but in gas, resting upon solidity which was itself touched only by gas.
The man and woman worked frantically within the Object. A part of it detached itself. They climbed out of it. They opened their maws and uttered cries. They wrapped their tentacles about each other and touched their maws together, not to devour but to express their emotions. They looked about them dazed with relief, and I saw through their eyes. The Surface stretched away for as far as their senses reported, moving and uneven, and yet flat. They stood upon solidity from which things projected upward. Overhead was a vast blackness, penetrated by innumerable small bright sources of light.
‘Thank God!’ said the man. ‘To see trees and the stars again.’
They felt absolutely secure and at peace, as if in a Peace Tides enhanced a thousand fold. And perhaps I was intoxicated
by my own daring or perhaps by the emotions I received from them. I thrust my tentacles through the Surface. Their weight was enormous, but my strength is great also.
Daringly I heaved up my body. I thrust my entire forepart through the Surface and into the central bubble. I was in the central bubble while still alive! My weight increased beyond computation, but for a long, proud interval I loomed above the Surface I saw with my own eyes - all eighty of them - the Surface beneath me and the patch of solidity on which the man and the woman stood. I, Sard, did this!
As I dipped below the Surface again I received the astounded thoughts of the creatures.
‘A sea-serpent,’ thought the man, and doubted his own sanity as I fear mine will be doubted. ‘That’s what did it.’
‘Why not, darling?’ the woman said calmly. ‘It was a miracle, but people who love each other as we do simply couldn’t be allowed to die.’
But the man stared at the Surface where I had vanished. I had caught his troubled thought.-‘No one would believe it. They’d say we’re insane. But confound it, here’s the bathysphere, and our cable did break when we were above the Deep. When we’re found, we’ll simply say we don’t know what happened and let them try to figure it out.’ I lay resting, close to the Surface, thinking many things. After a long time there was light. Fierce, unbearable light. It grew stronger and yet stronger. It was unbearable. It flowed down into the nearer depths.
That was many tides ago, because I dared not return to Honda with so vast a proportion of the gas in my swim-bladder released to the central bubble. I remained not too far below the Surface until my swim-bladder felt normal. I descended again and again waited until my ‘immortal part’ had replenished itself. It is difficult to feed upon such small creatures as inhabit the Heights. It took a long time for me to make the descent which by Morpt’s discovery had been made so readily as an ascent. All my waking time was spent in the capture of food, and I had litde time for meditation. I was never once full-fed in all the periods I paused to wait for my swim-bladder to be replenished. But when I returned to my cave, it had been occupied in my absence by another Shadi. I fed well.
Then came the Peace Tides. And now, having bred, I lay my report of my journey to the Surface at the service of all the Shadi. If I am decreed insane, I shall say no more. But this is my report. Now determine, O Shadi: Am I mad?
is patent nonsense. The psychology of such creatures as described by Sard is of the stuff of dreams.
Therefore, it is the consensus that Sard’s report is not science. He may not be insane, however. The physiological effects Of his admitted journey to great Heights have probably caused disorders in his body which have shown themselves in illusions. The scientific lessons to be learned from this report is that journeys to the Heights, though possible because of the exercises invented by myself, are extremely unwise and should never be made by Shadi. Given during the Peace Tides…,
PIPELINE TO PLUTO
Mood. Asimov makes the point that because of the particular disciplines of SF a good science-fiction writer can produce competent work in any field. Leinster was one of the rare exceptions that made the transition the other way. One of the advantages of this was that he was able to bring to his stories a sense of atmosphere that should be - but often is not - inseparable from most SF. Certainly the following item is a very chilly story in every respect.
Far, far out on Pluto, where the sun is only a very bright star and a frozen, airless globe circles in emptiness; far out on Pluto, there was motion. The perpetual faint starlight was abrupdy broken. Yellow lights shone suddenly in a circle, and men in spacesuits waddled to a space tug - absurdly marked Betsy-Anne in huge white letters. They climbed up its side and went in the airlock. Presently a faint, jetting glow appeared below its drivetubes. It flared suddenly and the tug lifted, to hover expertly a brief distance above what seemed an unmarred field of frozen atmosphere. But that field heaved and broke. The nose of a Pipeline carrier appeared in the center of a cruciform opening. It thrust through. It stood half its length above the surface of the dead and lifeless planet. The tug drifted above it. Its grapnel dropped down, jetted minute flames, and engaged in the monster towring at the carrier’s bow.
The tug’s drivetubes flared luridly. The carrier heaved abruptly up out of its hidingplace and plunged for the heavens behind the tug. It had a huge classmark and number painted on its side, which was barely visible as it whisked out of sight. It
‘So why aren’t we rich ?’ Nebula Award Stories 8, Victor Gollancz, 1973-went on up at four gravities acceleration, while the spacetug lined out on the most precise of courses and drove fiercely for emptiness.
A long, long time later, when Pluto was barely a pallid disk behind, the tug cast off. The carrier went on, sunward. Its ringed nose pointed unwaveringly to the sun toward which it would drift for years. It was one of a long, long line of carriers drifting through space, a day apart in time but millions of miles apart in distance. They would go on until a tug from Earth came out and grappled them and towed them in to their actual home planet.
But the Betsy-Arme, of Pluto, did not pause for contemplation of the two-billion-mile-long line of orecarriers taking the metal of pluto back to Earth. It darted off from the line its late tow now followed. Its radio-locator beam flickered invisibly in emptiness. Presendy its course changed. It turned about. It braked violently, going up to six gravities deceleration for as long as half a minute at a time. Presently it came to rest and there floated toward it an object from Earth, a carrier with great white numerals on its sides. It had been hauled off Earth and flung into an orbit which would fetch it out to Pluto. The Betsy-Arme’s grapnel floated toward it and jetted tiny sparks until the towring was engaged. Then the tug and its new tow from Earth started back to Pluto.
There were two long lines of white-numbered carriers floating sedately through space. One line drifted tranquilly in to Earth. One drifted no less tranquilly out past the orbits of six planets to reach the closed-in, underground colony of the mines on Pluto.
Together they made up the Pipeline.
The evening Moon-rocket took off over to the north and went straight up to the zenith. Its blue-white rocket-flare changed color as it fell behind, until the tail-end was a deep, rich crimson. The Pipeline docks were silent, now, but opposite the yard the row of flimsy eating-and drinking-places rattled and thuttered to themselves from the lower-than-sound vibrations of the Moon-ship.
There was a youngish, battered man named Hill in the Pluto Bar, opposite the docks. He paid no attention to the Moon-rocket, but he looked up sharply as a man came out of the Pipeline gate and came across the street toward the bar. But Hill was staring at his drink when the door opened and the man from the dock looked the small dive over. Besides Hill - who looked definitely tough, and as if he had but recently recovered from a ravaging illness - there was only the bartender, a catawheel-truck driver and his girl having a drink together, and another man at a table by himself and fidgeting nervously as if he were waiting for someone. Hill’s eyes flickered again to the man in the door. He looked suspicious. But then he looked back at his glass.
The other man came in and went to the bar.
‘Evenin’, Mr. Crowder,’ said the bartender.
Hill’s eyes darted up, and down again. The bartender reached below the bar, filled a glass, and slid it across the mahogany.
‘Evenin’,’ said Crowder curtly. He looked deliberately at the fidgety man. He seemed to note that the fidgety man was alone. He gave no sign of recognition, but his features pinched a litde, as some men’s do when they feel a little, crawling unease. But there was nothing WTong except that the fidgety man seemed to be upset because he was waiting for someone who hadn’t come.
Crowder sat down in a booth, alone. Hill waited a moment, looked sharply about him, and then stood up. He crossed purposefully to the booth in which Crowder sat.
‘I’m lookin’ for a fella named Crowder,’ he said huskily. That’s you, ain’t it?’
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Crowder looked at him, his face instantly masklike. Hill’s looks matched his voice. There was a scar under one eye. He had a cauliflower ear. He looked battered, and hard-boiled -and as if he had just recovered from some serious injury or illness. His skin was reddened in odd patches.
‘My name is Crowder,’ said Crowder suspiciously. ‘What is it?’
Hill sat down opposite him.
‘My name’s Hill,’ he said in the same husky voicc. ‘There was a guy who was gonna come here tonight. He’d fixed it up to be stowed away on a Pipeline carrier to Pluto. I bought ’im off. I bought his chance. I came here to take his place.’
‘1 don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Crowder coldly.
But he did. Hill could see that he did. His stomach-muscles knotted. He was uneasy. Hill’s gaze grew scornful.
‘You’re the night super of th’ Pipeline yards, ain’t you?’ he demanded truculently.
Crowder’s face stayed masklike. Hill looked tough. He looked like the sort of yegg who’d get into trouble with the police because he’d never think things out ahead. He knew it, and he didn’t care. Because he had gotten in trouble - often -because he didn’t think things out ahead. But he wasn’t that way tonight. He’d planned tonight in detail.
‘Sure I’m the night superintendent of the Pipeline yards,’ said Crowder shordy. ‘I came over for a drink. I’m going back. But I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Hill’s eyes grew hard.
‘Listen, fella,’ he said truculently - but he had been really ill, and the signs of it were plain - ‘they’re payin’ five hundred credits a day in the mines out on Pluto, ain’t they? A guy works a year out there, he comes back rich, don’t he?’
Murray Leinster Page 9