The Best of Hal Clement

by Hal Clement

  Both places—sub-Earth and its antipodes—were just where Hoerwitz wanted them to be; they were the spots where an unwarned space-walker would be in the greatest danger.

  However, the ship would be a refuge, if it were still there, and Hoerwitz wanted to get there before any possible guard. He therefore set out at the highest speed he could manage, climbing across the asteroid.

  It was like chimney work in Earthly rock-climbing, simpler in one way because there was no significant weight. The manager was not really good at it, but presumably he was better than the others.

  Earth was overhead and slightly to the west—about as far as it ever got that way, seen from near the airlock. That meant that time was growing short. When the planet started eastward again the asteroid was within a hundred degrees or so of perigee—an arc which it would cover in little over three-quarters of an hour, at this end of its grossly eccentric orbit.

  Travel grew more complicated, and rather more dangerous, as the planet sank behind him. Roche’s limit for a body of this density was at around twelve thousand miles from Earth’s center, and the tidal bulge—invisible, imponderable, a mere mathematical quirk of earth’s potential field—was not only swinging around but growing stronger. With Earth, now spanning more than thirty degrees of sky, on the horizon behind him he was safe, but as it sank he knew he was traveling to meet the bulge, and it was coming to meet him. He had to get to the ship before the field had been working on that area too long.

  The last thousand feet should have been the hardest, with his weight turning definitely negative; physically, it turned out to be the easiest, though the reason shocked him. He discovered, by the simple expedient of running into it, that the thieves had strung a cable between their ship and the airlock.

  With its aid, they would travel much faster than he could. There might be a guard there already. Mac, terrified almost out of his senses, pulled himself along the cable with reckless haste until he reached a point where he could see the base of the ship a few hundred feet away.

  No spacesuits were in sight, but the bottom of the globe was in black shadow. There was no way to be sure—except by waiting. That would eventually make one thing certain. The old man almost hurled himself along the cable toward the ship, expecting every second to be his last, but trying to convince himself that no one was there.

  He was lucky. No one was.

  The ship was already off the “ground” by a foot or so; the tide was rising at this part of the asteroid and weight had turned negative. Hoerwitz crammed himself into the space between the spherical hull and the ground and heaved upward for all he was worth.

  At a guess, his thrust amounted to some fifty pounds. This gave him something over a minute before the vessel was too high for further pushing. In this time it had acquired a speed of perhaps two inches a second relative to the asteroid; but this was still increasing, very slowly, under tidal thrust.

  The hull was of course covered with handholds. Hoerwitz seized two of these and rode upward with the vessel. It was quite true that a man drifting in space was an almost hopeless proposition as far as search-and-rescue was concerned; but a ship was a very different matter. If he and it got far enough away before any of the others arrived, he was safe.

  Altitude increased with agonizing slowness. Earth’s bulk gradually came into view all around the planetoid’s jagged outline. At first, the small body showed almost against the center of the greater one; then, as the ship in its larger, slower orbit began to fall behind, the asteroid appeared to drift toward one side of the blue-and-white-streaked disk. Hoerwitz watched with interest and appreciation—it was a beautiful sight—but didn’t neglect the point where the cable came around the rocks.

  He was perhaps five hundred feet up when a spacesuited figure appeared, pulling itself along with little appearance of haste. It was not yet close enough for the ship’s former site to be above the “horizon.” Mac waited with interest to see what the reaction to the discovery would be.

  It was impressive, even under circumstances which prevented good observation. The thief was surprised enough to lose grip on the cable.

  He was probably traveling above escape velocity, or what would have been escape velocity, even if the tide had been out. As it was, any speed would have been too great. For a moment, Hoerwitz thought the fellow was doomed.

  Maybe it was Robinson, though; at least, he reacted promptly and sensibly. He drew a gun and began firing away from the asteroid. Each shot produced only a tiny velocity change in his drifting body, but those few inches a second were enough. He collided with one of the structures at the base of a radiator, kicked himself off and downward as he hit it, touched the surface, and clutched frantically at some handhold Hoerwitz couldn’t see. Then he began looking around and promptly discovered the ship.

  The manager was quite sure the fellow wouldn’t try a jump. He wished, once again, that his radio receiver was working—the man might be saying something interesting, though he must be out of radio reach of the others. It would be nice to know whether the thief could see Hoerwitz’s clinging figure on the ship’s hull. It was possible, since the lower side of the sphere was illuminated by Earth-light, but far from certain, since the man’s line of sight extended quite close to the sun. He wasn’t shooting. But it was more than likely that his gun was empty anyway.

  It was disappointing in a way, but Hoerwitz was able to make up for himself a story of what the fellow was thinking, and this was probably more fun than the real facts. Eventually the figure worked its way back to the cable and started along it toward the airlock. The old man watched it out of sight. Then feeling almost secure, he resumed his favorite state of relaxation after fastening himself to a couple of holds with the snap-rings on his suit, and relaxed.

  There was nothing more to do. The drifting vessel would be spotted in the next hour or so, if it hadn’t been already, and someone would be along. In a way, it was a disappointing ending.

  He spent some of the time wondering what Shakespeare would have done to avoid the anticlimax. He might have learned, if he had stayed awake, but he slept through the interesting part.

  Smith, upon hearing that the ship was drifting away, had made the best possible time to the radiator site. Knowing that there was no other hope, he jumped; and not being a lightning calculator able to make all the necessary allowances for the local quirks in the potential field, he naturally went slightly off course.

  He used all but one of his bullets in attempted corrections and wound up drifting at a velocity very well matched with that of the ship, but about fifty yards away from it. He could see Hoerwitz plainly.

  Up to that time he had had no intention either of harming the old man fatally or blowing up the station; but the realization that the manager had had a part in the loss of his ship changed his attitude drastically. When the police ship arrived, he was still trying to decide whether to fire his last bullet at Hoerwitz, or in the opposite direction. Hoerwitz himself, of course, was asleep.

  Mistaken For Granted

  I

  People can usually get used to the weightlessness of space flight during the days or weeks it takes to cross from one world to another. In a long orbit it is easy to convince oneself that one’s ship is not about to fall onto anything, even though the sensation of weightlessness is that of endless falling. There simply is nothing visible nearby to hit. Of course, travelers have had nervous breakdowns in spaceships too badly designed to let them see out.

  To a physicist or an experienced space pilot, a bounce ride is just another orbit. Unfortunately most of the orbit is underground, like that of a baseball—though, as with a baseball, the underground part is not what is used. Traveling by bounce from, say, Ley Base in Sommering Crater to Wilsonburg under Taruntius X, the trip takes only thirty-five minutes and is never much more than two hundred miles above the Moon. But during the final third of it anybody can see that most definitely he is falling toward the ground.

  Rick Suspee had gladly shown of
f his adaptation to free-fall during the long trip from Earth. He hoped, however, that no one was watching him now. In his mind he knew that the bounce-shuttle’s computer was keeping track of position and velocity through its radar eyes. That the computer would light the main engines at the proper instant. That a second computer with a separate power source and independent sensors would fire a solid-fuel safety brake if the first engine failed to ignite. That a living, highly competent pilot with his own sighting equipment and firing circuits could take over if both the automatics failed. Rick’s mind knew all that but the lower parts of his nervous system were not convinced. Traveling at thousands of feet a second on a downward slant low over the moon’s surface still made him tense.

  Annoyed and frightened as he was, Rick felt sorry for his stepmother as he glanced back and saw the expression on her face. She was petrified. He decided it would be best to talk, and luckily he had seen enough Moon charts to be able to talk sense.

  “We’re past the peak now, I think. That’s Ariadaeus behind on the left, just into the sunlight. You can relax for a while—we’re still more than two hundred miles up. Look for a white beacon flashing three times a second just to the south of our arc. That will be the Tranquility Base monument. We’re out over the Mare now. Look—on the horizon ahead you can see Crisium and the mountains where Wilsonburg is.”

  The rocket swung slowly around so that its main engines pointed “forward.” The braking blast was about due.

  The mountains southwest of Mare Crisium were looming huge “ahead” and below. The Mare itself stretched beyond the horizon, which was much nearer than it had been a quarter-hour before. The pilot’s calm voice sounded.

  “Thirty seconds to power. Check your safety straps and rest your heads in the pads.” The two passengers obeyed. The pad allowed Rick Suspee to see the stars beyond the rocket’s bow, nothing else.

  The braking stage was made at two Earth gravities, the computer applying changes of one percent or so in power and a fraction of a degree in direction every tenth of a second throughout firing time—none of these adjustments could be sensed by human nerves. The only change at touchdown was from two Earth gravities to one Lunar pull.

  “You may unstrap,” the pilot said, “but stay in your seats until we’re inside the lock. I’ll tell you when there’s air enough for you to exit.”

  Rick watched the mobile rack trundle the rocket toward the side of the sixty-foot circle of smooth rock on which it had settled. The circle was the bottom of a craterlet in one of the hills over Wilsonburg. The bottom had been leveled and the side next to the upward slope of the hill cut to a vertical wall. In this wall was the lock, now yawning open to gulp the shuttle.

  The craft was through the huge outer valve in moments. The black sky and sunlit rock outside were cut off from view as portals slid shut.

  The pilot spoke again. “You can start for the doors now. There’s a pound and a half of oxygen outside and it will be up to three before I get our own valves open. It’s been a pleasure to have you aboard.”

  Rick was on his feet before the speech was over. His stepmother was more careful. She did not exactly mind weighing only twenty-one pounds, but she was not yet used to it and the ceiling was low. She was about to make some remark about inadequate gravity, Rick was sure, when she was distracted by what she saw outside.

  “Rick! Look! There’s Jim! He hasn’t changed a bit. I don’t see Edna, though—”

  Rick picked out the man easily enough from the dozen figures at the foot of the ladder outside. He was the heaviest and obviously the oldest. Rick gave less thought to the whereabouts of his aunt. He was noticing that none of the group were wearing spacesuits. Yes, the air had to be all right outside. This realization was supported by a slight pop in his ears as the shuttle’s air pressure changed slightly. Evidently the pilot had opened both valves of the vehicle’s airlock. Rick headed rapidly for the exit, leaving his stepmother to follow more cautiously.

  The top of the ladder was forty-five feet from the floor of the big lock. Rick accomplished the distance in a single jump—at least, he meant it for a jump. In terms of energy, this was about the same as an eight-foot drop on Earth; in time, it took rather more than four seconds. Which was enough to let Jim Talles step forward and catch him, the catch being embarrassingly necessary because the four seconds were also quite long enough to permit Rick to complete the best part of an unintended somersault. His Moon coordination was not as good as he had supposed—he had left the top step with more spin than he realized. His uncle’s first words were a tactful reproof.

  “Watch it, lad. Carelessness can be dangerous on the Moon. I take it your mother is aboard?”

  “Sure is. I—I guess you’re my Uncle Jim. Uh—hello.” Rick could not decide whether he was more frightened or embarrassed. It had been a weird sensation on the way down, something like that of a diver leaving the board to do a jackknife and deciding too late to turn it into a half-twist. That was bad enough—but still worse, Rick felt, was the fact that the five young persons accompanying his uncle were all about Rick Suspee’s own age. None had laughed or even smiled, but he could imagine what they were thinking. For about the five-hundredth time since his fifteenth birthday he told himself to stop showing off. Then he took a closer look at the five teenagers.

  One, on second glance, appeared almost too old for that category. He was about Rick’s own height—five-and-a-half feet—but stouter, sturdier. His broad shirt-front was covered even more solidly than Rick’s own by competence badges, many of which the Earth boy could not recognize—naturally enough.

  A quick glance showed that all the others were similarly decorated. But Rick saw with relief that none exhibited nearly as much badge area as he did. Maybe they would be impressed enough by his Earth-gained skills to be able to forget, or at least discount, the slip he had just made. For one thing, none of them could possibly hold an underwater rating. Rick’s scuba badge had been earned so recently that he was still gloating over it.

  “Jim! It’s so wonderful to meet you at last!” His stepmother’s voice pulled Rick from his thoughts. She stood at the top of the ladder, Jim Talles posting himself at the foot to cover possible accidents. An unnecessary precaution. Mrs. Suspee’s methods of showing off were more subtle than her son’s. She descended slowly and carefully, reaching the bottom quite safely. She embraced her brother-in-law with an enthusiasm Rick suspected was due to her relief that the bounce ride was over. Then she asked about Edna’s health and whereabouts, delivered messages from her husband and sundry friends, and finally allowed Talles to shepherd the party out of the lock chamber and make introductions.

  “Edna couldn’t get off the job,” Jim Talles said. “But she’ll be home by the time we get there. The kids here with me will be hosting Rick a lot”—Rick gulped; these would be just the ones he’d played the fool for—“and will probably show him a good deal more than I could. This is Aichi Yen, chairman by earned competence of the group known officially as the Fresh Footprints. Usually they call themselves by less formal names.” Talles indicated the oldest member, whose badges Rick had already particularly noticed. His face, to Rick, seemed rather nondescript. His hair, cut short in the common Moon style so as to give no trouble inside a space helmet, was jet black. His eyes gave just a suggestion of the ancestry implied by his name although the color of his skin suggested suntan much more than Earth’s Orient.

  “This is Marie D’Nombu.” A girl certainly not yet sixteen nodded in greeting. She was several inches shorter than Rick and Aichi but her shirt was well covered with badges. Her lips were parted in a good-humored smile, and Rick wished he were sure she was not laughing at him. “Orm Hoffman—Peter Willett—Audie Rice.” A tall, unbelievably thin boy of Rick’s own age, a fourteen-year-old with a shy expression and skin almost as dark as Marie’s, and a girl about twenty pounds more massive than Marie acknowledged their names in turn. All were looking more at Rick’s shirt than at his face.

  “Rick will com
e with me for now,” Talles told the young people. “It was good of you to trouble to meet him here. I’ll be glad to see all of you at my place around ten P.M. and as long after as anyone can stay awake. I know you’re busily scheduled now—so thanks again for coming.”

  Aichi Yen shook hands with Talles and, as an afterthought, with Rick, then nodded to Mrs. Suspee and disappeared into a nearby tunnel mouth. Three of the others did the same. Marie altered the pattern by speaking.

  “I’m glad to meet you, Rick. I’ve been looking forward to it ever since Chief Jim told us you were coming. I’ve read a lot about Earth. I’ve tried to imagine what it’s like to be able to go outdoors with no special preparation unless it’s raining or something like that. I hope you’ll tell us about wind and rainbows and glaciers and such—”

  “I can try. I’ve never seen a glacier, though.”

  “Well, that makes us even. I’ve never seen a radical trap.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ll tell you tonight if the Chief hasn’t beaten me to it. I’m supposed to be in class now. ’Bye.” She was gone on the track of the others.

  “Those seem interesting youngsters,” Mrs. Suspee remarked as the girl disappeared. “I’m not sure I approve of that flaunting of badges, though. It seems like showing off. I was hoping we’d be away from that sort of thing on the Moon. We get enough of it at home.”

  “If the badges are properly earned, why not display ’em?” responded her brother-in-law. “There are a lot worse things than letting the world know what you can do well.”

  “Well, Jim, I won’t argue. And you’ll notice I didn’t forbid Rick to wear his badges here, even if I did hope they’d turn out to be out of style.” She gazed off to her left. “I think those must be our bags over there. Do we take a cab, or do you live close by?”