Noon: 22nd Century tnu-1

by Boris Strugatsky

  The instructor said, “Panin and Kondratev, into the gondolas.”

  “Sir—” began Sergei.

  The instructor’s face took on a preoccupied look. “Oh, I forgot. I’m very sorry, Sergei, but the doctor has forbidden you to try accelerations above the norm. Temporarily.”

  “What?” Sergei asked with fright.

  “You’re forbidden.”

  “But I’ve already pulled seven Gs.”

  “I’m very sorry, Sergei,” the instructor repeated.

  “It’s some sort of mistake. It’s got to be.”

  The instructor shrugged.

  “I can’t have this,” Sergei said in despair. “I’ll get out of shape.” He looked at Panin. Panin was looking at the floor. Sergei once again faced the instructor. “It’s the end of everything for me.”

  “It’s only temporary,” said the instructor.

  “How long is temporary?”

  “Until further notice. Maybe two months, no longer. It happens sometimes. In the meantime you’ll be training at five Gs. You’ll catch up later.”

  “Never mind, Sergei,” Panin said in his bass. “Take a little rest from your multigravities.”

  “I would still like to ask—” Sergei began in a repulsively ingratiating voice that he had never used before in his life.

  The instructor frowned. “We’re wasting time, Kondratev,” he said. “Get into the gondola.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sergei said softly, and crawled into the gondola.

  He seated himself in the couch, fastened himself in with the broad straps, and began to wait. In front of the couch was a mirror, and in it he saw his gloomy, angry face. It would be better if they did carry me out, he thought. Now my muscles will get soft and I’ll have to start all over Now when will I ever get to ten Gs? Or even eight? They all think I’m some sort of jock, he thought venemously. The doctor too. Maybe I should tell him? He imagined that he was telling the doctor why he had to have all this and that the doctor looked at him with cheery, faded eyes and said, “Moderation, Sergei, moderation.”

  “Overcautious old bird,” Sergei said aloud. He meant the doctor, but suddenly he realized that the instructor might hear him over the speaking tube and take it personally. “Well, all right,” he said loudly.

  The gondola rocked smoothly. The conditioning session had begun.

  When they had left the training hall, Panin quickly started massaging the bags under his eyes. Like all the cadets inclined to stoutness, he always got bags under his eyes after the Large Centrifuge. Panin worried a good deal about his appearance. He was handsome and was used to being admired. Consequently, right after the Large Centrifuge he immediately set to work on the bags.

  “You never get this crud,” he said to Sergei.

  Sergei remained silent.

  “You have a very efficient physique, superjock. Like a roach.”

  “I wish I had your problems,” Sergei said.

  “They told you it’s only temporary, worrywart.”

  “That’s what they told Galtsev, and then they switched him over to Remote Control.”

  “Oh, well,” Panin said judiciously, “so this wasn’t the job he was cut out for.”

  Sergei clenched his teeth.

  “Oh, agony!” said Panin. “They won’t let him pull eight Gs. Now take me, I’m a simple man, a guileless man…”

  Sergei stopped. “You listen,” he said. “Bykov brought the Takhmasib back from Jupiter only by going to twelve gravities. Maybe you didn’t know that?”

  “I know it,” said Panin.

  “And Yusupov died because he couldn’t take eight. You know that too?”

  “Yusupov was a test navigator,” Panin said, “so he doesn’t count here. And Bykov, I’ll have you know, did not have one hour of acceleration conditioning in his entire life.”

  “Are you sure?” Sergei asked angrily.

  “Well, maybe he did have conditioning, but he didn’t go try and rupture himself like you, superjock.”

  “Do you really think I’m a jock?” Sergei asked.

  Panin looked at him in puzzlement. “Well, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it. It’s a very useful thing out there, of course.”

  “Okay,” said Sergei. “Let’s go over to the park. We have a chance to loosen up.”

  They started down the corridor. Panin, still massaging the bags under his eyes, glanced through every window.

  “The girls are still playing,” he said. He stopped at a window and stuck out his neck. “Ha! There she is!”

  “Who?” asked Sergei.

  “I don’t know her name.”

  “Impossible.”

  “No, really—I danced with her day before yesterday. But I have no idea what her name is.”

  Sergei looked out the window too.

  “That one,” said Panin. “With the bandaged knee.”

  Sergei caught sight of the girl with the bandaged knee. “I see her,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “Very nice-looking,” said Panin. “Very. And smart.”

  “Come on, come on,” said Sergei. He took Panin by the elbow and dragged him along.

  “Where’s the fire?” Panin asked in surprise.

  They walked past empty classrooms and glanced into the simulator room. The simulator room was fitted out like the navigation deck of a real interplanetary photon ship, except that on the control board was mounted the big white cube of the stochastic computer in the place of the video screen. The computer was the source of navigation problems. When turned on, it randomly supplied input for the board’s indicators. The cadet then had to set up a system of course commands optimally responding to the conditions of the problem.

  Right now, a whole gaggle of obvious smallfry was crowded in front of the control board. They shouted to one another, waved back and forth, and shoved each other. Then suddenly it became quiet, and the clicking of the keys on the board could be heard. Someone was entering a command. The agonizing silence was broken by the buzz of the computer, and on the board a red light went on—an incorrect solution. The smallfry let out a roar. They dragged somebody out of the control seat and shoved him away. The disheveled unfortunate shouted loudly, “I told you so!”

  “Why are you so sweaty?” Panin asked him with disdain.

  “Because I’m so mad,” said the smallfry.

  The computer buzzed again, and again the red light on the control board went on.

  “I told you so!” the same smallfry yelled.

  “Now then,” Panin said, and shouldered his way through the crowd.

  All the smallfry quieted down. Sergei saw Panin bend over the board, then the keys clattered quickly and surely, the computer began to hum, and a green light appeared on the board. The smallfry groaned.

  “Well, so that’s Panin,” someone said.

  “That’s Panin for you,” the sweaty smallfry said to Sergei reproachfully.

  “Smooth plasma,” said Panin, extracting himself from the crowd. “Carry on. Let’s go, Sergei.”

  Then they glanced into the computer room. People were studying there, but beside the graceful gray casing of LIANTO squatted three technicians, rummaging through circuit diagrams. The sad second-year cadet, Grigory Bystrov, was there as well.

  “From LIANTO, love and kisses,” Panin said. “It seems that Bystrov is still alive. Curious.”

  He looked at Sergei and slapped him on the back. A respectable echo rang down the corridor. “Buck up,” Panin said.

  “Cut it out,” said Sergei.

  They descended the staircase, passed through the lobby with the big bronze bust of Tsiolkovsky, and went out into the park.

  By the entrance a second-year man was watering the flowers with a hose. As he passed him, Panin declaimed, with exaggerated gestures, “Kopylov fills my life with blisses / So from LIANTO, love and kisses.” The second-year man smiled with embarrassment and glanced at a window on the second floor.

  They walked along a narrow lane planted
with bird-cherry bushes. Panin was about to begin a loud song, but a group of girls in shorts and T-shirts came out from around a bend, walking towards them. The girls were coming back from the volleyball court. In front, with the ball under her arm, walked Katya. That’s just what I needed, thought Sergei. Now she’ll stare at me out of those round eyes. And she’ll start the thousand-words-with-a-glance routine. He even stopped for a second. He had a fierce desire to jump through the bird-cherry bushes and crawl away somewhere. He glanced sidelong at Panin.

  Panin smiled pleasantly, straightened his shoulders, and said in a velvet voice, “Hello, girls!”

  The Remote Control Division vouchsafed him closed-mouthed smiles. Katya had eyes only for Sergei.

  Oh, lord, he thought, and said, “Hi, Katya.”

  “Hi, Sergei,” said Katya. She lowered her head and walked on.

  Panin stopped.

  “Well, what’s your problem?” Sergei asked.

  “It’s her,” said Panin.

  Sergei looked back. Katya was standing there, arranging her tousled hair and looking at him. Her right knee was wrapped in a dusty bandage. They looked at each other for several seconds—Katya’s eyes opened wide. Sergei bit his lip, turned, and went on without waiting for Panin. Panin caught up with him.

  “Such beautiful eyes,” he said.

  “Sheep’s eyes,” said Sergei.

  “Sheep yourself,” Panin snapped. “She’s a very, very beautiful girl. Hold it,” he said. “How come she knows you?”

  Sergei didn’t answer, and Panin kept silent.

  In the center of the park was a broad meadow with thick soft grass. Here the cadets usually crammed before theory exams and rested after acceleration conditioning, and here couples met on summer nights. At present the place was occupied by the fifth-year men of the Navigation Division. Most of them were under a white awning, where a game of four-dimensional chess was in progress. This highly intellectual game, in which the board and pieces had four spatial dimensions and existed only in the imaginations of the players, had been introduced to the school several years before by Zhilin, the same Zhilin who was now engineer on the trans-Martian voyager Takhmasik. The senior classmen were quite fond of the game, but by no means could everyone play it. On the other hand, anyone who felt like it could kibitz. The shouts of the kibitzers filled the entire park.

  “Should’ve moved the pawn to E-one-delta-H.”

  “Then you lose the fourth knight!”

  “So? The pawns move into the bishops’ volume—”

  “What bishops’ volume? Where do you get bishops’ volume? You’ve got the ninth move down wrong!”

  “Listen, guys, take old Sasha away and tie him to a tree. And leave him there.”

  Someone, probably one of the players, yelled excitedly, “Shut up! I can’t think!”

  “Let’s go watch,” said Panin. He was a great fan of four-dimensional chess.

  “I don’t want to,” said Sergei. He stepped over Gurgenidze, who was lying on Malyshev and twisting his arm up toward his neck. Malyshev was still struggling, but it was clear who had won. Sergei walked a few paces away from them and collapsed on the grass, stretching out full length. It was a little painful to stretch muscles after acceleration, but it was very helpful, and Sergei did a neck bridge, then a handstand, then another neck bridge, and finally lay down on his back and gazed at the sky. Panin sat down beside him and listened to the shouts of the kibitzers while he chewed on a stem of grass.

  Maybe I should go see Kan? Sergei thought. Go to him and say, “Comrade Kan, what do you think about interstellar travel?” No—not like that. “Comrade Kan, I want to conquer the universe.” Damn—what nonsense! Sergei turned over on his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows.

  Gurgenidze and Malyshev had quit fighting, and they sat down near Panin. Malyshev caught his breath and asked, “What was on the SV yesterday?”

  “Blue Fields,” Panin said. “Relayed from Argentina.”

  “So how was it?” asked Gurgenidze.

  “They should’ve kept it,” said Panin.

  “Oh,” said Malyshev. “Is that where he keeps dropping the refrigerator?”

  “The vacuum cleaner,” Panin corrected.

  “Then I’ve seen it,” said Malyshev. “Why didn’t you like it? It’s not a bad film. The music is good, and it has a good odor scale. Remember, when they’re by the sea?”

  “Maybe,” said Panin. “Only the olfactor on my set’s broken. It reeks of smoked fish all the time. It was really something when they went into the florist shop and smelled the roses.”

  Gurgenidze laughed. “Why don’t you fix it?”

  Malyshev said thoughtfully, “It would be something if they could figure out a way to broadcast tactile sensations in movies. Imagine—somebody is kissing somebody on the screen, and you feel like you’re getting slapped in the face…”

  “I can imagine,” said Panin. “That’s already happened to me. Without any movie.”

  And then I’d pick my crew, Sergei thought. Even now I could pick good guys for this. Mamedov, Petrov, Zavialov from Engineering. Briushkov from the third year can pull twelve gravities. He didn’t even need conditioning—he has some special sort of middle ear. But of course he’s a smallfry and doesn’t understand anything yet. Sergei remembered how, when Panin had asked him what the point of it was, Briushkov had puffed up self-importantly and said, “You try it, like me.” A smallfry, and too little to eat at that—a minnow smallfry. Yes, anyway, all of them are jocks, the smallfry and the final-year men. Maybe Valentin Petrov…

  Sergei turned over on his back again. Valentin Petrov. Transactions of the Academy of Nonclassical Mechanics, Volume Seven. Valentin Petrov eats and sleeps with that book. And of course other people read it too. They’re always reading it! There are three copies in the library, all of them thumbed to pieces, and most of the time they’re all checked out. So I’m not alone? Does that mean other people too are interested in “The Behavior of Pi-Quanta in Accelerators” and that they’re drawing conclusions too? I should take Petrov aside, Sergei thought, and have a talk with him.

  “Well, what are you staring at me for?” said Panin. “Guys, how come he’s staring at me? I’m terrified.”

  Sergei only now realized that he was up on all fours, and looking straight into Panin’s face.

  “Ah, the foreshortening!” said Gurgenidze. “I could use you as a model for ‘Reverie’.”

  Sergei got up and looked around the meadow. Petrov wasn’t in sight. He lay back down and pressed his cheek against the grass.

  “Sergei,” called Malyshev, “what’s your analysis of all this?”

  “Of all what?” Sergei asked into the grass.

  “The nationalization of United Rocket Construction.” He gave the name in English.

  “‘Approve Mr. Hopkins’ present action. Expect more same spirit. Stop, Kondratev,’” said Sergei. “Send the telegram collect, payment through the Soviet State Bank.”

  United Rocket has good engineers. We have good engineers too. And this is the time for all of them to get together and build ramscoops. It’s all up to the engineers now—we’ll do our part. We’re ready. Sergei imagined squadrons of gigantic starships at the launch, and then in deep space, at the edge of the light barrier, accelerating at ten or twelve gravities, devouring diffuse matter, tons of interstellar dust and gas. Enormous accelerations, powerful artificial-gravity fields.

  …The special theory of relativity was no longer any good—it would end up standing on its head. Decades would pass on the starship, and only months on Earth. And so what if there was no theory—instead there were pi-quanta at superaccelerations, pi-quanta accelerated to near-light velocities, pi-quanta that aged ten, a hundred times more rapidly than was laid down by classical theory. To circumnavigate the entire visible universe in ten or fifteen subjective years and return to Earth a year after takeoff. Overcome space, break the chains of time, make his generation a gift of alien worlds—excep
t that that damned doctor had taken him off acceleration indefinitely, damn him to hell!

  “There he lies,” said Panin. “Only he’s depressed.”

  “He’s in a bad way,” said Gurgenidze.

  “They won’t let him train,” Panin explained.

  Sergei raised up his head and saw that Tanya Gorbunova, a second-year cadet from the Remote Control Division, had walked over to him.

  “Are you really depressed, Sergei?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Sergei. He remembered that Tanya and Katya were friends, and he began to feel uneasy.

  “Sit down by us, Tanya old girl,” said Malyshev.

  “No,” said Tanya. “I have to have a talk with Sergei.”

  “Ah,” said Malyshev.

  Gurgenidze shouted, “Hey, guys, let’s go get the kibitzers!”

  They got up and left, and Tanya sat down next to Sergei. She was thin, with lively eyes, and it was remarkably pleasant to look at her, even if she was Katya’s friend.

  “Why are you mad at Katya?” she asked.

  “I’m not,” Sergei said gloomily.

  “Don’t lie,” said Tanya. “You’re mad at her.”

  Sergei shook his head and began to look off to the side.

  “So you don’t love her.”

  “Listen, Tanya,” said Sergei, “do you love your Malyshev?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, there you are. If you had a fight, I’d try to get you back together.”

  “You mean you had a fight?” said Tanya.

  Sergei was silent.

  “Look, Sergei, if Misha and I have a fight, then of course we make up. Ourselves. But you—”

  “We’re not going to make up,” said Sergei.

  “So you did have a fight.”

  “We’re not going to make up,” Sergei said distinctly, and looked straight into Tanya’s lively eyes.

  “But Katya doesn’t even know you and she have had a fight. She doesn’t understand anything, and I feel just terrible about her.”

  “Well, what do you want me to do, Tanya? Look at my side of it. The same thing has happened to you, I’ll bet.”

  “It happened once,” Tanya agreed. “Only I told him right away.”