The Rape of The Sun

by Ian Wallace

  The sound-drone of the Dhomer ship as she labored at Sun had been so steady that it had dropped below the threshold of noticing. Now that sound changed; the droning halted, then returned at a different pitch; the ship went into tooth-shaking vibration during physically distressed minutes; then the vibration subsided, but the new timbre of background sound continued and grew permanent.

  Dhurksven commented: “That was your friend Jensen in my body keeping my promise. He has started the operation of returning your star to its proper position. He will do all that I promised. Then he will go to seek his fortune on my planet as me. Your friend Ariel will go with him, to help him with the special powers of Ariel. Indeed I wish both of them well. I pray that you will wish me well.”

  I dared inquire, “How can it possibly feel to inhabit an alien’s brained body?”

  “It will take a long while to learn how it feels. By the time I learn, perhaps it will feel natural.”

  “And what of the new language, Dhurk? You seem to have mastered it immediately—”

  “It seems that I merely form ideas with the will to speak them, and the Jensen brain immediately furnishes the words and forms the speech. But in this brain I have found no words to express the weird of the experience. Cavell—do you wish me well?”

  “With ail my heart,” I assured him, “provided that in your soul-memory, you can find something to help me revive my husband.”

  34

  Dragon Svendurk shot us out of the Dhomer ship and reinserted us into our original sun-orbit, with human Dhurksven gradually adapting himself to the Mazda controls. When we came around to earthside, Wel (rather than Dhurk, who continued shaky in his new brained body) made repeated attempts to raise several stations on Earth; nothing. In somber mood we entered into more orbits, for two reasons: to get our escape booster fully loaded with solar energy, and to be sure that all four of our satellites were performing properly—all the time wondering whether the condition of Earth was such that proper performance would mean anything.

  Indeed, we saw a hazard. If our moon-orbiting receptor field should overload because nobody was tapping into its discharges, it might do explosive damage to whatever was left on Earth. Accordingly, we cut off the satellite action, subject to telemetric restart.

  After one more orbit, Dhurk—who now felt more confident of his new personal equipment and his new microship Mazda—announced after instrumental readings that the solar energy in our booster had reached peak capacity, and our chances of escaping were as good now as they ever would be. We agreed, but Wel warned all of us: “We may be returning to a wrecked world. If so, there won’t be shuttles to bring us in, and we’ll have to whip up a procedure to do it ourselves. And then, if we make it, all of us need to be ready to take our subsequent survival chances.”

  Of course, to survive, we’d have to get there. We had counted on intake en route from our solar satellites to breeze us homeward; but now, we had shut off the satellites. The problem was that escape from Sun was not the simple business of shaking loose from Sun, the way you shake loose from Earth in order to rocket to Moon. Sun’s gravity-well extends past Earth all the way out to Pluto and beyond. Somehow our booster had to maintain power almost all the way home, in order to stay above escape velocities which varied from 162 kps at our sun-orbit down to a mere 42.5 kps as we would topple into Earth’s little gravity-well; meanwhile, our solar energy intake would keep diminishing as we would recede from Sun. Could we manage such a prolonged escape-thrust, without aid from our four solar satellites?

  During another sun-orbit, Dhurk and I worked on the problem, with Wel and Bill kibitzing but unable to help much. We were trying to calculate a marginal series of power-bursts: expending power to get ourselves well above current escape velocity, we would then coast until we would slow nearly to escape velocity, while the booster would be hungrily sucking on its receding power source. As we came around the limb to earthside, I looked at the three men and asserted flatly: “No way, gentlemen. No way.”

  Dhurk reacted with astonishing promptness. “All right. We reactivate two of the satellites and keep them beaming us continually, instead of using all four shifting between us and the sub-lunar field.”

  I objected: “Your continually isn’t really continual. Suppose for instance we activate Two and Skiddoo. We can catch their beam only when both are earthside. But more than half the time, one of them will be farside.”

  “Suppose instead,” Dhurk suggested, “that we activate only One and Two or only Three and Skiddoo. Then they can cooperate to help us more than half the time—which will deliver more solar power to us than the use of all four satellites alternating between us and the sub-lunar field."

  “Objection,” softly said Wel. “Our booster has only so much capacity. When it absorbs all it can take from two satellites, its intake will shut off—and then, during days, we will have to draw on that power augmented by the feeble stuff that we will be getting directly from Sun.”

  “Why then,” quoth Dhurk, “we will resort to the power-burst technique that we have worked out; and with half-time augmentation from the two satellites, we just might make it. Look, I am one who has nothing to lose, this offer for me is no more chancy than Ariel’s offer to switch mindsouls between me and Sven. You three are the ones who have something to lose. Which alternative do you like: trying the two-satellite ploy, avoiding the peril of overloading the sublunar field, but making our sun-escape rather iffy—or just orbiting Sun until our orbit decays or our rations or atmosphere poop out, whichever comes first? Or, finally, shall we compound the wreckage of your planet by going ahead with the four-satellite overload?”

  The booster worked. Under brain-rattlingly high g’s, having worked up momentum and altitude during several accelerating orbits, we catapulted away from Sun, leaving our satellites behind: two dormant, two not. And then we moved into the jerky less-than-certain business of making good our escape by pushing ourselves all the way home.

  Hurtling toward Earth, we spent much of our free time soberly working on the problem of unassisted reentry. Our Jacobite shielding had performed beautifully in staving off sun-heat; but during earth-atmospheric entry, it would also have friction to contend with.

  At length we decided that if Earth should continue unresponsive when we would be orbiting her, we would continue to orbit while in teams we would skywalk to build up the nose shielding with emergency spray guns,*even opaquing our forward vision; whereafter we would also reinforce our belly shielding until our Jacobite would be exhausted. That way, we could chance a drop-through. Only, with no emergency parachutes, indeed it would be a crash landing! So that didn’t solve it—and even if we should solve it, how would we get anywhere from where we would hit?

  Fifteen million kilometers from Earth and still unable to raise Earth, we arrived at a truly desperate solution to the no-parachute problem. We would not disconnect from our booster. We would chance the enormous weight again that it would inflict upon us, and our consequently far higher fall-momentum, in the hope of being able to rotate 180 degrees end-on-end and fire the booster downward in time to retard our fall and hit ocean or ground with no worse than parachute-drop impact. Ocean was preferable; and by now, since there was so much of it, Dhurk felt capable of aiming confidently for it. Should we still be intact, with a booster having some remaining energy-load and not too badly damaged to use it, we would attempt to jet-skate-navigate to land.

  Deliberately we refused to face the possibility of failure at any of the numerous risk-points. Any failure would be death; we meant to live....

  Eleven million kilometers out, we received a feeble signal: “NASA calling Mazda. Come in, Mazda”

  This time it was Dhurk, now finely honed as Sven, who leaped on the radio. “Mazda here, Jensen talking. What’s your planetary condition? Over.”

  “Sort of poorly,” came the reply only seventy-three seconds later. “Big thing is, we have one operational shuttle. We can bring in your personnel, and return to get the capsu
le later—” The details weren’t good; they were not, however, hopeless. Earthquakes, volcanoes, windstorms, and fires had cruelly mauled the planet; deaths and other casualties were literally countless. For several days, all communications had been out, radio antennas having been pulverized. At least, there had been no nuclear exchange; with both sides suspecting each other of a sneak attack, it had been a near thing, but luckily the hot line’s cable had survived and was used, and now the USA and the USSR were actually cooperating in world salvage operations.

  Maybe it would be the start of something good there?

  During our first six days after exit from the Dhomer ship, our interpersonal contacts were perfunctory and uncomfortable. Even Wel and I hewed exclusively to the duty line. And I’m afraid I kept glancing furtively at Dhurksven, while he with Sven’s memories and glands kept glancing furtively at me. That, I am convinced, was inevitable.

  All this abruptly changed when the g’s of our initial escape from Sun had settled down. What happened came a couple of hours after dinner; we had fallen into our old routine of an evening bull-shoot—during which precious little bull was getting shot. ...

  I heard Wel say, “Look, Hel, we’re on our way home now, the others shouldn’t mind. Want to join me in my cabin?” Jolted, I turned to Wel; his crinkles were the good ones. I tried my best to match them. He arose and took my hand; I arose and slipped my arm around his waist; we went to his cabin, blessedly we were wife and husband together.

  Deep into the night, I awakened, knowing he was awake; hearts are close on a one-man bunk. He was on his back, nearly crowding me out. Balancing myself on a hip, I laid a hand on his chest: “What’s up, Doc?”

  “Not what you hoped,” he muttered.

  “Never mind what I may or may not have hoped. What Is up?”

  “I don’t enjoy playing Iago.”

  “I thought you were Prospero.”

  “Sure I was; and Collins was Iago disguised as Ariel, only I was the one who was mind-writing his lines. And I didn’t enjoy that—and in retrospect, I don’t.”

  “My dearest, Hréda was no Desdemona—”

  “No, she was Cressida, right. Not the point at all. Look* Hel: you were all hung up on Sven, and rightly so, he’s a marvelous guy, and I was knocking myself out not being jealous because it wouldn’t be loving and ethical for me to be jealous. So what do I turn right around and do? I deliberately hang-up Dhurk on just exactly that point of jealousy which I am eschewing as being less-than-human human—”

  “Wel, hush.”

  “All right. I said it.”

  “Our world was at stake.**

  “I suppose so.”

  “You saved it.”

  “If it is savable, maybe.” That was long before we raised NASA.

  “So doesn’t that justify it?”

  “Two wrongs, huh?”

  “Wel, listen—no, Will, listen. All you did was play on a possible jealousy. If then Dhurk actualized it—where’s your guilt?”

  “On my back, where else?”

  “You kook, you’re lying on your back—which is more than you give me room to do. Now wait, listen. Was it only jealousy that Dhurk felt? Or was it realistic recognition that all the time his Hréda was playing him for a sucker?”

  “Mm—”

  “Would you have inhibited your jealousy if you had thought that 7 was playing you for a sucker?”

  “Mm—”

  “Was I playing you for a sucker?”

  Violently he turned on his side facing me: “My God, no, Hel, of course you weren’t—”

  Heart-eased, I told him: “That’s a much better position. Now if you’ll just scrunch over a bit, it’s my turn to lie on my back.”

  Dhurk got me aside next day. He looked and acted fussed. “Excuse me, Doctor Cavell—”

  “Call me Hel. What shall I call you?”

  “Better call me Sven, I have to get used to the alias.”

  “Okay, Sven—” I twinged, a little.

  He said, “But Sven I am not. I know he loved you, it’s in his brain here, in fact I—find it just a bit compelling, but not irresistible. I think that love is in the soul much more than in the brain or glands. I keep on loving Hréda; intellectually I know it is stupid, but I don’t suppose it will ever die. I like you, Hel. Very much. But it is not love. I thought you should know that.”

  I studied him for sincerity. Then I smiled with my soul.

  I swear that the following is true. One January night this year, 1996, Wel and I were watching an old videotape movie on local TV—still the networks were patchy in their comebacks, but Sylvanopolis had reopened a station. Right in the middle of it, the picture blanked out. The following words appeared on the screen in big Gothic type and stayed during perhaps ten seconds:

  WORRY NOT, HE IS MAKING IT.

  The words faded, and the movie went right on.

  Next Wel and I weren’t seeing the film, we were mutely questioning each other. When we could speak, we found agreement that we both had seen it—and that we didn’t believe it. “Hey, wait,” said Wel, “we were taping this videotape, remember?” He halted the show, got out our tape, and reran it. Sure enough, at the same point in the movie, the same thing.

  Next day Wel used his connections at the TV station to get a private rerun of their tape. He phoned me: “Listen to this, Hel. Their tape does not, repeat not, carry the interruption that we saw and taped.”

  After thought, I told him, “I think that makes me happy.”

  Wel answered fervently, “I know it makes me happy.”

  Epilogue:

  THE TREVI FOUNTAIN

  This is going to my editor with the corrected galley proofs, and I hope he can work it in. I am mailing the stuff from Rome, having knocked off this epilogue after days of hard Southeastern Power work.

  J.C. sent Sven and me here to organize installation of a suburban Roman station to receive impulses from our satellite solar field—mightily juiced-up by hyperpower beamings from One, Two, Three, and Skiddoo—and to distribute the power around much of southern Europe. I brought the proofs of this narrative with me; and I brought also Wel-on his own ticket, as a science editor doing headliner field work. Wel had been here a couple of times, and I once with Wel; it was entirely new to Sven, one of the three great European capitals that he hadn’t looked in on.

  Oh, by the bye—Sven was Dhurk, of course; but so far as I know, none of Sven’s old associates had detected the psychic difference. Dhurk (I’ll call him that, now) from the very beginning had driven with great power and enthusiasm into the Southeastern Power operation; I think he is seeing Southeastern as a potent stepping-stone to something bigger. J.C. recently remarked to me, “Helen, I consider that Sven is vice-presidential timber. Vice-presidential. Now don’t quaver, Helen, he won’t replace you; but there are other v.p.’s, and I feel that his timber is def-finitely vice-presidential.”

  Once, after persistent demands from Dhurk, hesitantly Wel had loaned him copies of The Tempest and Othello. A week later, Dhurk had returned them with a one-word comment: ‘‘Admirable.”

  We’ve been working hard in Rome; only one Sunday have we been able to do any sightseeing. I want to tell you about the evening of that Sunday. Dhurk, digging deep into Sven’s book-memory, told us that he had felt a Sven-lifelong yearning to view the fabled Trevi Fountain by night; what say we inspect Hadrian’s Tomb at dusk, then weave our way to Trevi and dine at one of the tiny restaurants that we’d heard about? Great, said Wel; he knew a good one. Great with me, too; inexplicably, I hadn’t seen Trevi.

  We had a company car, a big black Fiat driven by Gino, an Italian chauffeur out of Milano who knew little about Roma but claimed to know much. Wel had to guide him through the intricacies of the Roman ways—and in Italian, that amazing Wel! What Gino could do was maneuver with loudly profane skill in the rat-race of Roman traffic: it is a city where the zebra-striped safety crosswalks for pedestrians are regarded by drivers as targets.

  And w
hat a wildness did Wel-directed Gino put us through, en route to Trevi! Northeast along Tiber-side Lungotevere Castello Gino lunged, hung a five-g right across the river on Ponte Umberto I, intricately maneuvered a left onto cramped Via Monte Brianzo (there we departed Father Tiber), and whirred through Piazzas Nicosia and Borghese. At Largo Carlo Goldoni, we executed a fender-blistering bee-dance through viciously interchanging cross-traffic; abruptly we were weaving southward on broad buzzing Via del Corso. . . .

  Wel yelled: “U-turn right here, and pull up!” Instantaneously Gino twisted the car around, narrowly missing several speeding taxis and a bus. The Fiat squealed to a curb-halt, dropping pounds of rubber. All but Gino dismounted beside a confusion of dirty-stone commercial buildings. “Pick us up right here in about two hours,” Wel ordered; Gino peeled away.

  Wel had his own romantic way of guiding us in to Trevi. Cautiously we negotiated an alley whose name I forget; it is just wide enough for two compact cars to meet and pass scraping fenders, but is always lined along one side by parked cars; nevertheless, it is two-way traffic, and no driver is careful. We were in silent single file, Wel leading, I next, Dhurk following; on Wel's advice, Dhurk kept looking back for hostile vehicles; in the middle, I let my men guard me while I gazed rightward at the inviting little fish and cheese and notion shops along the way. I was wondering what Dhurk thought of the unprepossessing approach to the fountain of Sven’s dreams.